Cloak & Dagger’s Season 2 finale serves as a showcase for the show’s stars while setting up a future for our titular heroes.
The episode is titled “Level Up” and that’s exactly what we saw Andre do at the end of the last episode. Ty and Tandy find his body, but he hardly needs it now that he’s a Loa.
With the whole city at risk of falling under Andre’s control, they need backup from the last person Tyrone wants to see.
Brigid also goes in search of help from Mina, struggling to reconcile her two personalities. Although not affected in the way Brigid was, Mina is fighting the aftermath of the terror. She wants to understand it and control it. So much of this season has been about control and who’s in control, with all of the characters searching for autonomy from demons real and imagined.
An MRI shows that Brigid still has rage in her brain, but also compassion and empathy. Before Mina can finish her analysis, she disappears.
Ty understandably hesitates to visit Evita, after she told him she wants nothing to do with him.
“I think she meant romantically,” Tandy deadpans, not taking Ty’s excuses. Tandy and Ty always push each other, and fortunately, it also leads to great one-liners. If they’re going to save the city, they have to put aside any personal awkwardness.
Evita reads the cards and confirms their worst fears, that if not stopped Andre will spread despair to the whole city. The only way to reach him is to reenter the Loa dimension. The catch, however, is that if they don’t escape before Evita’s candle burns out they’ll be stuck there.
Seeing Tandy and Ty’s powers grow, to the point where Ty can even control portals has been one of the cooler aspects of this season. And it’s finally paying off in their final battle.
However, when they arrive it’s Tandy’s turn to use her powers. With the viewfinder gone, Tandy uses her powers to draw a veve to bring them to Andre and the mall. Ty encourages her, telling her to embrace her powers and daggers.
“Not a knife, not a sword, but they can do the job of either. The special ones? They’re filled with pure hope, the opposite of despair. What’s a more powerful weapon than that?”
Talking about the “heart” of a show can be cliche, but for Cloak & Dagger, it’s hard not to. Without the deep, meaningful friendship between Ty and Tandy, the show couldn’t operate at such a high level. The weaker episodes this season have been the ones where they separate them, but the finale doesn’t hold back in showing why they’re the divine pairing.
While trying to find Andre, Evita has to literally fight to keep the candle aflame and gets some back up from Brigid who fights off the spirits sent to attack them.
Like during her first visit, Tandy and Ty must pick which versions of themselves they want to be from the mirrors. And of course, they pick being Cloak and Dagger. (While they don’t have full “costumes” yet, I love the use of Billy’s Mardis Gras cloak and Tandy’s ballerina-inspired white outfit).
They walk through the record store to the unlocked door to find Andre entertaining his captive audience, including Mina and Melissa. It’s never easy, and instead of getting to attack Andre full on he sends them into their despair where they face their innermost fears. For Tandy, it’s facing her father and, in a twist, for Ty, it’s facing himself.
It’s the fear she’ll always be damaged from her dad’s abuse and for Ty it’s the fear he’ll never live up to the perfection he expects for himself and instead hurts those around him.
They both fight against Andre’s control to get back to each other, meanwhile, Mayhem’s still fighting the spirits (taking the form of police in riot gear).
Nothing they do seems to hurt Andre, and when they realize they can’t fight their own enemies they trade partners.
“If anyone can kick my ass, it’s you,” Ty admits. Being the true partners they are, they help each other face their demons. They both clearly see each other: Tandy needs to be reassured that she came out the other side and won’t be forever trapped by her father’s legacy, and Ty needs to be reassured he did the right thing by not letting fear control him.
Andre tries to play the same trick on Brigid, unmasking a spirit as Fuchs who tells her she needs to let go of her anger and pain. Fortunately, badass Brigid-Mayhem doesn’t fall for it.
Their monologues about each other as they fight off Tandy’s dad and the evil Ty are stirring, and at times tear-jerking, but Andre wants them to play by his rules and pulls them back into their despair.
Divine and Paired
Overall as a villain, Andre has been lacking. Even with this episode, I expected his transformation into “D’Spayre” to be a little more impressive. Instead, they’ve just added in some more jazz solos. If anything has been a let down this season, it’s the time spent on this villain.
Still, Tandy and Ty fight their way out by seeing in themselves what they see in each other. Tandy gets to choose how she’s defined, not her father, and Ty gets to accept he doesn’t have to be perfect.
To put it in video game terms, they “level up.”
They both take away the power of their fears, cutting them down to size (in Tandy’s case literally).
And when they wake up in the club, Andre still underestimates them.
Tandy sends the daggers out to the crowd, but instead of injuring them, she restores their hope, weakening Andre. And with their final trick, Tandy jumps through Ty’s portal to stab Andre with her dagger of hope.
Because under all of that new power is just a broken man. When they play his own record of pain, to show him what he’s doing to others, they take away his power.
Given Andre’s promised transformation into a Loa, it’s a little unclear why that’s all it took for them to defeat him. Is he really gone? A funeral scene later suggests so, but things are left slightly open-ended.
In fact, the ending of the episode leaves more questions than answers, setting up an interesting future for the show.
As the episode closes we see on the local news that Ty’s innocence has been proven, presumably thanks to Father Delgado. Otis and Adina are reunited, but Ty must still reckon with his mother’s act of murder.
We also see Delgado at the church and Mina at her lab with a seemingly combined mouse suggesting they both have more story left to tell.
And finally that leaves us with our heroes.
Tandy packs her bag, only to be later joined by Ty on a bus out of town. We don’t know where they’re going, but we know they’re following a lead from Brigid about more missing girls.
But sometimes, it’s the journey and not the destination. And that’s what we’ve seen this season with Cloak & Dagger. Tandy asks Ty if they can still, “Be heroes, be divine and paired in other places?”
And we know by now, the answer is yes. Watching Olivia Holt and Aubrey Joseph grow into these characters the past two seasons has been a gratifying experience for viewers and setting them up for more adventures is the perfect note for the finale to end on.