This article contains spoilers about two-episode-long premiere of Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger last week but, based on the title, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article unless you’ve already watched Tandy and Tyrone’s television debut. If you’ve just watched C&D and you’re still digesting those flashback and flash-WTF moments, you aren’t alone, because Freeform envisioned our favorite comic book characters in a fresh way—but let’s talk about those scenes for a minute.
Shortly after Tandy Bowen aka Dagger (portrayed by Olivia Holt) and Tyrone Johnson aka Cloak (portrayed by Aubrey Joseph) meet for the second time and discover the beginning of their super abilities, they start to experience some pseudo-astral projection and see moments in time that nobody else around them can see. The next day, after Tandy and Tyrone meet outside of that party, Tandy goes home to her mother’s house. When Tandy’s mom touches her hand, Tandy (and viewers) experiences a flashback to when she was a child in ballet class. However, the flashback is from her mother’s perspective. While this might seem like a simple, nostalgic memory, we know that it isn’t just a memory because Tandy asked her mother what that moment was, which tells us Tandy wasn’t just reminiscing on her dancing days. Plus, the flashback gave her insight about her childhood that only Tandy’s mom would know.
The reunion.
Stream the first two episodes of #Marvel’s #CloakAndDagger on https://t.co/UfRsuIJsgN and the @FreeformTV app without sign-in now: https://t.co/vcK5NgUGPQ pic.twitter.com/x773YwH0re— Cloak & Dagger (@CloakAndDagger) June 9, 2018
Other than the fact that Tandy’s mom was confused about WTF Tandy was talking about, it seems as though Tandy’s subconscious was temporarily transported to that moment in time simply by touching her mother’s hand. In the comic books, Cloak is notorious for using his body as a physical embodiment of the Darkforce Dimension. Cloak can enter the Darkforce to physically teleport himself. While Dagger is also known to teleport through planar space using the Darkforce, when she’s accompanied with Cloak, of course, Dagger’s powers are connected to the Lightforce, which is why she can effortlessly combat some of Cloak’s negative mutated attributes in the comics.
Though the comic book renditions of Cloak and Dagger were able to teleport their bodies to other geographical locations, Marvel Television’s versions of these characters might be able to teleport their consciousness, as well. Seeing as Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger already made some healthy adaptations to how Cloak and Dagger got their powers in the Freeform series, it isn’t unlikely that they altered the spectrum of their powers—or the Darkforce itself. In Tandy’s specific flashback, it seems like her powers might allow her to touch someone to transfer her conscious mind to another person’s thoughts and memories. However, she isn’t the only superpower character in the series who can, in a way, teleport their conscious mind.
Tandy’s out of body experience is anything but coincidental. Likewise, Tyrone soon experiences his own pseudo-flashback episode when he tracks down the corrupt cop that killed his brother. Following his WTF moment on the roof of the Roxxon Corporation, Tyrone flashes back to a memory where he was at the police station, filling a report after his brother was shot. The respective pseudo-flashback scenes between Tandy and Tyrone might seem independent, but these déjà vu scenes conveniently take place the morning after their powers literally collided, and we can assume they took place at the same time (because the viewers can really simultaneously follow both Tandy and Tyrone when they aren’t together). However, Freeform could use these interconnected memory sequences to show that these flashbacks could be contented to Tandy and Tyrone’s powers, and thus, the Darkforce itself.
After the duo meets outside of a party and their powers physically forced them apart, Tyrone inexplicitly wakes up on the aforementioned roof of the Roxxon Corporation—where we can assume his powers, or the Darkforce, teleported him to. Nevertheless, the Darkforce didn’t transport his body onto the Roxxon Corp’s roof for no reason. Driven by his obsession to avenge his brother’s death and understandable anger over the situation, the Darkforce drove Tyrone to some answers, because when Tyrone walks down the stairs of the building and onto the sidewalk, he sees the ambiguous cop with a scar on his face that shot his brother.
“Don’t shoot.” #CloakAndDagger pic.twitter.com/MD0npHaHAc
— Cloak & Dagger (@CloakAndDagger) June 8, 2018
Granted, manipulated memories aren’t the only examples of the duo’s variation of retrocognition-meets-psychometry. While Tyrone went onto experience another flashback from the perspective of the police officer who killed his brother, his power to retrieve information from the past naturally seems to be more intertwined with is connected to the Darkforce. Unlike Tandy, who needs to touch a person to experience their thoughts or memories, Tyrone is perpetually connected to the Darkforce because his body is basically a gateway to the Darkforce, so the Darkforce can guide these memories. Plus, his powers can provoke this psychometry—seeing as after Tyrone experienced the second flashback from the perspective of the cop, his powers physically teleported to his high school. Although this teleportation could have been his powers’ way of getting him out of a dangerous situation, these flashback projections are only one part of Cloak’s Darkforce-induced psychometry.
In the second episode of C&D, we learn that Tyrone’s psychometric powers can mimic Tandy’s, seeing as after he touches his mother, he’s transported to the darkest depth of her mind: one of her greatest fears. Aside from the cinematography of the scene basically replicating a panel out of the comics, the scene paints a vivid image of two tombstones with Tyrone and Billy written above the respective epitaphs, the scene preludes to Tyrone’s other darker abilities.
Adina’s fear. #CloakAndDagger pic.twitter.com/2iXxIJ4t3I
— Cloak & Dagger (@CloakAndDagger) June 8, 2018
After Tyrone’s mind escapes his mother’s consciousness, his mother becomes physically unwell, which could hint that Tyrone and his mother were actually in the Darkforce during this psychometric event. In the comics, Tyrone’s powers need to physically feed on other individuals’ life-forces. Therefore, his mother’s spontaneous illness could indicate that the Darkforce was feeding on his life while the two were briefly encapsulated in the realm. (Which, obviously, could foreshadow the sometimes gruesome side of Tyrone’s powers and subsequently the Darkforce that comic book readers know all too well.)
Ultimately, these flashbacks aren’t really flashbacks because Tandy and Tyrone’s conscious minds somehow teleport to those moments, which means the Darkforce generates new powers or at least transmute some of the powers that Tandy and Tyrone’s comic book selves grew accustomed to. Who knows, maybe we can see Cloak and Dagger use the Darkforce to alter their memories or time itself?