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Spoilers below forCloak & Daggers season-one finale.
Its been a rough few weeks for Tandy Bowen and Tyrone Johnson.
In other words, season two is shaping up to be as threatening as the first.
Lets jump in the time machine.
How did you initially get involved with the show?It was funny.
I think it was five or six years ago.
They were just like, Have you ever heard of this writer named Joe Pokaski?
So Jeph called me and he was like, Are you interested in any Marvel characters for television?
I said, Tandy and Tyrone.
Theres something that felt so right about them for the television format.
So I wrote the script.
It was so interesting because nobody else looked like them.
I was just obsessed with the fact that they were equal partners.
You always see sidekicks and different kinds of relationships, but those two seemed like they needed each other.
You couldnt have one without the other.
They were really down with setting a look and feel for their shows.
Jeph was fantastic and we both decided to move the show to New Orleans.
So, they were far more flexible than I thought.
I think some of the challenge is how fractured the ownership is, still.
I would love for Peter Parker to walk by, but Sony owns them.
Youd like someone from the films to be there, but everything is a little bit segmented.
But the issue is being like, Can we use this character?
So I think the segmentation is a problem.
Hopefully, that will get better.
Would that be the number-one crossover you want to see?
I mean, they came from Spider-Man.
Theres definitely a sense of teen angst and great power and great responsibility that they all share.
Someone smarter than me once called them the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the Marvel universe.
They just drop in.
They can show up in anX-Menbook.
They can show up in the big crossover event.
They show up on theRunaways.
They show up in theUltimate universe.
And youre always happy to see them.
Thats how I feel.
Id like to see them in the cinematic universe being the same way.
You mentioned New Orleans.
Why set the show in New Orleans?
And when did that come up as an idea?It came up pretty early.
I had said, Doesnt New York have enough superheroes?
Is there any other place we can put it?
When I fell upon New Orleans, it felt so right for Tandy and Tyrone.
How did you learn about New Orleans and those specific elements of the citys culture?
Meeting people?A little of both.
We made sure we were at least half women and at least half African-American.
I think that allowed us to speak truths and not guess.
Id seenBeyond the Lightsrecently, and I was like, This is it.
We should see if she could do it.
A lot of my friends were like, She doesnt direct anything that she doesnt write.
Youll never be able to get her.
As the timing worked out, she had just come off of another project.
So she decided to read the script.
She expected to hate it, as she told me, and was pleasantly surprised to not hate it.
You mentioned crossover potential.
There was a crypto-crossover withLuke Cageinsofar as Brigid is said to have formerly worked with Misty Knight.
How did that bit come up?
Was it your idea or Marvels?It came from someone at Marvel.
How can we get Misty Knight?
Perhaps she has been friends or ridden with Misty at some point.
And all parties seemed cool with it.
Were there any Easter eggs that nobody caught?Not many.
Im kind of amazed.
Our fans are ridiculously perceptive.
Brigids boyfriend, Fuchs, gets killed and stuffed in a refrigerator.
That was a deliberate reference to the trope ofWomen in Refrigeratorsandfridging, right?Oh, absolutely.
That was something me and particularly the women in the writers room talked about early.
I had heard about it four or five years earlier.
So, we thought it would be interesting to reverse that role with Brigid and Fuchs.
My favorite episode of the season is the time-loop one, Lotus Eaters.
And we love the idea of them visiting the oil rig that gave them their powers.
For Tandy, it allowed her to expose how lonely she was and how much she missed her father.
[Tyrone and Tandy] had been hanging out together.
They had been using each other to some degree, but this is where they become friends.
This is where they become the teenagers that talk late on the phone.
That felt like it was why we were telling the episode.
We shot at this church that was being redone when we shot the pilot.
It was fantastic, it was beautiful, the owners were great.
It looks so church-y in the soundstage version.Right?
Its such a beautiful space.
I was wondering if Wait, you wrote that article?
You remember that?I remember sending it to Karey Burke and I said, See?
I remember sending it to my bosses.
It was all very encouraging because it was very prescient.
It was what we were saying, and we sounded like we were blowing smoke.
And then this article came out, and I was like, Here, see?
This is exactly our intent.
It was very encouraging, so, thank you.
Oh, well, you are quite welcome.
It turned out you all really did depart from the source material in key ways.
Its that whole Marshall McLuhan idea: The medium is the message.
Jeph Loeb understands that really well.
I know Bill Mantlo, he had a bit of an accident, so he needs some help.
I had heard somewhere that he was very excited about how Olivia was handling Tandy.
Not only understanding how you could be a vigilante, but what kind of vigilantes they want to be.
Whose idea was the Stan Lee cameo in the form of the fake Warhol portrait?[Laughs.]
That was one of our writers.
We came up with a bunch of cameo ideas.
We were like, Where can we do it?
We loved the idea that at one point hes like, Stan, let me paint you!
What were some of the rejected cameo ideas?Youve seen the finale now, right?
I think that was the runner-up.
I hope to see T-shirts at Comic-Con soon.
