The first episode of the 2-hour premiere picks up with our heroes 8 months after they stopped the Roxxon catastrophe in the finale of last season. In this time Tandy and Tyrone’s roles seem to have switched where Tyrone is now living on the run while Tandy starts having a somewhat normal life. However, they both miss the excitement of bringing Roxxon down and secretly use their powers to try and help people. But as we soon find out, in trying to help they may be making things worse.
It’s a nice change of pace to see Tandy make an effort to live a normal life. For much of the first season she was living alone in the church, depressed, and addicted to drugs. Now, even though she’s still living in the church, she has Tyrone there to keep her company and is bettering herself by practicing ballet and improving her relationship with her mother. Even though she has a lot of pain in her past, Tandy is trying to move past it and improve her life for the better. Going to group counseling with her mother is also a great way for the two of them to overcome some of the pain caused by Tandy’s father. However, those scars run very deep because it’s soon revealed that Tandy has been terrifying the abusive husbands of the women at her group counseling.
This development is very much in-line with her character. Tandy is trying to build a better life, but she’s still having trouble processing what she went through in a healthy way. She also has a good heart and wants to try and help these women who are being hurt. But Tandy’s meddling fails and ends up pushing Mikayla, the woman she was trying to protect, closer to her husband. When she hears of this Tandy lashes out and judgingly tells the woman, “He hits you, you leave. And anything else is a choice. It’s your choice.” Even though she’s talking to Mikayla, it’s clear that what she’s saying is directed at her mother. Because of everything else going on this thread isn’t really developed any further, but hopefully Tandy and her mother will continue to work on their relationship.
Meanwhile, Tyrone has been stealing money and drugs from gangs in an effort to put them out of business and get them off the streets. He’s clearly come a long way and has much better control of his powers. While his efforts to stop the gang wars is admirable, O’Reilly points out that he’s only making them more paranoid and thus more dangerous. Even though Tyrone is doing this to help people, it’s also pretty clear that he’s doing it because he enjoys the excitement.
This opens up a larger theme in these first two episodes, that both Tandy and Tyrone miss the excitement that comes from being a hero. On the surface they’re happy that everything with Roxxon is over and they can now try and rebuild their lives. Their relationship is also in a very good place, they’ve settled into a routine and seem to enjoy living together. But they’re still lying to each other about their nightly activities which indicates that they know they’re doing it for selfish reasons.
However, once the truth is revealed it was nice that their argument was quickly resolved. Since Tandy and Tyrone are essentially lying to each other about the same thing, it makes sense that they would be able to understand each other’s reasons for doing it. Tyrones apology and Tandy’s acceptance also shows that these characters have grown up a lot since the first season. Tyrone is able to acknowledge his faults and Tandy understands that his lies aren’t because he doesn’t trust her.
After Tyrones apology, they work together to find a way to fix some of the damage Tyrone may have caused in his antagonization of the gangs. Their plan is to go to a local club where the gang leaders meet and record their conversation. Since O’Reilly told Tyrone that she needs hard evidence to stop the gangs, this is much better than his previous plan of mysteriously stealing from them. Everything seems to go well, but their plan rapidly deteriorates when the meeting gang members are mysteriously slaughtered.
This leads into the mystery surrounding what happened to O’Reilly. Other than some pretty intense stress, she appears to be acting pretty normal, but as the second episode progresses we find out that there’s much more going on. Initially it seems like she might be suffering from a split personality, especially when she’s sees a malicious reflection of herself. But by the end of the episode it’s revealed that there’s an evil version of her causing trouble. This is a pretty unexpected development, but it’s certainly much more interesting than a split personality. We’ve already seen a villain like that in Iron Fist, so it’s nice that the show is going in an original direction rather than retreading other characters in the MCU.
By the end of the first two episodes we the main plot of the season appears to be revealed. The missing girls that Tandy was investigating look like a symptom of a larger criminal organization that we’ll learn more about it going forward. We also get a glimpse of Tyrone learning more about Voodoo from Evita’s Aunt which has the potential to open up new magical areas of the MCU to explore.
VERDICT
4 veve’s out of 5.
These two episodes seem to be bringing the characters in a unique and compelling direction. Having Tandy and Tyrone’s situation be completely flipped and seeing how they deal with that is a great development and helps make this season feel fresh. There are also plot lines that could have been overly drawn out (like Tyrone and Tandy’s argument about lying to each other and Evita being upset with Tyrone for disappearing for 8 months), but they were resolved pretty quick. I definitely appreciate when characters aren’t mad at each other for multiple episodes just to manufacture drama and it looks like the writers are staying away from that. While there are still several cheesy lines and moments, these two episodes were very strong and I hope the season maintains this level of quality.
ONE-SHOTS
- It seems that the overly intense and dramatic music is still a big part of the show which is kind of disappointing.
- Looks like Evita’s been learning from Black Widow when she kisses Tyrone to hide him from the police.
- It is a little weird that Tyrone didn’t quietly let Evita know that he was okay. Hopefully we’ll find out why he stayed away sometime this season.
- The flashback structure of the second episode could have been a bit better. It was a bit jarring and I’m not sure it was entirely necessary to explain where each character went after they left the crime scene.
