Cloak & Dagger: Colony Collapse
August 2, 2018 6:46 PM - Season 1, Episode 10 - Subscribe

Tandy and Ty must fight for their lives, their loved ones, and the city as they attempt to fully master their powers and embrace their destiny when someone starts up a new version of the Roxxon Drill. (Season Finale)
posted by oh yeah! (11 comments total)
 
I mostly sort of expected a head fake with the whole fated to die thing - oh you thought we meant Ty or _Tandy_? Nah, actually it was Nina or O'Reilly.

It also felt like they wrote it to tie off nicely if they only got one season, which conflicts with how these last two episodes felt like they rushed through a lot of plot because of all the front-loaded exposition ate up program hours early on. I mean, if they knew they had two seasons to play with, they could've done more with the nadir in episode 9, maybe stretched it out to episode 10 and had a cliffhanger leading into the new season. If they didn't know they had two seasons, the whole Roxxon Gas Plot felt like it got shoved onto the end to give at least a little bit of comic book action that had mostly been absent up to that point.

Still, a solid offering that felt more street level than Runaways which never quite got out of the "rich kids discover their parents are up to no good" in the first season.
posted by Kyol at 7:45 AM on August 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


Thanks for that Vulture link - it provides some interesting insights into the show. My favorite take-away:
What was the racial makeup of the writers room?
I tried and kind of failed to be the only white male in the room, but that was my goal. We made sure we were at least half women and at least half African-American. I think that allowed us to speak truths and not guess. The important thing we had all talked about from the beginning was, we didn’t want to tell white male stories that were being acted out by women and acted by black men. We took it very seriously that this was the first young black lead in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that this was the first young female lead in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And I think there’s a really good group of people who can talk freely and start to translate certain problems in ways that other people can understand.
Italic emphasis mine, because this is good.

And it's odd to think about limiting being a MCU product actually is - "Marvel, to their credit, has let us make some vague references to other television shows and there’s hopefully some crossover potential."

It's to their credit that you can vaguely reference other MCU shows? Don't bite the hand that feeds you and all, but that's pretty damning with faint praise.

But back to this show - I enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to see what happens in the second season, but I'll be bummed if Detective Brigid O'Reilly becomes a villain as is mentioned in that interview, because this Marvel Wikia article makes her sound like a less straight-forward vigilante character, fighting criminals but outside the law.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:04 AM on August 3, 2018


I like this show. I would also be very sad if O'Reilly become a villain. I was glad that they buckled the trend and neither died. Although you could say Ty "died" by having his life taken away with that murder charge.

I think it's safe to say Mina didn't die. They wouldn't go out of the way to have Ty electrocute her instead of Tandy having to stab her with a light knife.

But what the hell happened with Connors?? So Tyrone can absorb people into his darkness? Is that like a prison of fear that the person is trapped in forever? That's some crazy stuff. I look forward to getting that explained.
posted by numaner at 11:35 AM on August 3, 2018


Yeah, there was a morning-after news broadcast that sort of brushed off the Terrors as something that faded when Ty and Tandy did their thing, so Mina's fine. Minus the rather large number of stabbed and shot people who were murdered, oh well, I mean it's Mardi Gras, what're you going to do, right? A little light murder never hurt anybody.
posted by Kyol at 12:19 PM on August 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


just their version of the purge
posted by numaner at 1:26 PM on August 3, 2018


Tyrone absorbing people into the darkforce was his original go-to comic book power, so it was nice to see it in this adaptation. I don't know if they're going to play it the same way as it was originally portrayed, especially since they walked away from the drug and addiction storyline that was the foundation of the characters' origins.

I had forgotten about Detective O'Reilly's comic book journey, but as soon as I saw that illustration on the page linked to by filthy light thief the memory bells started ringing again. That was such a familiar image. It has been so long since I read the original run that a lot of details and characters and plots aren't as well-cemented in my memory banks as some other comic book properties, but now that I've taken a peak down the rabbit hole, it's amazing the details that are coming back. It should make watching the next season that much more interesting.

