Series / Cloak & Dagger (2018)

"You and I are connected."

Tyrone: The universe keeps pushing us together.
Tandy: The universe keeps pulling us apart. Anyway, it’s nice to have someone to talk to.

Cloak and Dagger is a superhero/romance series airing on Freeform, based on the Marvel Comics characters of the same name. Like many other shows produced by Marvel Television, it is set within the expansive Marvel Cinematic Universe, alongside ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Defenders franchise on Disney+.

Tandy Bowen (Olivia Holt) and Tyrone Johnson (Aubrey Joseph) are emotionally damaged teenagers with fantastic abilities that appear to be triggered by one another and which they must keep secret from others: Tandy forms and manipulates light constructs, while Tyrone can teleport when in a shadow and cover himself (and others) in darkness. When a chance meeting brings Tandy and Tyrone together, their lives become a lot more complicated than they already were.

In addition to Holt and Joseph, the series also features Andrea Roth as Melissa Bowen, Tandy's mother attempting to adapt to a new life; Gloria Reuben as Adina Johnson, Tyrone's mother who spends more time improving her son's life than she does loving him; Miles Mussenden as Otis Johnson, Tyrone's father stuck at a desk job for his family's sake; Carl Lundstedt as Liam, Tandy's partner-in-crime masquerading as a boyfriend; J.D. Evermore as Detective Connors, who hides a close secret with an intimidating persona; Noëlle Renée Bercy as Evita Fusilier, a classmate of Tyrone's who has her own part to play; and Emma Lahana as Detective Brigid O'Reilly, who might be the only good cop in the NOPD.

In August 2019, it was announced that Tandy and Tyrone would be crossing over with Runaways in the latter's third season, marking the first instance of a crossover between two Marvel Television series on different networks.

On October 24, 2019, it was announced the 2nd season was going to be its final one as the series was canceled.

The recap page is in construction.

Trailer 1, Trailer 2.

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Cloak and Dagger contains examples of the following tropes:

• Absurd Cutting Power: Tandy is able to use her light daggers to cut through a steel safe like cheese.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Tandy's mother is neglectful. Her alcoholism and her obsession with clearing her late husband's name and recovering the money their family lost leave her unable to adequately care for even herself, much less her daughter. She flat-out tells a cop looking for Tandy that she hasn't seen her (teenage) daughter in weeks (albeit on one of the rare occasions when Tandy was actually there).
  • Tandy's father was too, not to her but to her Mom. He wasn't the good man she remembered him as.
• Accidental Aiming Skills: Tyrone teleports to the perfect spot with his gun at the perfect angle to shoot Tandy and get her off the road. Of course, he wasn't even aiming at her.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Tandy's daggers of light cannot affect inorganic matter in the comics. Tyrone and Tandy's ability to sense people's hopes and fears is taken up to eleven as well.
  • The show's version of Mayhem lacks the ability to exhale toxic gas and is instead super strong and capable of catching and dissipating Tandy's light daggers. While she retains her razor-sharp nails, they are not retractable like in the comics.
• Afrofuturism: Much like Luke Cage (2016), the series uses a fantastical premise (teenagers with Wonder Twin Powers based around light and darkness) to explore racism and oppression, starting with the fact that Tyrone's brother was a victim of Police Brutality.
• Alternate Timeline: The primary focus of the Season 2 episode "B Side". Andre spends the episode making Tandy go through alternates of her life, what might have happened if only one or two things changed, each one getting progressively worse.
• Ambiguous Situation: The ending to "Call/Response" leaves it ambiguous whether Tandy was trying to invoke Die or Fly so she could learn to control her powers or if she really intended to commit suicide, her powers activated and saved her, and the sight of it convinced her to keep fighting.
• And I Must Scream: Ivan has been catatonic since he was pulled off the rig, stuck in an endless repeat of the last few moments before the rig exploded for eight years in real time and much longer in mental time. By the time Tandy and Ty get to him, he's forgotten nearly everything outside of it and is a little off (giving all his murderous coworkers cute nicknames for one).
• Arc Number: Season Two has 11, 22, 33, etc..
• Arc Symbol: Lots and lots of religious symbolism surrounding Tyrone and Tandy, both Judeo-Christian and Vodun (neither of which are mutually exclusive). Lighting candles, especially, comes up both in a religious context (Tyrone lighting a votive candle at a shrine) and a mundane context (Tandy using candles for light... in an abandoned church).
• Arc Words: For Season 2:

Tandy: Pancakes or Waffles?

• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • Tyrone to Tandy in Episode 3.
    Tyrone: What do you think is on the other side?
  • Another series of them, from Tyrone to his mother, in Episode 9.
    Tyrone: Watch your mouth, pull your pants up, take your hoodie down, WHEN DOES IT END?! Even if I do everything perfect they could still come after me, so why be perfect? Why not stand up for the world the way it should be?
• Attempted Rape: One of the men Tandy robbed tracks her down and tries to get payback by raping her. She is able to manifest a light shard, stabs him with it and then makes a run for it.
• Badass Longcoat:
  • Tyrone's cloak, which in this incarnation was his brother's.
  • Tyrone is wearing a cream colored one in Tandy's Vision Quest.
• The Bait: Tandy seduces and drugs rich kids so that she can let her boyfriend into their homes to rob them.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • When Tyrone's father meets up with his friends, they act very suspicious, and the implication is that they're resentful of him for being successful. After a tense confrontation (right up to one of them putting a razor to his throat), it turns out to be a ritual and they all embrace and welcome him back.
  • Episode 6 gets one in early, with a shot of a slender, dark-skinned man having sex with a woman with white-blond hair. Shippers were disappointed to see that neither are Tandy or Tyrone.
  • For the entire season, and up until the climax, it's been implied that the toxic energy trapped beneath New Orleans is Tyrone's power, and he'll be the one to defeat it. It isn't until Tandy refuses to let Ty do this alone that she realizes that the toxic energy is both of their powers, twisted together, and they need to work together to let it separate and thus defy fate.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Tandy, Tyrone, O'Reilly and her anti-heroic clone Mayhem are all gorgeous while Scarborough and Connors are average and greasy, respectively. subverted with Lia in Season 2, who's part of the Big Bad Duumvirate.
• Because Destiny Says So: Only the Divine Pairing can save the world from the oncoming catastrophe.
• The Bechdel Test: Addressed by Olivia, who is happy to have long conversation scenes between Mina and Tandy that are about science and have nothing whatever to do with romance or their men.
• Benevolent Conspiracy: A minor example. There's a group of black men in New Orleans who are community and cultural leaders, and Tyrone's father is their Spyboy, gathering information from places they can't to warn them of upcoming danger. Billy was actually being taught to be a Spyboy himself before he was killed.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Peter Scarborough, the Chief Executive of Risk Assessment for the Roxxon Corporation and the de facto head of Roxxon Gulf, and Connors, a Corrupt Cop who is part of the drug trade in New Orleans. Scarborough is the one who oversaw the creation of the oil rig that Tandy's father Nathan Bowen designed, and when it exploded, he put all the blame on Nathan, but spent years trying to get back at digging whatever it was they found. Connors, meanwhile, was just a rookie cop who got startled when the explosion occurred into shooting Tyrone's older brother Billy, then turned to his uncle to cover the whole thing up. Thinking he could get away with anything after that, Connors became a major player in the drug trade. Tandy and Tyrone want to take down Scarborough and Connors respectively, but the two appear to be unconnected.
  • Season 2 initially has Brigid's Vigilante Man Literal Split Personality Mayhem as the main antagonist. She quickly gets sidelined for Andre Deschaine, an Emotion Eater and the ringleader of a human trafficking ring, who later attempts to become a Loa.
• Big Good: The Divine Pairing is said to appear to protect New Orleans every time it faces a catastrophe (a different two people for each crisis).
• The Big Easy: As well as the setting, the Divine Pairing are intrinsically tied to New Orleans, and are meant to protect it in times of disaster. The fact that their powers have reawakened indicates disaster is coming.
• Bittersweet Ending: Season 1 ends this way, though it's distinctly more sweet than bitter: Tyrone and Tandy are able to shut off the Core channeling the merged Darkforce and Lightforce, curing the Terrors and preventing the people of New Orleans from killing themselves. Roxxon's role in the events become public, and with Scarborough catatonic, Tandy and Melissa don't need to fear retribution from the vengeful MegaCorp, which has bigger problems. However, while Connors was absorbed into the Darkforce dimension and with O'Reilly presumed dead, there is no one to exonerate Tyrone of Fuchs' murder. Tyrone is forced to hide in Tandy's church, but Tandy knows where to find him and his parents know he's alive. The last scene of the season shows O'Reilly emerging from a swamp, clearly affected by the merged Darkforce and Lightforce, implying she will become Mayhem.
• Broken Pedestal: Near the end of Episode 8, Tandy finds out that her father, who she's spent so long mourning and trying to clear his name, actually abused her mother.
• Brutal Honesty: In episode three, Tandy tells Tyrone "Don't take this the wrong way, but I hope I never see you again."
• Bullying a Dragon: Tandy and Tyrone get these from both of their villains. Tandy captures Scarborough and has him at her mercy, demonstrates the ability to summon blades with Absurd Cutting Power, and nearly drops a building on his head, and he still decides to send a hitwoman after her and her mother even though she'd already taken his deal and was out of the picture. Connors sees a kid who can teleport, survive being shot at repeatedly, and control fear, and decides the best thing to do is to brag about escaping justice, kill one of the only good cops in the precinct, and try and frame Tyrone for his murder.
• Cannot Talk to Women: Tyrone has no idea how to talk to girls romantically. It gets awkward at times.
• Canon Character All Along: Andre Deschaine turns out to be D'Spayre.
• Canon Foreigner: Pretty much half the cast. Liam, Peter Scarborough, Evita, Chantelle, and Mina and Ivan Hess all have no comics counterparts.
• Central Theme:
  • The first season focuses on confronting past trauma and moving on, learning to live with the past without letting it control you.
