White Lines is the title of the second hour of the two episode, two-hour premiere of Cloak and Dagger and it was just as brilliant as the first hour. The beginning slides into the end of the season premiere seamlessly, we pick up at the murder scene in the club where Tandy and Ty called Detective O’Reilly in to help them. O’Reilly kicks them out so she can clean the crime scene before the rest of the cops show up and everyone gets caught. Tandy and Tyrone have a fundamental clash of opinions, and in its simplicity, it highlights the differences in thinking between classes and races. The episode is split between all three major characters, with each getting to show things from their point of view which was a brilliant choice because it built up the tension , gave us a little relief and then ramp up the feeling again.

.Tyrone heads off on a mission to discover what the voodoo symbol was that one of the drug kingpins drew on the floor, he gets his answer, to a degree but, it also leads to a confrontation with Evita who is not too happy that he never made contact especially after he shows her his power. While trying to learn to control his power he comes accidentally poofs himself to a chained up to a gurney in an ambulance, Makayla who begs for his help. He tries to take her with him and save her but, it doesn’t work and he ends up back in the church alone, defeated and sad.

Next up is Tandy’s story. We see her in her group therapy session, Makayla starts to defend Jeremy and Tandy gets upset and yells at her causing her to run away. After her mom calls her on it, as a survivor of abuse, Tandy sets out to track Makayla down and save her, or at least apologize. After her search comes up empty, she goes back to talk to the group leader who leads her to Andre Deschaine, a community leader,  who helps her on her search. Unfortunately, the rescue mission gets cut short, Tandy has a power surge when she sees a vision of her dead dad and runs off.

The third story we see is Detective O’Reilly as the devil at her brains door, Mayhem, escapes and decides to enact her own version of justice. Mayhem is much more assertive and violent and, it’s kind of glorious. She goes rogue and shows up to see the widow of one of the men who was murdered at the gang summit, after going Jack the Ripper on a $100k Kandinsky, and threatening to do the same to everything else in the house, she manages to find out the info she needs. She heads to the docks where she bumps into Tandy and that’s where things start to get hella interesting.

While watching the memorial for over a dozen missing brown and black girls from a poor neighborhood and getting a lesson in racial politics from Andre , he gets a call and Tandy rushes off to the hospital to see an almost comatose Makayla. Wanting to get to the bottom of what happened, she slips into her mind and figures out what happened to her, she gets a lead and uses social media pics to find out more, which is how she ended up bumping into Mayhem leading to an epic bad guy beat down with a riotgirl style soundtrack in the background. After Mayhem sends Tandy to stand guard she finds out that there’s another shipment of girls coming in and once she has gotten all she needs from the ambulance driver, she kills him in a way that would make Deadpool smile.

Evita shows up at the church to apologize to Ty, where he tells her about what happened in the ambulance and how she has to find her. It is nice to see him open up and it was equally nice to see her help him through it because, it works and they end up at the hospital putting him right back on the path of him and Tandy being a dynamic duo, kicking bad guy ass and saving all the missing girls. Tyrone heads to O’Reilly’s to fill her in on what he discovered and finds her tied up and,  after he rescues her he poofs to Tandy to warn her and that’s where we discover that Mayhem isn’t the other half of a split personality, it’s a different person.

Quotes:

On Drugs in marginalized communities-

Those people choose misery and I’m sick of watching it

– Tandy

People don’t choose to suffer Tandy and, they don’t choose to hurt.

– Tyrone

On missing minority girls-

Where are the cops, the reporters, they should be all over this.

– Tandy

They would be if YOU went missing.

– Andre Deschaine

Episode High: Watching Tandy and Mayhem, in an O’Reilly suit, go ape shit on the bad guys to stop them from trafficking women was everything. I love it when girls are more damn hell in a dress than damsels in distress.

I found White Lines to be amazing. Cloak and Dagger is setting itself up to be the This is Us of the Marvel Universe because I felt all the feelings and still got all the action. Jennifer Phang is a brilliant director and the way she frames shots and gets such honest and emotional performances out her actors is to be applauded. Between her directing, the killer script and the truly breathtaking performances I spent the second half of this two-part season starter feeling some pretty real feelings about some imaginary characters. Honestly, at this point in the game, if you aren’t all about Cloak and Dagger, I really don’t know what you are doing with your life. And, I’ve got to give a special shout out to the music supervisor because this soundtrack is FIRE.

I give this completion of the series premiere arc a 9.8