Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger panel took place at WonderCon 2019 on Friday, March 29 at 4:45pm in North 200A of the Anaheim Convention Center.
Prior to this panel, I had attended the Dark Phoenix panel over in the Arena (recap and photos coming soon), which had ended at around 4:15pm. I came straight to this room, as it seemed several others had done as well, and was able to walk in with no trouble. The Into the Badlands panel was still going on, so I got to see the last few minutes of that.
As is the norm for Marvel Television panels, Jeph Loeb, the Head of Marvel Television, came out first to warm up the crowd. He divided the audience into sections to chant “April,” “4th,” and “Freeform” — as that is the date and network on which Season 2 of Cloak & Dagger is premiering.
After the crowd was good and warmed up, Jeph Loeb called the panelists out on stage, which included Executive Producer/Showrunner Joe Pokaski and actors Emma Lahana (Brigid O’Reilly), Aubrey Joseph (Tyrone/Cloak), and Olivia Holt (Tandy/Dagger).
Pokaski answered that the biggest difference between Season 1 and Season 2 is that they now know how talented the actors are, so they threw more challenges at them. For example, Olivia learned ballet, Aubrey did some “crazy stunts,” and Emma learned martial arts. “We raised the bar in Season 2, and of course these guys cleared it,” Pokaski commented.
Loeb acted surprised to see Emma Lahana on the panel, asking didn’t we see Brigid die at the end of last season? Emma revealed that Brigid has turned, and said that she is having fun playing two characters — Brigid and Mayhem, the latter of which she pointed out is “a real badass.” Surprisingly, Emma has an accent, and she told us that she is from New Zealand.
Aubrey Joseph said that the biggest difference for him in Season 2 is that while Season 1 was a “slow burn” of us getting to know Tyrone and Tandy, now they’re embracing their powers as well as the fact to they’re going to be a team and that there’s a city to save.
Jeph Loeb then tried to get Olivia Holt to sing. It took a little convincing, but finally she gave in, and pointed out that the tune to “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” is the same as the alphabet. She tried to get Emma to sing the latter while she sang the former. Emma agreed, and they started to sing, but it lasted a only a few seconds before they stopped and laughed at their failed attempt!
Loeb teased that they would now show a clip of the first episode of Season 2 — then revealed that they would be showing the entire first episode of Season 2! The description of the panel had mentioned an “extended sneak peek” so attendees did not know in advance that we would get to see the whole episode.
I don’t want to give too much away about the episode, so I’ll just give a few teases.
There’s a cool opening montage of Tandy taking ballet classes, while Ty is using his powers to clean up some drugs off the street, which he then brings to Detective Brigid O’Reilly. However, even though he thinks he’s doing a good thing, O’Reilly informs him that this actually complicates an ongoing investigation.
Meanwhile, it seems like things are going well between Tandy and her mother, and they even attend group meetings together. Tandy secretly uses her powers to help out a battered woman from her group, but it doesn’t quite go as planned.
Later, Ty tries to fix what he messed up, but that doesn’t go so well for him. Tandy gets on board with helping him out and they work together to try to solve the problem — which involves going dancing at a nightclub. The episode ends on a cliffhanger, as it turns out that this problem might not be as easy to solve as they would have liked.
After the episode ended, we learned that Episode 2 would be airing the same night after Episode 1.
Unfortunately, the panel had just about run out of time by the time we finished watching the episode. However, before ending the panel, Loeb pointed out that Joe Pokaski had a chance to direct an episode this season and asked what it was like. “It was scary as hell,” he answered. Pokaski commented how excited he was for everyone to see Episode 7, and that everyone on the panel had his back for it.
The panelists also commented what it was like for them to have Pokaski be a director. Aubrey said that Pokaski is “such a genius” and that it was “cool to see him in a different light.” Olivia said that when Pokaski directed Episode 7, it made the experience that much more fun, and told Pokaski, “You crushed it!”
Even though it was exciting to see the world premiere of Season 2 Episode 1 of Cloak & Dagger several days in advance of its release date, I was a bit disappointed that the actual panel portion with the cast was so short. I’m guessing this may have been on purpose so as not to reveal too much about Season 2, but it felt a little odd for the main cast members to be brought out only to have a few short minutes of speaking time. Oh well. Still looking forward to seeing what Season 2 has in store for us!
As mentioned before, Season 2 of Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger premieres on April 4 on Freeform.
You can view more of our photos from the WonderCon 2019 Cloak & Dagger panel below.