  • For the second season, it's abuse. Tandy learns that no, it's not as simple as walking away from an abuser. Abusers isolate their victims, break them down, make them feel despair, make it so they feel they have no choice but to stay.
• Character Development: The majority of Season 1 is given over to Tandy and Tyrone's personal development after receiving their powers.
• Chiaroscuro: The series lighting uses this aesthetic heavily to feed the light/dark motif of the two main characters: most scenes are designed on a limited color palette of white, black, grey and pastel/muted colors; often bright light sources in darker settings (for instance Tandy's daggers) will feed the aesthetic.
• Color Motif:
  • Tandy wears primarily white and pastel tones while Tyrone wears black or gray. This extends to their individual scenes that keep this color scheme and are often respectively brightly lighted and in low light/night settings. It is taken up to eleven in their "vision" scenes when they read people's greatest hopes (Tandy) and fears (Tyrone).
  • Subtler since it doesn't directly involve their powers, but Brigid and Mayhem have their own disparate color schemes to go with their personalities. Brigid has blue and Mayhem has green.
• Composite Character: In addition to being based on the unnamed cop who kills Billy in the comics, Conners turns out to be the counterpart of Roger Falcone, the corrupt cop who "killed" Brigid.
• Continuity Nod:
  • O'Reilly, a detective from Harlem, mentions her friend Misty.
  • In "Colony Collapse", Scarborough says that Roxxon needs to keep up with Stark and Rand.
  • In "Blue Note", Solomon and Tyrone talk about Luke Cage, specifically they are seen reading an article named "Luke Cage in Harlem Rumble", written by none other than Karen Page.
• Corrupt Cop:
  • Connors, the cop who killed Tyrone's brother, is also a drug dealer and hired thug.
  • The rest of the NOPD aren't much better, as they seem to help cover up any sort of problem that the officers in their ranks might have. Connors's entire station house is apparently well known for being corrupt and okay with looking the other way, e.g., ignoring one drug dealer who took out the competition so long as they can say the overall crime rate is down. When Tyrone gets evidence of Billy's murder from Connors, they bury it under bureaucracy while making clear they have no intention to pursue it and let Connors out, with him even mocking O'Reilly for thinking that something as minor as a taped confession would put him behind bars.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive:
  • Most of Roxxon, of course, but Peter Scarborough tops the list. Everyone in the company hates him and desperately wants to defeat him in one way or another, while he himself hopes for nothing but stealing money from heroes who sacrificed themselves to save lives.
  • Stan is a low-level example. Mina's blueprints for her valve network would have required an expensive crane to install one; he had it installed ten meters away in an easier location to save money. The valve quickly began to fail because it was drilling into material Mina hadn't designed it for. Stan blames Mina.
• Corrupt the Cutie: Both Tandy and Tyrone try to do this to each other. Tandy tries to get Tyrone into her world of crime and daring while Tyrone tries to coax Tandy into his more law-abiding and less anti-hero world.
• Culturally Sensitive Adaptation: In the original comics, Tyrone came from a poor black family, while Tandy came from a rich white one, a dynamic which carried a lot of implications even back in the 1980s. In the live-action series, the writers put them on a more equitable socio-economic footing, with Tyrone coming from a well-off black family while Tandy came from a formerly-comfortable white family that had fallen on hard times.
• Cutting Corners: This is a recurring problem with Roxxon and the Corrupt Corporate Executives running it. They skimped on extra safety equipment that Tandy's father and Ivan Hess requested and in the present a junior executive relocates a crucial valve to an unsafe location simply so he does not have to spend the money on a crane. What makes this really stupid is that if they ever manage to successfully tap into the new fuel source under the seabed, they stand to make billions. However, they sabotage themselves to save a few thousand dollars.
• Damsel in Distress: While Tandy can absolutely take care of herself now, when she was 8 Tyrone saved her from drowning and pulled them both to shore.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Tyrone's powers derive from darkness, but he himself is kind and heroic, and his powers are based more on evasion and escape compared to Tandy's more combat-oriented light powers. Tandy even compares him to an angel.
• Deal with the Devil: Peter Scarborough offers Tandy and her mother financial security for the rest of their lives if she just gives him the evidence that Roxxon is responsible for the rig's destruction. Tandy doesn't bite at first, but once she realizes that her father was not the good man she thought he was, she takes him up on it since she no longer cares about clearing his name.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: Roxxon blamed Tandy's deceased father for the oil rig explosion, confiscating all of his possessions and leaving his family destitute in the process.
• Decoy Antagonist: The trailers and build up in Season 2 depict Mayhem as the antagonist. Truth is she's gone by Episode 4 and the true big bad is an Emotion Eater called Andre Deschaine.
• Despair Event Horizon: The girls who are taken by New Orleans slavers. When Tandy used her powers to look inside for their hopes, all she found an empty void with the girl curled in on herself and crying.
• Determinator: Tandy, who manifests a light dagger for the first time after refusing to just lie down and give up.
• Diagonal Billing: For Olivia Holt and Aubrey Joseph.
• The Dividual: In the first season finale, Tandy suggests that she and Tyrone are tied so closely together by their powers that they are essentially the same person. This puts the Divine Pairing in a different perspective, making it possible that Tandy and Tyrone together are one "person" of the pairing, and O'Reilly is the other half, the one who died to save the city.
• Domestic Abuse:
  • Tandy's dad hit her mom for minor things.
  • Tandy later draws a direct comparison to her trying to consume Liam's hopes.
• Double Entendre:
  Mina: I'm so excited to show you my valve.
  Tandy: I'm excited to see your valve.
• Down to the Last Play: Tyrone's finals basketball game in "Princeton Offense" comes down to one last shot with seconds left on the clock. Tyrone chooses to miss the shot after his powers go haywire and make him see his opponents' fears (being in a war zone, killed by a gang, beaten by an abusive father), leading to Tyrone deciding that his opponents needed the win more then he did.
• Downer Ending: Season 2 Episode 6, which ends with Tandy filled with Despair.
• Dragged Off to Hell: Another of Cloak's classic powers brought over from the comics. Tyrone's powers are strictly non-lethal, a fact he dislikes. However, he does demonstrate the power to envelop a person (Connors) in his darkness and drag them into his Cloak. In the source comics he drags them into the Darkforce when he does that, but the involvement of the Darkforce has yet to be confirmed by canon. After Tandy dives in we do learn what's in there is an almost empty void with Papa Legba waiting for you and what's essentially a library of the worst moments of people's lives.
• Dug Too Deep: The Roxxon oil rig did not explode just because Roxxon was Cutting Corners (They were, but that wasn't the cause). They actually discovered a new substance under the seabed that had the potential to be a revolutionary new energy source. However, it turned out to be extremely volatile and exposure to it turned the crew into homicidal maniacs. In the present, Roxxon is planning to restart the drilling and this time the entire city could be affected.
• Emotional Powers: Tandy and Tyrone's powers have one limitation. They run on the emotion they draw out in others. Hope for Tandy and Fear for Tyrone. So when Tandy loses her Hope in 2x07 she loses her powers.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Roxxon may be run by evil cutthroats, but they at least they understand that women can murder their enemies just as effectively as male hit-men.
• Evil All Along:
  • One of Billy's old friends, who Tyrone thought really made a good life for himself, is dealing drugs and working with Connors.
  • Andre from the community center, he's Season 2's Big Bad and the one responsible for all the missing girls. He takes them and fills them with despair so that he can feed off it.
• Evil, Inc.: Roxxon. Even without any involvement in human experimentation, the fact that they smeared a deceased employee's name to cover up an accident that they caused (especially since he died as an indirect result from it, and was trying to warn them about the danger when he died) and sent his wife and child to live on the streets would cement them as this for all time.
• Evil Is Petty: Ivan Hess warns Tandy that Roxxon can be extremely petty when it comes to destroying people who try to go against it. It's nothing new to Tandy who experienced that pettiness first hand when her mother tried to sue Roxxon.
• Failsafe Failure: Despite Roxxon Cutting Corners, the oil rig had enough failsafes that its crew should have been able to prevent the explosion. However, the failsafes did not account for most of the crew turning into homicidal maniacs.
• Failure Is the Only Option: There have been other divine pairings before Tandy and Tyrone and, in every incarnation, they've failed to be together as one of them always dies and leaves the other alone. Supposedly, Tandy and Tyrone will meet the same fate.
• Fate Drives Us Together: Discussed:
  Tyrone: The universe keeps pushing us together.
  Tandy: The universe keeps pulling us apart.
• Femme Fatalons: Mayhem has these. Though they're short enough to go around in public without drawing attention, they're absurdly sharp and can slice a persons' skin and muscle like nothing.
• Fiery Cover-Up: Also a Revealing Cover-Up by Roxxon of course. A Roxxon hitwoman killed Greg and set his office on fire to stop the investigation. They miss Tandy who just witnessed the hit. This not only leads Tandy further into the conspiracy but helps her to realize how far Roxxon is willing to go.
• First Girl After All: The first thing Tandy ever stole was Tyrone's hoody when they were kids. She still has it years later.
• Fly Or Die:
  • Tandy jumps into the water with chains wrapped around her legs in an apparent suicide attempt, only to come up a minute later, having cut through her bonds with a light dagger. She noticeably summons a light dagger much more easily after this.
  • Tandy gets Tyrone to do the same the following episode by shoving him off a balcony.
• Foil: Tandy and Tyrone are this for each other, showing their opposite number where and when they're going wrong whether they like it or not.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Tandy and Tyrone first met as kids when he indirectly saved her from the accident that killed her father. Neither recognizes the other when they meet again.
• Gaslighting: In "Ghost Stories", Tyrone, Fuchs, and O'Reilly come up with a plan to drive Connors crazy enough that he'll confess to Billy's murder. At one point, O'Reilly shows Connors a police sketch he'd had done of Tyrone, but she switches it out for a sketch of Billy and acts like it had always been that way.
• Glass Slipper: Tyrone still has Tandy's ballet slipper from when they first met.
• Glory Days: Tandy's mother's greatest desire is to go back to when Tandy was young and her husband was still alive.
• Godhood Seeker: The ultimate goal of Andre Deschaine is to become one of the Loa. He succeeds, but isn't able to enjoy it for long before a Fate Worse than Death.
• Good Parents: Tyrone's parents are a little strict and overbearing, but it is largely driven by their fear of losing him as they lost his older brother.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Tandy and Tyrone enter the mind of a catatonic Ivan Hess and discover that he has been reliving the two minutes before the rig explosion for the past eight years. By the time they get there, he's forgotten his name and the simple fact that there is anything outside the rig. Worse, it's a Year Inside, Hour Outside situation; when Tyrone pops out for thirty seconds and then pops back in, Tandy has already gone through at least two hundred loops, meaning Ivan Hess has been trapped for subjectively eight thousand years. They finally end the loop by escorting him to the core room and having him reset the rig to keep it from exploding; Tyrone had done it earlier, but it had to be Ivan because it was his mind.
