Tyrone and Tandy’s families had very different ways of marking the anniversary of their respective losses. Ty’s parents seemed to want to throw themselves into work or whatever cold preoccupy them, seemingly wanting to ignore the date entirely. It was only when Ty’s father had his old Mardi Gras tribe over to work on their costumes, that we got to see a crack in their otherwise stoic facade. Taking Billy’s old cloak that Ty had been working to finish, his father (played by the wonderful Miles Mussenden) seemed to break over having in his hands the last thing left of his first-born son. Just like RUNAWAYS before it, CLOAK & DAGGER has not balked at giving the parental figures something to work with and Ty’s folks may just be the silent MVP’s of this show.
Tandy popped round to visit, Ty avoiding any awkwardness over revealing their deeper connection by simply telling his parents that Tandy lost her father on the same night Billy died, a common sense of loss leading to their bonding. Not exactly a lie, even if it completely avoids the real stuff going on with the pair. After realising the Johnson's weren’t going to mark the day at all, Tandy invited Ty to join her and her Mother later that night in lovely display of empathy. But of course, our girl had another motive for dropping by the Johnson house. Turns out Ty’s mother does work for Roxxon and Tandy swiped her pass when no one was looking as part of her plan to deal with Scarborough.
Slipping into the Roxxon Gulf HQ, Tandy killed the lights the only way she knew how, by stabbing through the fuse box of course. Once she had Scarborough where she wanted him, she kidnapped him and confronted him with all the evidence she’d amassed proving her father was right and that Roxxon had covered up their own failings. Interestingly though instead of denying it Scarborough straight up offered Tandy money to make all of it go away and only after inferring that her Father wasn’t the saint she seemed to believe him to be. Tandy left Scarborough under a collapsing structure, with his immediate future to think about what he'd done, all the while not realising he had got under her skin, she just didn’t realise it yet.
Tyrone’s plan, completely independent of Tandy’s, was a little more out there. Playing on the fact it was the anniversary of his brother’s death, the passing resemblance he now had to what his brother had looked like 8 years ago, a kick-ass cloak and shadowy, fear-based teleporting powers, Ty sought to mess Connors up. Enlisting the help of O’Reilly and her boyfriend, uniformed officer Fuchs (turns out he wasn’t just a booty-call and actually a pretty decent guy, so of course he was doomed) Ty sought to scare a confession out of Connors by masquerading as the ghost of his dead brother. The sequences of him tormenting Connors were creepy as hell, even if they culminated in something a little more melodramatic as Ty shouted Connors down and finally, got him to confess to Billy’s killing. And on video no less, as Fuchs had recorded the whole thing. With O’Reilly making the arrest, it looked as though Connors was done for. I mean, that's what it looked like, right?
Seemingly having won the day, Ty joined Tandy and her Mother in their tradition of remembering Nathan by releasing a balloon, though this year they used one of those sky lanterns instead. It was a deeply moving moment, especially for Ty as he had earlier that night finally brought his brother’s killer to justice, only for him to mark his passing for possibly the first time ever. It was easy to get caught up in the moment, as they all did when Tandy’s mother stood between them and took the teenager's hands. They of course entered her mind simultaneously and just like with Ivan, instead of seeing just her hopes or her fears, they saw what could best be described as a weird mixture of both. In a sort of David Lynch- esque scene, they found Tandy’s mom in a movie theatre, as she lovingly watched memories of her time with Nathan on the big screen. But sensing there was something else going on, something wrong, perhaps even spurred on by Scarborough’s words, Tandy sliced through the screen and she and Ty found themselves stepping through it into the actual setting of the Bowen family dining room they were just watching. They then saw the same scene play out, behind the scenes as it were, but with the important distinction, something that Tandy’s Mom Melissa had been simultaneously hiding and refusing to acknowledge herself. Nathan had hit her, probably more than once judging by her reaction. It seems Melissa had been romanticizing her relationship with Nathan in the years since he’d been dead, lionising the man that had abused her. Maybe it was for Tandy’s sake, maybe her own? People are complex after all.
Faced with this new revelation, Tandy couldn’t bring herself to question her Mother about it, but she realised her quest to clear her Father’s name was for nought. The man she loved likely didn’t exist outside an idealised memory, rose-tinted after all these years. No longer interested in clearing the name of a wife-beater, Tandy made the call to Scarborough about his offer and told him she was in. And whilst Ty seemed to have lifted this colossal weight off his shoulders, the others involved in Connors's arrest didn’t fare so well. In a shocking ending that put a spin on the women’s in refrigerators trope, O’Reilly returned home to find Fuchs having been murdered. Battered to death and his body stuffed in the fridge. A real sick twist on the fact he was always willing to cook for to be honest. Just when you thought CLOAK & DAGGER was reaching some kind of cathartic resolution, the writers come in and figuratively cut the legs out from under you. Utter brilliance.
Written by Nick Whitney, CLOAK & DAGGER Beat Writer
Related Posts:
CLOAK & DAGGER Season 1 Episode 7 Review: Lotus EatersSDCC 2018: Marvel's CLOAK & DAGGER Panel Recap
CLOAK & DAGGER Season 1 Episode 6 Review: Funhouse Mirrors
Comments
Post a Comment