One of the most satisfying moments for fans of Cloak & Dagger in its first season was the Luke Cage reference that firmly connected the Freeform series to the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now, with the series having wrapped up its first season on Thursday, executive producer Joe Pokaski is opening up on just how that reference came about.
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Speaking with Vulture, Pokaski revealed that the idea of having Brigid O’Reilly (Emma Lahana) connected to Luke Cage wasn’t exactly his idea. It came from Marvel.
“It came from someone at Marvel,” Pokaski said. “I love [Luke Cage showrunner] Cheo [Hodari Coker], and I’m a big fan of [Misty Knight actor] Simone [Missick], so I’ve always been like, ‘What can we do? How can we get Misty Knight? She’s the coolest.’ Somebody had come up with the facts, like, since the Brigid character was from New York, we should reference it. Perhaps she has been friends or ridden with Misty at some point. And all parties seemed cool with it. It was one of those things where if you don’t know what they are talking about, it doesn’t really affect your experience.”
For fans that did know what they were talking about, though, it was a pretty big deal. In the episode “Ghost Stories”, Tyrone (Aubrey Joseph) reveals himself and his powers as Cloak to O’Reilly and her boyfriend, Office Fuchs (Lane Miller). While the revelation was a shock to Fuchs, O’Reilly was significantly less rattled by it. She later explained that she had seen things like that before when she was a cop in New York and then proceeded to ask him if she had ever told him about her friend Misty — meaning Luke Cage‘s Misty Knight.
Of course, O’Reilly didn’t really get a chance to tell Fuchs more about Misty — he ended up dead at the end of that episode — and given how the season finale of Cloak & Dagger played out, O’Reilly probably isn’t likely to call on her New York friend anytime soon. After a confrontation with crooked cop Conners (J.D. Evermore), O’Reilly was left for dead only to emerge from the river in a post-credits scene, transformed into Mayhem. It was a crazy note to end the season on and it’s one that Pokaski told ComicBook.com he knew very early on he wanted to do.
“Honestly, that was very early,” Pokaski said. “We knew that we were gonna do Mayhem. It just felt like, ‘What do we want to see as TV viewers?’ Marvel Cinematic Universe does it so well. I remember people were talking about when I was on Daredevil all those years ago season one we had talked about doing it and this felt so right. We loved the idea of starting with the bee and making out the kind of cool thing that, it’s hard probably to tell with the light, is the place where Mayhem comes up at the end is exactly where the little girl walked in with the basket in the very first flashback of the episode. So, there was a cool symmetry with that. I think we got so excited we put it there and God bless the people at Marvel for letting me put the title card before it.”
What did you think about Cloak & Dagger‘s Luke Cage reference? Let us know in the comments below.
Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger has been renewed for a second season by Freeform and is set to air in 2019. For now, you can catch all 10 episodes of the first season on Hulu and Freeform.com. Luke Cage‘s second season is now streaming on Netflix.