Overall, I think this is a solid entry in the MCU. It's also nice that it can be a completely stand-alone property for those who aren't interested in jumping into the entire Marvel TV and movie mishmash, but there are enough threads and elements to tie it back to the rest of the live-action Marvel world for those who care about continuity and links and connections.

Thanks to those of you (and you know who you are) who encouraged me to give this a try when I wasn't sure about watching it.
posted by sardonyx at 7:58 PM on August 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


I got all weepy when Tyrone & Tandy joined hands & combined powers, really loved this finale and am happy with the season overall, and looking forward to seeing what they do with S2.

I love that the relationship between Tyrone & Tandy has developed into a real friendship, not just the usual tv-show dynamic of a male/female pairing being all about the UST.
posted by oh yeah! at 8:24 AM on August 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


So...what are the chances of a Runaways and C&D crossover in the future ?
posted by Pendragon at 11:03 AM on August 4, 2018


Episode thoughts

Good:

- Cloak using his absorbing powers. If they get a second season I hope they explore how that works in this universe.

- Tandy and her mom being total badasses.

- The D-bag Roxxon guy was actually pretty scary as a terror.

- Tyrone's speech to the cop holding them.

- Tyrone showing up just in the nick of time. Him being able to read the look on Tandy's face was a great character moment.

- Tandy giving Tyrone the hooded coat.

- Tandy and Tyrone working together using their powers in the real world.

- The chemistry between the two leads.

Bad:

- The terrors seemed more goofy than terrifying after the opening scene. Especially after they're all done up for Mardi Gras and are running in a group. They really could have used some of that walking dead zombie choreography because they just looked like extras awkwardly running.

- Tandy maiming and/or killing a bunch of innocent people. I think they tried to show that she was going for shoulder shots, but it was a missed opportunity to show that her daggers could drain energy instead of just being super-knives, especially since Tyrone got some new powers this ep.

- The divine pair flashback scenes were economical, but it all felt very crammed in and rushed in the finale.

- O'Reilly's lackluster "death" scene.


Thoughts on the series:

- Cloak's cloaks. I appreciate his Mardi Gras cloak as a nod to his stripey comics cloak and a tie-in the setting. I also like hooded coat as a symbol of Tyrone and Tandy's connection to each other. However, nothing has looked as cool or as close to the comics cloak as when he was on that rooftop with his black bed sheet billowing out behind him. I'm sure it's totally impractical to shoot action scenes with him using that or recreating it digitally, but I still wish they could.

- The way cloak disappears bugs me. He just blinks out. I really wanted to see his power signature when he disappears as well as when he reappears. I understand why they don't do it that way. It would be weird if everytime he disappears people see tendrils of black smoke energy, but I still think it would be cooler.

- New Orleans is a great choice for a setting and they really do a lot of work to incorporate it into the story and the characters. It's also a better choice for a series sortakinda set in the MCU that isn't going to have any cameos from the NYC street level heroes.

- The divine pair stuff never sat right with me. It's interesting flavor, but I wish that if they were going to have it, that it was something that Tandy and/or Tyrone had found on their own rather than it being dumped in their lap by a third party at the last minute.

- I hope it gets picked up for a second season. It's really a nice change of pace from the other Marvel properties and it maintains an interesting and dynamic story all the way through the first season, which Runaways didn't really achieve. I might even renew my Marvel Unlimited subscription to read some old C&D comics.
posted by runcibleshaw at 9:29 PM on August 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Season 2 was confirmed back in July, that’s why they had that ‘Season 2 Will Be Mayhem’ promo after the finale.
posted by oh yeah! at 8:47 AM on August 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


Season 2 will premiere April 4th with the first two episodes back to back.
posted by numaner at 11:16 AM on March 20, 2019


« Older Elementary: Breathe...   |  Succession: Succession... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments