8 Years Later, This 2-part Cancelled MCU Show Remains Criminally Overlooked (& It Needs a Second Chance)

When we think about the MCU’s television series, we typically think of the Disney+ series and for a good reason. After Avengers: Endgame, Marvel made a big push into the television space with shows like WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If…? and Hawkeye kicking things off in earnest in 2021. But while the Disney+ television shows get a lot of attention, there are other series in the MCU that are just as significant. These are the shows that turned the focus onto some of the younger heroes in the Marvel universe and while neither of them got the appreciation they deserved, eight years later what might just be one of the MCU’s best stories continues to be overlooked.

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Debuting on Freeform in 2018, Cloak & Dagger brought two of Marvel’s most interesting characters to life. Centering on Tandy Bowen (Olivia Holt) and Tyrone Johnson (Aubrey Joseph), the series told the story of two teenagers from dramatically different backgrounds who end up linked by a shared, childhood tragedy and who are connected by superpowers with Tandy having the ability to emit light daggers and Tyrone having the ability to utilize darkness. The series got off to a good start and was met with critical acclaim, but with lower ratings for the second season, the series was cancelled in 2019, though the final episode was crafted in a way where it served as a satisfying series finale as well.

Cloak & Dagger Was a Progressive, Socially Conscious Corner of the MCU

Part of what made Cloak & Dagger such a good series is that, while it was a superhero show connected to the ever-expanding MCU, it was also a realistic and grounded series that was as much about issues in the real world as it was about the big, blockbuster issues of the larger MCU setting. The first season of Cloak & Dagger saw the heroic pair dealing with Roxxon and their machinations. As the catalyst for the series, the Roxxon Energy Corporation and secret experiments with Lightforce and Darkforce energy, caused a catastrophic rig explosion that not only gave Tandy and Tyrone their powers, but also devastated their lives—killing Tyrone’s brother, Billy, and Tandy’s father, Nathan and then blamed the latter for the incident. Making things worse, the volatile energy continued to pool and build up beneath New Orleans, something the company was willing to kill to conceal.

But an evil corporation attempting to conceal their damage to the environment and the dangers posed to human life isn’t the only important element of the series. The show also took a serious look at the effects of trauma. While Tyrone lives an outwardly good life with affluent parents and attending private school, he’s experienced anxiety and fear since the death of his brother. Meanwhile Tandy, whose entire life fell apart with the death and defamation of her father, struggles with homelessness, drug abuse, and depression. The show takes on both of their trauma and sees them having to confront it both individually and together even as they deal with Roxxon.

The series also doesn’t shy away from social issues, such as the realities of race in the South and issues facing lower income communities—those below the poverty line are in much more danger from Roxxon than affluent residents of New Orleans in the series. And even with the series shifting focus in Season 2 to. have Tandy and Tyrone working to solve the abductions of women by Andre Deschaine, it still got much more ground level and personal than anything else we’d seen in the MCU to date—or since.

The MCU Needs More Grounded Stories Like What Cloak & Dagger Offered

Cloak & Dagger gave the MCU something unique and necessary by delivering an impactful and far more intimate story than what we typically got. While Marvel Television would eventually start to give us more grounded stories, nothing was quite like Cloak & Dagger. It’s a series that also deserves a second chance—and if anything, the success of Daredevil: Born Again somewhat serves as proof that a second chance might be exactly what Cloak & Dagger needs. That series is the continuation of Netflix’s Daredevil, that ended after three seasons in 2018 and still had more stories to tell. It would take a few years, but that series was eventually integrated with the main MCU series and given new life as Born Again.

With that show doing so well and focusing on smaller scale stories (in the grand scheme of things; Daredevil isn’t out here fighting Thanos and is more dealing with street-level issues like Kingpin and corruption), it feels like a space where Cloak & Dagger could also thrive if given a second go. A lot has happened in the larger MCU since we last saw Tandy and Tyrone and when we did last see them, they had decided to leave New Orleans to be heroes together. It feels like a perfect place to find them now, years later, perhaps even after having built a bit of a reputation for themselves as Cloak and Dagger.

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