Marvel's Cloak & Dagger Premiere Review: 8 Ups And 2 Downs
3. The Mature Tone (And Characters)
More and more comic book shows (and movies) are adding a darker edge these days. For this to really work, however, the dark, mature tone has to lend itself to the show's subject matter.
Fortunately, this is very much the case with Cloak & Dagger.
Given the characters' troubled pasts, their arguably more-troubled current lives, and the seedy world around them that seems to be getting worse by the minute, Cloak & Dagger makes fantastic use of its grim tone, using it to help further the story.
In fact, in terms of its tone and aforementioned subject matter, it's arguably the darkest show Marvel has released outside of Netflix. And in addition to this, the show's characters (main or otherwise) are also very mature, realistic, and down-to-Earth.
This is a welcome surprise, given Freeform's track record. Whereas most other shows on the network (which are aimed at the early-twenties demographic) provide characters who are lowest common denominator "millennial" stereotypes, Cloak & Dagger actually respects its characters, the world they inhabit, as well as the audience's intelligence.