Cloak & Dagger

Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger (S1 trailer) premiered three years ago today. A serious YA drama based on the comics duo, played by Aubrey Joseph and Olivia Holt, it dropped their drugs-related origin but keeps drug use as a plot along with institutional racism, homelessness, corporate negligence and police corruption and violence, and the main plot of season two tackles trafficking. It is, as you can guess, pretty heavy much of the time.

This interview with showrunner Joe Pokaski ahead of S2 and the linked PSA at Marvel demonstrate that.

It was part of a Freeform channel substrand along with the pilot for the much lighter-hearted New Warriors, and which also got a crossover with Runaways on Hulu.

Like the Netflix Marvel shows it stays fairly grounded in terms of character plots, costumes and villains. Unlike the Netflix series that kept everybody in New York, the show moves the unhappily empowered teens to New Orleans, a good choice for a different and flavourful backdrop IMHO.

Our young maybe-heroes’ powers reflect and complement each other, making for an unusual partnership. The series also runs with them being part of a pattern, a Chosen Two... with some trouble ahead.

Another reason to watch it is the involvement of writer and producer Christine Boylan, half of the producing team working on World Of Darkness media. She wrote the first episode after the feature-length pilot which has riot police with flaming torches and a 3D printed voodoo doll, great modern fantastic ideas.