Fans of Marvel’s more obscure heroes will be pleased the team of Cloak and Dagger will finally get their own series, obviously titled Cloak and Dagger, which will air on Freeform in 2018. Well, technically the show was announced last year, but since I never heard of Freeform, the news completely passed me by. But I’m not alone here, right? Right?
Anyway, for those of you who never heard of Cloak and Dagger — after all, they are obscure, at least when compared to the likes of Luke Cage and Captain America — they are a super-powered team that consists of Tyrone “Ty” Johnson (Aubry Joseph) and Tandy Bowen (Olivia Holt). Johnson, aka. Cloak, has limited intangibility and can teleport through the “darkforce dimension.” Meanwhile, Bowen, aka. Dagger, can create daggers made out of psionic light that can either drain people of their strength or cure them of drug addictions. Oh, and because of his connection to the darkforce dimension, Cloak needs to occasionally feed on light, either from Dagger’s, um, daggers, or from light that emanates from anyone Cloak leaves in the darkforce dimension.
The show will not be a strict translation of the comic. Several aspects, such as Cloak and Dagger’s vastly different backgrounds, will remain intact, but the trailer has numerous story and plot changes. For example, the video demonstrates that Cloak and Dagger have a history together, as Johnson saved Bowen from drowning in a car when they were children. Furthermore, in the comics they first meet when Johnson retrieves Bowen’s stolen purse, right after he thinks about stealing it himself, but someone else nabs it first. Furthermore, Johnson stuttered in the comics.
The trailer left me wondering if the show will keep the comic’s most controversial aspect. In the trailer, Cloak and Dagger’s powers manifest when they hold hands after running away from something (or someone), but we do not know why. Is it due to stress caused by them fearing for their lives? The trailer obviously leaves the reveal for show, but in the comics, Cloak and Dagger got their powers after an evil scientist injects them with synthetic heroin. That would explain Dagger’s oddly specific ability to cure drug addiction, but it raises the question of whether or not the show will retain this specific origin. Today, shows usually present less controversial topics, which in this case would probably mean Cloak and Dagger will get their powers from the organization that gave Wade Wilson his healing powers in the 2016 Deadpool movie rather than from super-heroin.
While the trailer looks promising, we will have to wait until next year to see how well Cloak and Dagger fares on Freeform. With luck, it will be a compelling show that remains faithful to the source material, as many of the social issues in the comic are still prevalent today, especially heroin addiction.
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