• Happily Ever After: Liam's greatest wish is to be together with Tandy forever.
• Hate Plague: Whatever Roxxon was drilling, it made everyone on the rig start murdering each other right before the explosion.
• Heel Realization: After spending a good few rounds in Ivan's head, Tandy realizes that the life of crime she led in the real world was lousy.
• He Knows Too Much: In Episode 4, Greg was shot and all his files on Roxxon were burned. Fortunately, the hitwoman didn't find his safe which had copies.
• The Hero's Journey: Deliberately invoked in Episode 9 referring to the low points Tandy, Tyrone and O'Reilly hit allowing them to be born again as the journey goes on.
• Hidden Villain: Connors, the police officer who killed Billy. His greatest fear is being held accountable for that.
• Home Base: Tandy's church becomes an important location for her and Tyrone. One of them is living in it throughout Season 1.
• Hourglass Plot: By the end of Season 1 Tandy has reconnected with her mom and moved back home, while Tyrone, wanted by the police, is staying in the church.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Tandy and Tyrone both go through this, though Tyrone more so than Tandy. What gives them control, with their initial malfunctions at least, is putting themselves in a Fly Or Die situation after which they get the basic on-off switch, at least.
• I Know What You Fear: Tyrone can see people's greatest fears.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Duane mentions that Tyrone jumped into the lake to save Billy. The thing is, Tyrone never told him about that.
• I Warned You:
  • When Ivan's mindscape starts to reset.
    Ivan: What did the stag say to the doe? "Well not to brag, but I told you so."
  • Tyrone releases an epic I Told You So on his parents after they were told that Connors confessed. Turns out, they believed him all along but thought they couldn't say anything or they'd lose him too.
• The Lady's Favour: A tradition at St. Sebastian's, where Tyrone goes to school. Giving a girl their jacket is a guy's way of publicly declaring feelings.
• Leitmotif: During Tyrone and Tandy's Vision Quest, they hear the song "Goodnight Irene" being played and/or sung several times.
• Life Drinker: A rare heroic example, Tyrone's touch can drain and weaken anyone, except Tandy.
• Light 'em Up: Tandy's powers are light-based.
• Light Is Not Good: While Tandy's powers are based on light and hope, there are plenty of ways she can, and does, use them to hurt people.
• Literal Split Personality: O'Reilly gets subject to this after the events of Season 1. The Roxxon chemicals mixed with the forces that gave Tyrone and Tandy their powers split her into a Docile and an Aggressive. The Aggressive side, Mayhem, hates Brigid.
• Little Miss Con Artist: Tandy's raison d'être is conning rich boys by drugging them and then robbing them.
• Living Shadow: Tyrone's powers are derived from weaponized darkness.
• Lotus-Eater Machine:
  • Ivan's catatonic state is this for Tandy, since it's the only way she can talk with her father.
  • Tandy later learns how to do this to other people with her powers as well as feel what they feel. Doing so damages the person she takes from, as afterward they lose the happiness their hopes brought them.
  • The ultimate fate of Peter Scarborough is to be trapped inside a dream.
• Machiavelli Was Wrong: Tandy can't understand why Tyrone would help her or like her, so she decides that he sees her as a Damsel in Distress to rescue rather than a person who cons other people and he wouldn't care about her if he knew what she was really like. When she finally lashes out and tells him this in "Lotus Eaters", Tyrone gives her a blistering "The Reason You Suck" Speech that, if nothing else, definitely lets her know that he knows exactly what kind of person he is.
• Magic Feather: Tyrone uses a cloak made by his dead brother to focus his powers. When the cloak is damaged by Terrors in Episode 9, he replaces it with a hoodie Tandy stole from him when they met as kids eight years ago.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Roxxon did this to Tandy's father posthumously to cover-up their own fault in it, and because he tried to shut down the rig. A darker variant with Tyrone's brother, as his death is blamed by the police on drugs, and Ty finds out the officer who shot him never officially existed, which he later discovers was a lie.
• Marked to Die: The sacrificial member of the Divine Pairing is always shown by some kind of marking on their shoulder or upper arm.
• Maybe Ever After: The series was cancelled before fully exploring the romance between Tyrone and Tandy, but the final episode, as well as the crossover episodes with the Runaways, do spell out that they're meant to stick together and balance each other out.
• MegaCorp: The Roxxon Corporation, which is the MCU's go-to corrupt company. The odds of them being behind our heroes' powers is very high, considering A) they were responsible for them in the Ultimate Marvel continuity, which is already known to be a big influence on the show; and B) Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. mentioned that they acquired the assets of Isodyne from Agent Carter, who were experimenting with stuff called "Darkforce" or "Zero Matter", which is the source of Cloak's powers in the comics.
• Meet Cute: Subverted. Tandy bumps into Tyrone and spills something on him in a cutely awkward way and then leaves to get napkins to clean it up, but it was actually just a cover for her to steal his wallet and run off with it.
• The Mentor: Aunt Clarisse, the local Vodun priestess. The powers themselves also show Tandy and Tyrone that they're supposed to be there for each other.
• The Modest Orgasm: We see Brigid's hand sliding down the glass as she has sex in a police car in "Princeton Offense".
• Morality Chain: Tyrone acts as this (or tries to anyway) for Tandy, though he is understanding and doesn't preach to her about it.
• Movie Superheroes Wear Black: The most unlikely inversion. Despite trailers indicating that Tyrone would use an entirely black cloak, the pinstriped one appears and is even more colorful than in the comics due to its beadwork.
