Freeform (formerly ABC Family) has been trying to find its place in an already crowded cable line-up. But one way to stand out from the crowd? Get yourself a Marvel show. Which is easy enough when your parent company is Disney/ABC Television Group. But with so many characters already snapped up by other channels, Freeform had to dig deep into the lore closet to get to Cloak and Dagger.
Created in 1982, the superhero team of Cloak/Tyrone and Dagger/Tandy first appeared in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #64 before branching off into their own bi-monthly comic The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak and Dagger. The duo, created by Bill Mantlo and Ed Hannigan, also appeared over the years in various team-ups, including the X-Men, the Secret Avengers, and the Secret Defenders. But most casual fans of Marvel had never heard of them until Freeform announced they were bringing Cloak and Dagger to life in a live-action show.
Now, the first trailer is here and does its best to balance what appears to be a new origin story with introducing the fairly obscure characters to a wider audience. What was once an origin involving Tyrone and Tandy being delivered to the Maggia (Marvel’s equivalent of the Mafia) and forcibly injected with a synthetic heroin that usually resulted in death, but in their cases gave them superpowers, it now appears a car accident in childhood may have somehow triggered their abilities. Regardless, it appears Cloak’s abilities still involve becoming literal darkness while Dagger becomes literal light. And the show does it all without forcing Dagger to heavily invest in double-sided tape for her costume!