Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 2, Episode 9: Blue Note; Episode 10: Level Up
The final two episodes of Cloak and Dagger are... they work in some ways, but kind of fail in others, and I feel a good chunk of what makes the finale feel genuinely underwhelming is the handling of Andre Deschaine, our main villain. And to make it clear, none of the fault really lies with the actor, because frankly it's Brooklyn McLinn's performance that really salvages the otherwise pretty forgettable villain. Between a very inconsistent portrayal of his motivations, and how much the show sort of just jumps around from "he runs a sex trade by fooling girls" to "he's actually a sad boy inside who gets migraines when playing his trumpet" to "he wants to ascend into a Loa", his character sort of bounces around multiple different portrayals before settling into the admittedly not very interesting "he just wants people to feel despair because he feeds on those." Episode 9 tries to recontextualize this by jumping back and forth between Andre's past as a struggling musician beset by migraines so much that he even considered suicide, but, again, the execution of said scenes are so lukewarm that I really didn't feel much emotion watching them and I do kind of feel like perhaps they came a bit too late in the story for me to really care. Like, I get it, he feels a hell lot of despair from being unable to perform the job of his dreams. And I kind of understand the transition from being in such despair that he was about to kill himself to using his newfound power to stop his headaches by draining the despair from many other young women. The leap from that to being a sex trafficker cult leader and wanting to be a loa is still kind of out of nowhere, though.
And episode 9 sort of just wibble-wobbles around plotlines that, well, I don't really care about? It's a necessary episode to get from point A to point B, to set up the chain of events that lead to the finale, but... I dunno. It just feels so damn procedural, y'know? It just feels like we're hurriedly rushing through plot lines to get to the finale. Tyrone meets with that one kid, Solomon, from earlier in the season, to get clues or whatever and bonds with him. Oh, and we also wrap up the drug dealer leader subplot, and as cool as it is to see Tyrone abuse his teleportation powers to strike the fear of god into the drug dealers, that whole subplot was wrapped up way too neatly and quickly for my liking after all the buildup it got.
Tandy and Mayhem delve into Lia's mind and sees that she kind of has a sad backstory of wanting to be a musician before life happened, and get into a brief argument with each other about whether it's right to execute Lia or not. It's a neat, if pretty generic, "who has the right to execute a criminal?" discussion, and the words are well-done, but it just feels so underwhelming when contextualized as a mere speech in an otherwise underwhelming episode.
Eventually, though, we sort of just bounce around through flashbacks and mind-walking and ethics arguments to the end of the ninth episode, which is Tyrone and Tandy confronting Andre, who's using his trumpet to mind control and enthrall a bunch of citizens (including Tandy's mom, because you have to have an emotional hook), and Cloak and Dagger's attempt to do anything it takes to stop Andre ends up with Andre and the citizens disappearing as Andre presumably ascends into godhood (Loa-hood?) because who knows how these wacky Darkforce powers work, really. I did like the neat symbolic scene of Andre walking through his mental records collection store into a new stage, but overall I kind of felt like episode nine was kind of a miss.
The season finale is a wee bit better, and at least I do appreciate that after all of the meandering we had throughout the season in having weird flashbacks and alternate what-if worlds in the Darkforce Crossroads dimension, a significant portion of the finale ends up taking place with Tyrone and Tandy quite literally fighting their personal demons.
Andre uses his D'Spayre powers to trap Tyrone and Tandy in yet another creepy dream dimension where they have to face off against their worst nightmares. In Tandy's case, she faces off against her abusive father and basically has to confront what that means to her. In Tyrone's case, he faces off against... "Perfect Tyrone"? The policeman Tyrone from Tandy's flashback of a perfect world? Okay, then.
And as much as I give Cloak and Dagger shit for self-indulgent padding, I must admit that this particular Elseworlds fighting sequence? That's pretty damn well written. Sappy and cheesy as all hell, and a lot of the dialogue is expected, but it's pretty damn well written. It has everything that the previous couple of episodes' worth of lukewarm confrontations didn't, which was the fact that Tandy and Tyrone telling off their personal darker demons -- and their best friends' personal darker demons -- is something that's caused by the two getting closer and becoming better friends over the course of two seasons, building up their love and trust, is organic and something I genuinely understand about these characters, as opposed to the honestly pretty abrupt subplots we've been covering this season, is told in a far better and cohesive way.
In contrast, Mayhem and Evita are embroiled in a frankly bland and shitty subplot of fighting "those that the gods send to stop Evita" as Evita protects the candle-portal or whatever. Which, uh... specters that take the form of Fuchs? Which Mayhem just fucking blows straight to hell with a grenade? I dunno. At least they tried to give them something to do, but man, after all the buildup Mayhem got earlier this season she is just sort of there as the obligatory Punisher-mentality friend, huh.
And while Tandy and Tyrone's confrontation with their personal demons were pretty well done... the stakes and just what the fuck Andre's trying to do is never explained quite as well. Sure, people are trapped and forced to listen to Andre's trumpet performance, but other than vague lines of "he's becoming a Loa!" or "this is going to spread all over the world!" we never really quite get a good grasp at what exactly Andre is trying to do. Eventually, after Tyrone and Tandy quite literally become stronger people after confronting their personal demons, they do a neat little combo trick where Tyrone teleports Tandy and her big-ass light sword and stabs Andre. And they win, huzzah. It's... it's cathartic more than climactic, but it's all right.
And then we get a series of epilogue scenes, where a lot of the plot lines that seemed so important earlier in the season are just brushed away off-screen. Tyrone's name is cleared, Evita's still a Loa bride or priestess or whatever, Connors' corpse is hung by Mayhem in the police department building, Connors' uncle is arrested, the drug dealers aren't selling to pimps... and Tyrone and Tandy, seemingly growing into something more romantic, head off on a bus to a destination outside of New Orleans.
Anyway... this has been a neat ride. Cloak and Dagger's second season is definitely a far, far weaker season than its predecessor. It tries to do too much, setting up so much subplot and characters and end up doing nearly nothing with them (Tyrone's mom is the biggest contender for this) or just handwaving their stories in the most boring manner, instead focusing way too much screentime on the weird Loa and Darkforce stuff that certainly isn't the most interesting stuff. Likewise, I think I've ranted enough about D'Spayre not being handled well. Tyrone and Tandy themselves are written and acted quite well, but the season surrounding them certainly isn't. It's not the best superhero show out there, but it's definitely been a neat ride.
What's next for me, I wonder? I do like this two-episode-per-review format, which is a lot less stressful for me to write, and tackling superhero seasons one at a time, which was what I was doing with the sophomore seasons of The Gifted and Cloak and Dagger, has been pretty slow-paced and fun. I'm not sure what I'm going to watch next... Agents of SHIELD will still run as I watch its episodes intermittently, but I'm not sure if I'm going to tackle one of the Netflix seasons (Punisher S2 and Jessica Jones S3) because those tend to just be so draining to watch and talk about. Runaways has its whole second season out too, and I might just tackle that to get it out of the way? Or maybe I'll finally take a look and slowly go through DC's Doom Patrol series, another one I always sort of felt was kinda heavy. We'll see.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- In episode 9, Tyrone and that one gangster boy ends up bonding over Luke Cage, the bulletproof man, after seeing an article about him written by Karen Page. Nice to see the Netflix characters are apparently up to their antics even after their shows are cancelled!
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