• Mr. Fanservice: Tyrone, who is a very attractive young man, is shown stripped down to his boxers, as well as other compromising states of undress several times.
• Mundane Utility: Tandy uses her light dagger, supposedly a divine gift meant to save New Orleans, to cut a plastic tag off a bag.
• My Beloved Smother: A rare good example in Tyrone's mother, because her overbearingness about his behavior is rooted in her fear any minor divergence will lead to a police officer shooting him, like what happened to his brother.
• Naked People Are Funny: The first time Tyrone teleports, he was sleeping in his undies immediately prior. Thus, he winds up wandering through New Orleans in his black bed sheet like a cloak.
• Nature Lover: Mina adores working in the marshes, studying the plants and animals that live there.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The Season 1 trailers heavily hinted at Tyrone and Tandy becoming lovers. Instead, Tyrone gets involved with Evita, while Tandy and he grow into Heterosexual Life-Partners at best.
  • Season 2's trailers depicted O'Reilly's powers gained from being exposed to both the Lightforce and Darkforce as part of a darker split personality, Mayhem. However, "White Lines" ends with the revelation that O'Reilly and Mayhem are now doppelgängers.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • Tandy's father knew the rig was a massive liability, so he went against his Roxxon bosses to try and get it shut down. Instead, after the rig collapsed, and he was killed as an indirect result, the bosses blamed it all on him, driving Tandy and her mother into poverty.
  • Liam uses all of his savings to help Tandy get a new identity and leave town. When he is subsequently arrested, he has no money for bail or a lawyer. Tandy chose to leave town, ditching him.
  • Greg is a nice guy who cares about Tandy's mother and hopes they can end up as a family. He investigates Roxxon to expose the truth and help the Bowens get back what they lost. Tandy's mother breaks up with him in a fit of jealousy and then he's murdered by Roxxon.
• Not Afraid of You Anymore: Tyrone says this to Connors, right before he sucks him into his cloak.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: The show is set in Nawlins, but ain't nobody even trying to sound the least bit southern.
• Not What It Looks Like: Tyrone takes bolt cutters to help set up a crime scene so he has reason to be in a police station. When his father finds them, and Tyrone won't tell him why he has them, he assumes that Tyrone stole something and reacts accordingly.
• Not Worth Killing:
  • Tyrone has wanted to kill Connors all season, and in Episode 10 he gets the chance to do so by throwing him off a roof. He looks and considers doing it, but in the end he just rolls his eyes and pushes him away from the edge. Not that this ultimately saves Connors, whose own persistence in trying to kill Tyrone results in him being Dragged Off to Hell.
  • Peter Scarborough is a lesser example. Tandy has the offensive powers to kill him, but she goes for something more poetic. His greed and selfishness caused all of this, so she just leaves him trapped in a dream, to spend the rest of his life on life support and if he ever wakes up he'll be carted off to jail.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Season 2 ends on Tandy and Tyrone leaving New Orleans on a buss, meaning future seasons will be in a completely new setting.
• One Degree of Separation: O'Reilly mentions her friend Misty to a coworker and readily accepts superhumans because she's seen some pretty wild things in New York, which could refer to basically anything in New York in the past few years.
• Orphan's Ordeal: Tandy's father was lost in a major storm.
• Outliving One's Offspring:
  • Part of the reason Tyrone's mother pushes him so hard to be perfect is that she's afraid that if he slips up even slightly it'll make him a target for police, which killed his brother. When Tyrone sees her greatest fear, she's shopping with her sons when they both run out of sight and get shot, and then she's standing at their graves.
    Tyrone: It's like you think if I don't do everything perfectly, you're gonna lose me.
    Adina: I'm afraid even if you do everything perfectly I'm gonna lose you.
• Percussive Pickpocket: Tandy steals Tyrone's wallet by "accidentally" bumping into him.
• Playing the Victim Card: The boy who attempted to rape Tandy paints himself as this when visited by Detective O'Reilly. But when she starts to question him further, he pretends to need more rest. Later, Connors tells O'Reilly to let it go.
• Police Brutality:
  • There's a brief shot of police using their batons on protesters, as well as the incident that killed Ty's brother.
  • In Tandy's vision inside Tyrone's mind, no matter how he kills the cop who killed his brother, he is brutally killed by the cops in revenge. He only succeeds when she gives him one of her light daggers, which manifests as a pair of handcuffs, representing arresting the cop instead of killing him.
• Post-Modern Magik: Aunt Clarisse has many Voodoo dolls, some centuries old, mostly carved out of wood or assembled out of straw. Her newest one is made using a 3D printer.
• Power Incontinence: Tandy and Tyrone have no control over their powers when they start out, manifesting them involuntarily or not coming to them when needed.
• Power Stereotype Flip: Tandy, who runs from every situation and never believes anyone has any good in them, gains light daggers and the ability to see hopes. Tyrone, who attacks first and has trouble understanding how people can be cruel, gains shadow teleportation and the ability to see fears. They even note that if Tyrone had gotten Tandy's daggers he would have already killed someone, and if Tandy had gotten Tyrone's shadows she would be long gone.
• Product Placement: A shameless example when Tyrone is tasked to gather voodoo ingredients (milk, lavender, anise, white yarrow) and asks if he needs "to forage in the woods or something". Then the scene cuts to him carrying a Whole Foods bag.
• Profiling: Racial profiling is slated to take an important role in the series, with a little Corrupt Cop for good measure. Ty's brother appears to have died from it. There's also some class profiling, as shown when Tandy accidentally stabs a rich boy who was trying to rape her: even though she has proof of the assault through bruises and any fair case would rule it as self-defense, she knows she stands little chance of being cleared for it since she's a low-class criminal, and especially since she had robbed him blind prior.
