With Ty’s life hanging in the balance, Tandy turns to Evita for help in saving her friend. Meanwhile, Adina turns to a face from the past for help.

Last week, Cloak & Dagger went dark, which seemed very appropriate as the nature of villain Deschaine had been revealed – given the way in which his powers work and more specifically, the way he uses them, the slow leaching out of any hope and a growing sense of despair fit right in, thematically. This week, picking up exactly where we left off, Ty is unconscious and unresponsive, and Tandy calls up Evita as things take a properly supernatural turn.

On a surface reading, it might seem as if the show is throwing ever-increasing weirdness at the audience for no reason. But this is a show that delves way beneath the surface, and rewards the viewer for doing the same. The broad theme of the reason behind Ty’s absence, and the way in which that manifests itself where Tandy finds him, is one that not only makes sense, but also relates to decisions facing and made by various other characters – theme runs through this show like letters through a stick of rock, and that continues here.

But if there’s another distinct characteristic of the show, it’s that it does not pull its punches, addressing and then reinforcing its themes through a level of subversion of expectations and sheer brutality that’s seldom seen in the genre. This is not a show where the good guys learn a lesson and then walk off happily into the sunset. It’s a show where the lesson is learned intellectually and then mercilessly rammed home emotionally. It doesn’t matter how many heartfelt declarations are made from one character to another – they’re still going to plant face first into the concrete pavement of reality moments later. That’s brave writing, but it’s also a finely-tuned tightrope to tread, narratively – abuse your characters too much and too often in this way, and the show just becomes bleak, hopeless and meaningless. Pull away too early or succumb to the temptation to make things that bit easier, and it becomes false and trite.

Thankfully, these writers know what they’re about, and it helps that they have a cast that does too. Holt’s perfect combination of hard-nosed steel and hidden fragility are exactly what’s needed for Tandy’s character, while Ty’s honest belief in the fundamental good tempered by the bleak experience of anything but are brought to uncanny life by Joseph. Emma Lahana, too, revels in the challenge of playing both halves of Brigid – a microcosm of that balance I mentioned, where Mayhem could easily become a two-dimensional parody or Brigid a timid damsel in distress, but both are avoided apparently effortlessly.

It won’t work for everyone (what does?) – the more the show goes on, the deeper it delves into Voodoo lore and mysticism in ways that won’t sit well with the casual genre viewer who likely just wants to see lots of punchy-kicky, explodey action. But for a show that can provide that while also pondering questions of philosophy and morality in the most unflinching of ways, you can’t go far wrong here.

Verdict: I’m struggling to think of a more confident, more balanced and more focused writers’ room than the one for this show right now. 9/10

Greg D. Smith