Ty and Tandy’s feelings of helplessness grow as their efforts to help only seem to lead to more trouble.

Picking up a few seconds before the final scene of the first episode, this instalment of Cloak & Dagger goes with the tried and trusted method of point-of-view storytelling, letting us follow broadly the same set of events from the perspective of our two protagonists and O’Reilly in the aftermath of whoever or whatever it was that killed everyone at the club.

From Ty and Tandy’s respective points of view, this means watching them continue to stumble in their efforts at helping others. It also involves each of them finding some help on the way. In Ty’s case, it comes from a source who doesn’t necessarily know exactly what he can do but probably wouldn’t be all that surprised if they found out. The help Ty is offered doesn’t quite give him all that he needs however. It’s missing something and because of that he still isn’t taking all the steps forward that he wants.

Tandy meanwhile finds herself distraught when her attempts at helping someone seem to catastrophically blow back. Her anger still gets the better of her more often than it should, and controlling that impulse is, you sense, the only way that she is going to fully learn to use her powers.

O’Reilly is the wild card – it’s maybe an open secret to anyone with an internet connection or knowledge of the comics who she is, but the show still plays with the viewer a little on this one. O’Reilly – if it is her – is acting increasingly strangely, by turns admonishing Ty and Tandy for getting involved in things they shouldn’t and making a mess and then making even bigger, louder, more obvious messes herself.

What’s clever is how the episode unfolds with these three different strands, and how those strands get brought together. This isn’t a new way of telling a narrative, but it is well-executed here, and sets things up nicely for what I suspect is to come.

Verdict: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, so the maxim goes. Well-worn narrative devices deployed with a deft hand, backed by great performances all round. 9/10

Greg D. Smith