• Properly Paranoid: Tyrone's mom, ever since her eldest son died. She carries a gun, and has a feeling she's being targeted.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Tyrone's father uses beadwork to teach Tyrone diligence and discipline. The cloak itself was Billy's and he died before he could complete it, so Tyrone finishes it with his father.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Between Tyrone and Tandy in Episode 4.
  • Tyrone delivers a merciless one to Duane when the truth comes out between them.
  • Tyrone gives another to Tandy in "Lotus Eaters", calling her a liar, thief, and drug addict in a Tough Love attempt to wake her up from the Lotus-Eater Machine.
• Record Needle Scratch: In Episode 5. Tandy is running hot, scamming the answers she needs with her powers, everything going her way while music plays in the background. Music which grinds to a halt along with her self-satisfied smile when Tyrone suddenly appears in the middle of the party in gym clothes.
• Red String of Fate: Subverted. It's initially indicated that the Divine Pairing are meant to be together romantically, but it's later shown that past pairings were siblings or even complete strangers as well as lovers. The only thing consistent about them is that they tend to be the same age.
• Refusal of the Call: Tandy tries several different ways of leaving New Orleans. She never stood a chance.
• Related in the Adaptation: In the comics, Billy was Tyrone's best friend not his brother.
• Reusable Lighter Toss: A cleaner tosses a combustible liquid on evidence and tosses a lighter to destroy everything. including a body the assassin created.
• The Reveal:
  • "Funhouse Mirrors" has two big ones: Tandy and Tyrone are the latest incarnation of The Divine Pairing, a pair of special individuals who are always at the center of major disasters in New Orleans. Also, whatever Roxxon was dredging for on the night of the rig explosion, it wasn't oil, but a much more powerful and less stable energy source.
  • "Colony Collapse" reveals what Roxxon has been drilling for all this time: It's not just the Darkforce as previously believed, but the Darkforce merged with the Lightforce, which has corrupted both energies, resulting in the Terrors. Tandy and Tyrone have to hold hands, causing them to absorb their respective energies and release them into the sky, draining the wells and curing the Terrors.
• Revenge: Both Tandy and Tyrone are searching for someone who killed a member of their family.
• Riches to Rags: Tandy and her mother, courtesy of Roxxon after her father's death.
• Rising Water, Rising Tension: In the prologue, set when Tandy and Ty are still children, Tandy's father is accidentally run off the road and dies in the crash, leaving the car to sink into the bay with Tandy still inside. Ty sees his brother shot in front of him and jumps into the water in a vain attempt to save him, then gets trapped under the sinking rig. If it weren't for their powers instinctively activating, both would have drowned.
• Romance: Cloak and Dagger is set to be Marvel's first live-action project to be overtly styled in this genre.
• Ruder and Cruder: Tyrone and Tandy engage in sex with respective love interests and Tandy is a recovering drug addict. There's also a fair bit of cursing. In the original Cloak and Dagger (Marvel Comics) comics, the titular heroes have a reputation for being both Chaste Heroes and teetotalers.
• The Sacred Darkness: Referenced. While Tandy has the light powers, Tyrone is the religious one and believes he's on a Mission from God due to his powers, and Tandy compares him to an angel.
• The Scapegoat: Tandy's father warned Roxxon about the danger of their oil rig. When it collapsed exactly like he said it would, and he died as an indirect result, they immediately blamed everything on him, with the side effect of ruining the lives of his surviving wife and daughter.
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: Tyrone pulls one on Connors, making him think he's actually Billy come to haunt him for his murder.
• Screw Destiny: Invoked by Tandy in the climax of the Season 1 finale.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Tandy's first impulse, unfortunately is bail out on scenes she doesn't like. The series starts with her choosing not to do that anymore.
• Security Blanket: Tyrone's old hoodie is a source of comfort for Tandy.
• Shaping Your Attacks: Tandy fights with knives of light, presumably having some experience with real knives from her time on the streets.
• Ship Tease: Much between Tandy and Tyrone in Season 1. The series is the only Marvel live action series to date that specifically names their series a romance, and the obvious chemistry between Aubrey and Olivia only make it worse. However, Word of God states that, at least for now, romance will take a back seat to advancing the main plot and character development, so confirmation of any feelings the leads may have for each other will not happen for now.
• Shown Their Work: The show really dives into the history and culture of New Orleans, bringing out obscure things you probably wouldn't know if you weren't a native. They also give us Ivan and Mina Hess in the first season, who look typically Asian but have Russian names. Russia's broad extent means that it has a large Asiatic population.
  Big Chief: I know you think you're being clever, but the fact is, that's quite racist. Our native brothers and sisters helped our people survive under slavery.
• Slipping a Mickey: One of the scams Tandy and Liam run is to have her pick up a rich looking guy at a party and have him take her to his home where she slips a sedative into his drink. When the victim passes out, Tandy lets Liam into the house and they then steal anything valuable. It backfires in the series premiere when the victim remembers enough about what happened to track Tandy down and try to rape her. He fails due to her powers manifesting.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: In Episode 9 Tandy and Tyrone lash out at the world around them after Nathan turned out to be an abusive bastard and exposing Billy's killer didn't change a thing. Father Delgado calls this Hero's Regression.
