Tandy gets the opportunity to see multiple ways in which her life might have turned out differently, with one constant linking them all.

When the last episode closed with Tandy betrayed and loaded into the back of that ambulance, one might reasonably have expected a full-throated action episode this week as Ty and Brigid hunted her down. Instead, being Cloak & Dagger, the show elects to take a different tack, as Tandy experiences a number of variations of how her life might have turned out with subtle details changed.

Exactly how or why that is happening is the real meat and bones of the proceedings, and the writers take their time getting to that, peeling back the layers slowly for Tandy at the same time as the audience, making for a truly tense instalment where we get to experience events and discover information at the same pace as our protagonist.

The details of each variation are not as important as the constants that permeate them all. Wisely, the writers don’t spend too much time on the ‘fish out of water’ aspect, having Tandy seamlessly acclimatise to her place in each, despite them all being very different. Unsurprisingly, the constants relate to Ty and their respective powers – each reality presenting a different catalyst/starting point for their initial manifestation.

The way the show drags out something that could have been quite mundane into an entire episode’s worth of genuinely engaging content is just one of the many reasons why this is one of the more intelligently crafted shows in the genre at the moment. By the time you reach the ending, you may not necessarily be surprised by the destination, but I guarantee you’ll have felt a hell of a lot on the journey.

Verdict: Brave even by the standards of this show. It’s not often you see a show drag something so perfunctory out into an entire episode and get it so right. Writers of other genre shows right now would do well to take note. 9/10

Greg D. Smith