Marvel's Spider-Man Episode Forty-Three: Cloak and Dagger

Cloak and Dagger

First Aired: October 6th, 2019

 

Synopsis: Miles modifies Doctor Octopus' arms so that he can communicate with Peter's mind inside them, and notes that Peter's mind will get damaged if it's transferred to any more machines. Meanwhile, Spider-Man fights Cloak and Dagger, but they escape. While Doctor Octopus reviews footage of them Aunt May insists that he has to go to school, as she's re-enrolled him at Midtown High. There, Ock meets Flash and then runs into Anna Maria Marconi, a teaching assistant with dwarfism. She wants assistance with a sponsorship proposal for the company Alchemax, as she thinks that Midtown can compete with Horizon if it's given the opportunity. While talking to her Ock spots Cloak and Dagger attending the school. He later goes out after them and finds them robbing a lab, but they get away again. Meanwhile, Miles and Peter start planning how to switch Peter's mind back with Ock's, with Peter thinking that he can convince Ock to do it voluntarily.

 

At school Doctor Octopus looks up information about Cloak and Dagger's civilian identities and discovers that they were at Alchemax, but his research is interrupted by Anna Maria, who points out that she didn't help him with her proposal. Ock apologises and agrees to do an interview with Tiberius Stone, the head of Alchemax. When the interview comes Cloak and Dagger appear, ready to get revenge on him for the experiments he ran on them, but Ock changes to Spider-Man and fights both them and Stone, who has a personal force field. Cloak and Dagger are defeated but Spider-Man defeats Stone, only for Peter to arrive in a robot with Ock's arms. He's unable to convince Doctor Octopus to swap minds back and so they fight, with Peter being assisted by Miles. Peter's robot is nearly destroyed, forcing Miles to flee with it as Doctor Octopus declares himself victorious.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• While lamenting having to go back to Midtown, Doctor Octopus thinks that one positive is that he can advance through classes rapidly and get a PhD. In the comics he also wanted Peter to get a PhD, but it made more sense there, as Peter had been in and out of university repeatedly. Here, it comes across like he just wants it because his comics version did.
• Cloak and Dagger are voiced by their live action actors, Aubrey Joseph and Olivia Holt. Both were pretty good actors in a pretty good series, in my opinion.
• When Tiberius Stone first appeared in the comics, he appeared in an Iron Man series and was blonde and confident. Years later he was picked up by Dan Slott during his Spider-Man run, and was instead depicted as dark-haired and something of a dweeb. In spite of the heavy Dan Slott influence on this series, he's depicted here more like his original appearance, and with more of his original personality.
  

Review: Given that this episode has Peter finding an ally and confronting Doctor Octopus, it should be exciting and pulse-pounding. Unfortunately, too much of it is spent on extraneous content - I like Cloak and Dagger a lot, but most of the plot involving them and the events at Midtown High feel like they're there to delay a confrontation between Peter and Doctor Octopus. The little skirmishes Ock has with them throughout the episode definitely don't feel that important, and by the time Peter shows up at the end, I'm a bit done with fights for the episode.

Something that I do like is that Peter - or rather, Doctor Octopus - has to return to Midtown High. This show's version of Flash Thompson is a loveable goofball, and while Anna Maria Marconia should definitely have been introduced to the arc - if not the series - earlier, she's pretty decent too. While I'm not super big on the time spent on Cloak and Dagger, I can't deny that I still like them as characters, and they get some pretty good action sequences against Spider-Man.

As mentioned, though, the episode's got a bit too much extraneous content. Perhaps the most egregious is Tiberius Stone having a forcefield which he can shape into armour, allowing him to join in on the combat, when I really just want to see him get punched across the room. As it is the brutal encounter between Ock and Peter works well enough, but I can't help but feel that it could have been executed much, much better.