• Split Personality: In the second season. Brigit O'Reilly and Mayhem are the same person.
• Start of Darkness: An unusual unsympathetic version with Connors, the officer that killed Tyrone's brother. A flashback showed that it was a rash impulse (due to him being startled by an explosion from the rig collapse) and he actually regretted it immediately afterward, but after the department (including an uncle he mentions in the flashback) helped him cover it up, he, seemingly believing he could get away with anything, rapidly descended into corruption, becoming a drug dealer and murderer. When confronted with the same situation 8 years later (a black teenager, in this case Tyrone, surrendering), he doesn't hesitate to shoot him because He Knows Too Much.
• Stereotype Flip: In this version, Tandy is a street-smart poor girl while Ty comes from an upper-class background.
• Stuffed In A Fridge: In what can only be a Shout-Out to the tropenamer, O'Reilly finds her boyfriend killed and stuffed in a fridge for her to find at the end of Episode 8.
• Suicide by Cop: Tandy claims that all Tyrone is trying to do by going after Connors is get shot, just like his brother.
• Suppressed Rage: Tyrone is full of anger after years of being told to push his anger down.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Yeah, Tyrone helped save the city and Connors is worse than dead, but the rest of the police still think he's a cop killer. With nobody to exonerate him or clear him of charges, he has to go into hiding.
• Surrender Backfire: Ty's brother attempts to turn himself in to police in Ty's stead when Ty steals a car radio. Instead, one of the officers, Connors, shoots him accidentally.
• Tarot Motifs: Clarisse uses the cards to try and see what's coming after meeting Tyrone. Seeing him clued her in that a new Divine pairing had been chosen and that means trouble for New Orleans.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Villainous version. Duane, one of Billy's friends, is now the drug kingpin of New Orleans, working equally with Connors. He knows Connors killed Billy and certainly isn't happy about it, but puts it aside for the sake of their business.
• Time Skip: Season 2 takes place 8 months after Season 1.
• Title Drop: Sadly averted. While the concepts and symbolism of both Cloaks and Daggers are brought up individually, the two words never appear in the same conversation. Neither do Tandy or Tyrone refer to themselves, or are referred to by others, by their comic-book code names.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Tyrone faces this during his finals game. His primary loyalty has to be to his team, but the ref had been calling everything unfairly in his team's favor all night and the players on the other team need the prestige of winning more than the kids from St. Sebastian's. In the end he chooses "good", and seems damn happy about it.
• Tough Love:
  • Tandy and Tyrone help each other when when the subject of their mutual death wishes comes up. They really don't want to see the other get themselves killed.
  • Tyrone provokes Tandy harshly but with the most friendly intentions,when Tandy wants to give in to the Lotus-Eater Machine. Then Tandy gives the same to Ivan.
• Trauma Button: Tyrone gets very twitchy around cops. At one point he goes into a police station, and despite the cops being perfectly cordial (if a little overworked), he runs away in less than a minute.
• Villain with Good Publicity:
  • Connors, the cop who shot Tyrone's brother, is a vice detective in good standing while behind the scenes he is a major drug kingpin in the city. He uses his vice connections both to supply high-grade drugs and to eliminate the competition.
  • Billy's friend Duane is a pillar of the community who grew his home refurbishing business after the hurricane. The truth is he's partnered with Connors to control all the drugs in the city.
• Vision Quest: Tyrone and Tandy both undergo a vision, with a little help from Auntie Clarisse.
• We Could Have Avoided All This: If Tandy had just told Mina the truth she would have just taken her to Ivan and the whole mess would have been finished about an half hour earlier. The idea of telling the truth just never occurred to her. Though to be fair, Mina was working for Evil, Inc. and Tandy couldn't have known she was one of the clean people on their payroll before scoping her out.
• Weaponized Teleportation: Tyrone starts out not doing this but he begins to master it in Season 2. Exemplified in Vikingtown Sound when he uses the momentum from being thrown to teleport behind the brute and knock him down.
• Wild Teen Party: Tandy and Tyrone meet at a teen party though it's much more subdued than usually depicted.
• Wonder Twin Powers: Tandy and Ty's powers activate when they touch for the first time, after which their hands start glowing/getting covered in darkness respectively.
• Workaholic: Tyrone's mother is really busy.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Invoked by Tandy when Tyrone complains that as a black teenager he cannot just walk into the police station and observe what the cops are doing. Tandy suggests that he pretend to be a victim of a crime and thus have a valid reason to be in the police station. Tyrone makes it look like his bike was stolen so he is seated in the middle of the station and has plenty of time to observe things before a police officer has time to take his statement.j
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Tandy and Ty's light and dark powers react to each other. Together, they are "The Divine Pairing".
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: The couple of seconds Tyrone spent in the real world translated to enough time inside Ivan's head to make Tandy forget Tyrone's name and learn how to throw light daggers.
• Your Heart's Desire: Tandy can see people's greatest hopes.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The Technically-Living Zombie kind. Whatever's in the energy Roxxon's harvesting, it turns people into homicidal maniacs who transfer the energy by touch and seek to infect everyone nearby. In the climax, all of New Orleans is infected, but Tandy and Tyrone manage to channel and purify the energy.

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Tandy: Do you think we can do it?
Tyrone: What’s that?
Tandy: Be good... be heroes... be divine and paired in other places?

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