Marvel's Cloak & Dagger is ripe for crossovers. There has already been a Misty Knight namedrop, and the Roxxon Corporation is fertile ground in which any number of characters could spring up. It’s clear that the producers are aware what fans want, and it’s a question consistently asked of Marvel Television’s heads and creative teams.
There’s a lot happening in Cloak & Dagger Season 2 already. At WonderCon, Head of Marvel Television Jeph Loeb and Cloak & Dagger showrunner Joe Pokaski discussed the influences and pressures of Season 2 — in addition to hinting as much as they could about a certain crossover we’ve been waiting for.
CBR: It seems like Season 2 is going to be tackling a lot of issues such as human trafficking, domestic violence, a flawed justice system. Can you tell us a little more about the thought process behind choosing those issues and putting them all together into one season?
Jeph Loeb: I certainly don’t want to make you feel like it’s a crisis sandwich, but if you think about all of those things, they’re very tied together… I think the short answer to all of that is it’s never been a show that has shied away from social injustice from a real honest look at racial equality and inequality. It’s where the show lives; it’s where the show’s characters always lived. The comics always felt like that. They weren’t stories of two heroes that went out and stopped bank robbers or fought the villain of the month, as good as that villain might be. They were really characters that lived in the street and were there to protect people that couldn’t protect themselves. And that’s where the show lives and lives really well.
On the flip side of it is you would hope that in that world, you’d have an advisor that does understand the system and does understand the law, and in many ways, that is who Brigid O’Reilly played. And now that she’s been complicated, and things have become more “mayhem-ic”... I think what you’ll find is that there’s this sort of wild card in the story. So our heroes are off going this way, making sure it’s all going really well, and then, suddenly, they’ll just get broadsided by someone who they think is a friend and who at times is and sometimes might not be. And that’s a complication that makes it both fun and exciting.
What were the challenges for the second season?
Joe Pokaski: The second season, I take them way too seriously. I’m a big television fan, and I think the best seasons of television have been second seasons like West Wing Season 2, Buffy Season 2, Alias Season 2 — that’s kind of where you define your show. So it’s been a challenge, but it’s been a good opportunity. Last year, we cast these two actors who I didn’t know very well, and now I know them better. I learned over the course of the first season that they can do anything. So it was really exciting for me and writers to get back in the writers room and be like, “Now that we know Olivia Holt can do anything, now that we know Aubrey can make you feel the way he feels,” we’re able to throw in more complicated stories, put them in more danger, create more emotional complexity than I initially thought creating the show.
You spoke last year how much New Orleans influenced the season, how has it influenced the second season?
Pokaski: In a big way. Vudon is still kind of our spiritual baseline for a lot of stuff. Tyrone by way of Vudon is learning how to control his teleportation a little better, and we’re also dealing with some of the issues that touch New Orleans because it’s so close to the highway system. We’re dealing with human trafficking a little; it’s kind of our real-life villain that’s peppering some of our stories with our more accentuated villains.
Will we get any Runaways crossovers?
Pokaski: I am working very hard to try to make that happen is all I can say before Marvel shoots me. But it’ll be fun. We always talk about how great it was when we started reading Runaways when we were younger, Cloak and Dagger just show up really early. And it feels like they’re all in the same sandbox, and Jeph is a great boss, so we’re all trying to make it happen.
If you could have any Marvel character cross over onto Cloak & Dagger, who would it be?
Pokaski: Spider-Man! That’s where they came up, that was their origin in Spectacular Spider-Man. I always had so much fun where you’d just be reading a Spidey comic, and all of a sudden, they’d show up, and they’d always just start fighting, which was kind of fun you could do that back then. Hopefully with Miles Morales coming into town and every company buying every other company, maybe someday that’ll be reality.
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 Emma Lahana as Brigid O'Reilly/Mayhem, 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 Liam, James Saito as Dr. Bernard Sanjo and J.D. Evermore as Detective Connors.