The first two episodes of Cloak and Dagger, a brand new series that joins the illustrious world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, aired live on June 8 on HOOQ. Subsequent episodes air every Friday on the same day as the US telecast.
The series follows two teens Tandy Bowen (Olivia Holt) and Tyrone Johnson (Aubrey Joseph), who discover they have hidden superpowers which are somehow linked.
Tandy can emit light daggers and Tyrone has the ability to engulf others in darkness and the two realize that they are better together than apart and form a romantic relationship which gets a little complicated.
The first two episodes see the origin of the lead characters. They both encountered a mishap, a science experiment explosion that happened when they were kids. And although it came from the comics world, the makers of the series made big changes.
In the comics, Tyrone and Tandy were two kids who had run away from home. They ended up in New York City, and fallen under the sway of some sketchy fellows who promised them a place to stay, only to instead use them as unwilling guinea pigs for an illegal drug test.
In the series though, their backstory has been dramatically revised. On the series, Tandy got her powers after an oil rig blew up, causing the car she was in to crash into a river. Tyrone got his powers by jumping into that same river after his brother got shot and fell into the water.
Now teenagers, Tandy is a runaway who periodically checks back in with her mother, who abuses prescription drugs as a means of coping with the death of her husband (Tandy’s father who died in a mishap that coincided with the oil rig explosion).
When not with her mother, Tandy spends her nights in an abandoned church and survives by running a series of small cons.
Tyrone, on the other hand, is a black kid who tries not to stand out at an overwhelmingly white private school, while also struggling to live up to his parents’ expectations.
Years before, he witnessed his brother killed by the police for a crime he didn’t commit.
These updates though make the series even more relevant. Not only that it’s presented in a melodramatic way, something most Filipino viewers are accustomed to, it also centers on teenage issues of drug use, bullying, and academic problems.
And more than how their powers develop, finding how these teenage characters solve their issues amplified by their harsh surrounding, is much more interesting to find out.