Tandy and Tyrone are each struggling to adapt to their new lives after vanquishing Roxxon, with their roles effectively reversed as Tyrone lives in hiding as a criminal while Tandy lives a reasonably idyllic new home life with her mother. But can either of them really live without excitement, or one another?

A lot happened in the closing episode of the first season, and this one opens with a distinct change of gear, as Tandy goes about a life of ballet practice and time spent with her mother and Tyrone lives in the church alone. But it doesn’t take long for the show to reassure us that neither has lost their appetite for danger and excitement, even if they aren’t quite ready to admit it to one another yet.

Wisely, the show eschews the obvious follow up of having them be a superhero team righteously smiting the bad – they beat Roxxon through a combination of their powers and sheer dumb luck, after all, and they are both effectively still kids, with all the issues that go along with that. Added to which, let’s not forget that Ty is still wanted for murder, and neither of them – even by the end of the last season – had yet mastered their powers fully.

So essentially we see the ways in which each has their outlet. For Ty, it’s trying to right the wrongs on the street, taking drugs and money away from the gangs. But that’s not the simple solution he might want it to be – the world is a lot more complicated than simply doing the right thing and everything being sorted, and he’s about to find that out, with not even the people he’s attempting to be helpful to necessarily appreciating his efforts.

Meanwhile, Tandy is using the opportunities afforded by attending group therapy with her mother to find individuals who – in her opinion – need help of a more direct, practical bent with their problems. She too will slowly discover though, that just because you do what you think is the right thing, doesn’t always mean that you’ll get the result that you want.

It’s a way of showing us that the two of them need one another as much as anything else, both on a practical level as their powers complement one another, and on a more emotional level – Ty needs Tandy’s pragmatism and practicality, and Tandy needs Ty’s strong moral sense and tendency towards reticence to act as a subtle check on her impulsive nature. The two are spending time together, but keeping their respective activities from one another, and that’s always only ever heading towards one conclusion.

It’s good to have the flip in the circumstances of our two protagonists, even as it’s equally good to know that beneath that simple veneer of where they lay their heads at night and their current respective stations in life, they’re very much still the same two people, with the same strengths and flaws. It feels like a very natural, organic return for the show, and judging by the way things end before the credits, new and exciting challenges await them over the course of this season.

Verdict: A slow-burner but done in absolutely the right way, as is typical of the show. A strong start to what promises to be an interesting second season. 8/10

Greg D. Smith