Will Cloak & Dagger's Det. O'Reilly Become a Supervillain?

Following her debut in Cloak & Dagger's second episode, Detective Brigid O'Reilly has made quite the impression on Tandy Bowen. Unlike most people in Tandy's life, O'Reilly wants to help her, for no reason other than it is the right thing to do. However, O'Reilly's pure intentions may not stay that way for long. If her history in the comics is any indication, she may find herself a super villain -- or, at the very least, a vigilante with gray morals -- before long.

O'Reilly entered the scene in 1983's Cloak and Dagger #1 as a decidedly anti-vigilante detective. Though she shared a goal with Cloak and Dagger, they had decidedly different methods. Cloak and Dagger were comfortable using any means necessary to clean up the streets; O'Reilly, however, worried about the rule of law and the possibility of innocents getting injured in the crossfire.

In her debut scene, O'Reilly interrogated a handful of drug dealers, who were the victims of Cloak and Dagger. After learning Cloak and Dagger's MO, she was able to track a handful of their other attacks, leading her to contemplate their methods. She quickly arrived at the idea that, while their intentions were good, they were going about it all wrong.

Soon, O'Reilly found herself in Cloak and Dagger's crosshairs. After following two teens who were swooped up by drug dealers, O'Reilly burst in one one of Cloak and Dagger's stings. When the drug dealers saw Cloak and Dagger, they immediately opened fire; Cloak was able to absorb some of the bullets in his interdimensional cloak, but a stay bullet struck one of the teens, instantly killing him.

When the dust settled, O'Reilly told them they were under arrest, since they were "partially responsible for the death of this boy." While Tandy was distraught over the casualty, Ty showed no remorse, calling himself a survivor. This enraged O'Reilly, who said they were "no better than the scum you punish."

Nevertheless, when Cloak and Dagger came to her for help stopping a murderer, she obliged. Thanks to her intel, the vigilante duo tracked the murderer down -- and got to the scene before she could. In the ensuing fight, Ty sucked the man into his cloak, much to O'Reilly's dismay. Though Ty insisted he brought the murderer to justice, O'Reilly had a different word for it: "Horror."

Cloak and Dagger fled the scene after this confrontation, but that didn't deter O'Reilly. She decided to go after the vigilante duo with a handful of silver bullets. After a quick visit to Father Xavier Francis Delgado, though, she confessed she "was glad he got what he deserved, but that's why the law exists... to make sure one objective notion of justice supersedes all of our individual ideas of retribution." Thus, she believed it was up to her to bring Tandy and Tyrone to justice.

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On her mission to stop Cloak, O'Reilly stumbled into a robbery -- of Father Delgado's church, no less. Cloak appeared just in time to stop the would-be robbers, while O'Reilly observed from a confessional. The ensuing fight led her to question whether she truly wanted to stop him and, when she emerged from the confessional to arrest the robbers, he took their bullets for her and saved her life.

When the fight was over, Cloak admitted that the hunger of the darkness inside him sometimes overcame him. In a show of good will, he ejected the murderer he had absorbed. As a result, O'Reilly found she had no reason to arrest him, as Cloak hadn't killed him after all. Then, after learning how the vigilante duo were imbued with their powers, O'Reilly decided to drop their case altogether.

In Cloak & Dagger's 1985 maxiseires, O'Reilly's story took a strange turn. In the very first issue, she discovered corruption within her department. As it turned out, some officers in her department had struck a deal with local crime rings, where these corrupt cops would provide a heads up if the police were about to make a sting. Armed with this knowledge, she made it her personal mission to uncover every last corrupt cop in her precinct. She was warned this would make her "a lot of enemies," but she forged on regardless.

Even as she dealt with her department's corruption problem, she continued to perform her regular duties. This put her in Cloak and Dagger's path once again, as they were both after the same shipment of narcotics, which was set to arrive in New York by boat. Thanks to some meddling by Spider-Man, the shipment got away, infuriating O'Rielly but certainly not dampening her drive to serve justice. However, it did inspire her to use some unorthodox methods, up to and including beating information out of a suspect.

Unfortunately for O'Reilly, some of her people were also corrupt. During a bust at a warehouse in issue #5, they led her right into a trap. When she discovered a piece of evidence in plain view, she approached with two other cops, only for a plastic cage to emerge from the floor and trap them inside. What's worse, the plastic cage turned out to be a gas chamber. Gas immediately seeped in through the floor and, despite a few valiant efforts to escape, all three officers suffocated to death.

Nevertheless, this wasn't the end of O'Reilly. Cloak and Dagger discovered her too late to save her, but Dagger tried to resuscitate her anyway. Dagger's efforts brought something back, but it wasn't wholly O'Reilly. O'Reilly transformed into a creature with pallid skin and pupil-less green eyes; what's more, she now had strange new abilities, including the power to emit venomous gas from her pores, a scratch that paralyzes and flight.

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"As the gas spread through my system, Cloak swept me into darkness and Dagger filled me with her light. All the elements combining in that instant caused me to be reborn as Mayhem," she explained to one of her betrayers, just before paralyzing him. According to Cloak, "Her love of the law died with her... Mayhem and we are now sprung from the same mold," to which Dagger added, "Mayhem's form of retribution leaves no room for rehabilitation." Following her transformation, O'Reilly abandoned all the principles she clung to as a cop, becoming "the ultimate vigilante."

Indeed, Mayhem was willing to put Cloak and Dagger down on her way to her revenge. She came to blows with them and eventually caused the death of her betrayer, crying, "We both served the law once, Falcone! Now neither of us do! I was your victim -- now I am your judge, jury and executioner."

Nevertheless, Mayhem eventually joined forced with Cloak and Dagger to stop the drug shipment once and for all, thus completing her quest for revenge. With her help, Cloak and Dagger were able to publicly uncover a crime family and stop the narcotics from reaching their intended sellers. The vigilante duo subsequently left New York to find the source of the shipments, while Mayhem opted to stay behind in New York to terrorize evildoers. She has not been seen since.

In the show, of course, O'Reilly has shown shades of her comic book counterpart. As in the source material, Freeform's O'Reilly has pure intentions and a proclivity for upholding justice. For instance, she realized something was off about her stabbing case and saw Tandy as someone in need of help, rather than condemning Tandy without digging into the circumstances. She will also likely tackle the corruption in her department, since she immediately picked up on Detective Connors' shady behavior. However, it's yet to be seen if she will suffer a fate like her comic book counterpart. If the comics are any indication, though, her future is Mayhem.

Airing Thursdays at 8 pm ET/PT on Freeform, Cloak & Dagger stars Olivia Holt as Tandy Bowen/Dagger and Aubrey Joseph as Tyrone Johnson/Cloak, as well as Andrea Roth as Tandy’s mother Melissa Bowen, Gloria Reuben as Tyrone’s mother Adina Johnson, Miles Mussenden as Tyrone’s father Michael Johnson, Carl Lundstedt as Tandy’s partner in crime Liam, James Saito as Dr. Bernard Sanjo and J.D. Evermore as Detective Connors.