How and Why Cloak & Dagger S2 Explores Human Trafficking

Like its first season, Cloak & Dagger Season 2 will explore a weighty subject through a superhero lens. This year, the Freeform series will tackle human trafficking, a practice defined by Homeland Security as "modern day slavery" that "involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act." During a set visit attended by CBR, showrunner Joe Pokaski explained why it was important for Cloak & Dagger to approach this topic, how protagonists Tandy and Tyrone get involved in it and more.

"We were very lucky when we started working out this pilot. We were very lucky that Marvel and Freeform allowed us to tackle real-life issues," Pokaski shared. "We thought, if we were going to tell the story of a young black man with a hoodie or if we were going to tell the story of a young woman who was out on the streets, we wanted to make sure we reflected some of the more dangerous and un-talked about things in our society. When we turned towards Season 2, we wanted to that without being repetitive."

"My first show I created with my friend Misha [Green] was a show called Underground and it dealt with the Underground Railroad, so we dealt with lots of slavery consultants and I was talking to a very smart man at a museum in Baton Rouge and I asked him where the worst slavery in the world was right now. I was trying to sound smart, and I was naming places in Africa and places I knew and he kind of laughed at me," he recalled. "He said, 'I think the worst slavery is up right along the highway, about 10 miles that way.' And he explained that there were estimates of about 300,000 human beings trafficked either into sex or work slavery, most of them women. You know, a lot of them foreign, but not all of them, and that we not only have an infrastructure kind of in the Craigslists of the world, but infrastructure of the highway is actually a circulatory system of human trafficking. So truck stops and things like that are actually built to oppress."

"So when the writers and I started talking about that and started understanding it, it felt like something that no other superheroes were tackling. It felt like this is kind of the corner of the universe that Tandy and Tyrone had carved out for themselves. As artists, as people who want to tell stories, it felt like a good thing to explore, to maybe educate. We were fortunate that it was also dramatic and really kind of dovetailed into our characters arcs as well."

Asked how this will involve Tandy and Tyrone, he replied, "More specifically than you'd imagine. So, I think without spoiling too much, by the second episode, they're pretty knee-deep in it. It doesn't hurt that probably their closest friend had a bit of a transformation at the end of last season, and I think what we're hoping to do is tell the story of Tandy and Tyrone wondering what kind of vigilante they want to be. There's a couple of touchstones, Mayhem being one of them, as to the super extreme, crazy, everyone even a little bit guilty must get hurt vs. some nicer people and Tandy and Tyrone trying to find themselves on that spectrum and as often as possible, because I like conflict, finding themselves on different sides of an argument depending on what the situation is."

NEXT PAGE: How Tandy & Tyrone Get Involved

Aubrey Joseph, who plays Tyrone, offered a bit of insight as to how his character and Tandy discover the human trafficking plot. "Tandy and her mother start going to these group meetings for people who have either been abused or been around that as a way to heal, for them. You know, that kind of brings us into another realm where we start talking about the human trafficking," he explained.

"To me, I'm just so excited that we are talking about it. I feel like it's not really talked about on television like that and it's insane that it still goes on to this day and that people's entire lives are being literally stripped from them, to be treated like an object," he added. "It's literally like modern day slavery in my eyes, so I think it's amazing that we get to speak of it and for Tandy to be such a powerful female. It just has a bigger place in her heart, like a deeper place in her heart, and she really wants to help these girls. Same with Brigid O'Reilly."

"I don't want to give away too much, but it definitely brings an even bigger aspect to our show," he teased. "It's something to look forward to. It's amazing the way that we show them kind of feeling this inclination to help no matter what. It's like, excuse my language, but like 'Fuck whatever we have going on, there are people that are literally being stripped of their happiness and hope and we have to help these people.'"

Mayhem actor Emma Lahana also weighed in on the topic. "What makes art amazing is the fact that you can do that in a way that's -- I don't know if entertaining sounds like a terrible thing to say when you're talking about these really heavy issues, but I think that's a way that people can digest and understand it and learn from it and learn what to look for and it makes you grow and evolve and change in ways that you maybe had blind spots," she shared. "I'm so proud of this show, that we do deal with real-life issues, and in Season 2 we're dealing with human trafficking."

"I think that's really important, because so many people hear the term 'human trafficking' and they think 'third world country.' They don't think the United States, but it's happening everywhere in such a level," she continued. "Hopefully, this show as well, with what we're doing with Season 2, people will then actually be able to look out for the telltale signs of, like, that's maybe somebody that needs help. So it's highly important that we talk about real issues and we do it in a digestible way that's also entertaining and makes people engaged."

Returning April 4 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.