What will the story of Cloak & Dagger season 2 be? Season 1 of the MCU show has come to a triumphant close, and with it one major plot thread - the idea of the “Divine Pairing” - has apparently been resolved. After several episodes of setup that stressed one of the two would have to die in order to save New Orleans, the season finale showed the heroes dodge that particular bullet. Tandy and Tyrone refused to accept their fate, and instead united their powers in one spectacular moment.
At first glance, this seems like something to celebrate. The curse of the Divine Pairing has apparently been broken, and now the two heroes can work side-by-side. Even better, their powers appear to have subtly changed; they’re shown still in physical contact, when before any attempt to touch one another had resulted in a devastating flare of power. Given the sparks that have been flying between the two, it really looks as though the teens’ decision to reject their destiny has opened up a whole new future for them both.
But the Divine Pairing is too important, too fundamental a plot thread to be dismissed so easily. The concept is sure to return in season 2 - and here, we explore two ways that could be the case.
- This Page: What is the Divine Pairing? Page 2: What Happens Next with the Divine Pairing?
Cloak & Dagger’s Divine Pairing Explained
The last few years have seen Marvel Television truly learn the importance of location in a good TV show. In 2015, Daredevil season 1 treated Hell’s Kitchen as a character in its own right, and received popular and critical acclaim for doing so. Marvel doubled down on that approach with Luke Cage, which delved into the history and heritage of Luke’s beloved Harlem. Cloak & Dagger showrunner Joe Pokaski has apparently decided this is just the right approach to take with a superhero series. By grounding it in a concrete location, the fantastical elements of the superhero world become all the more real, and the larger-than-life struggles of super-powered individuals really become metaphors for our own daily battles.
The Divine Pairing is the plot device Pokaski has used to ground Tandy and Tyrone’s struggles in the reality of New Orleans. There’s a certain duality to the Vodun religion that’s typically associated with New Orleans, with some of the Loa deliberately bound together as mystical pairings. Marvel decided to extend that, creating a tradition that, at each crisis point in New Orleans’s history, two people would be chosen as potential saviors for the city. When disaster struck, one of these would be destined to die, a sacrifice that would somehow end the catastrophe.
The Cloak & Dagger season finale, “Colony Collapse,” included a number of flashback scenes that helped establish the history of the Divine Pairing. The first showed two Choctaw children, one of whom sacrificed herself in order to end a famine. In 1793, one brother deliberately chose to allow himself to be killed in a duel and a deadly storm abated. Fast-forward to 1812, a messenger carrying news that the war has ended died before his message is passed on, but a young woman continued his journey to stop the war. The final flashback showed the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918, with a doctor’s passive immunization bringing an end to the epidemic. Marvel has carefully woven the idea of the Divine Pairing into real historical events: a strong storm really did strike New Orleans in 1793, devastating rural sections of the province; the Battle of New Orleans really did take place after the Treaty of Ghent was signed; and the Spanish Influenza outbreak did strike New Orleans, only to miraculously disappear with unprecedented speed. It’s reasonable to assume that, in the MCU, Hurricane Katrina’s wrath was also abated by a Divine Pairing back in 2004. Of course, considering that too recent and the scars too fresh, Marvel avoided explicitly making that connection; Cloak and Dagger do transport themselves to the roof of the Lousiana Superdome, though. This was the “shelter of last resort” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, so there is a subtle and implicit link there.
Cloak and Dagger, then, are presented as the latest Divine Pairing. Roxxon has been attempting to tap into the mysterious power that lies beneath New Orleans (most likely the Darkforce). They’ve been cutting corners, and the pressure is building. Should the valves blow, nightmarish energy will flood the city, transforming people into mindless, fear-fueled “Terrors.” This is the disaster that Cloak and Dagger seem destined to bring to an end. Unlike previous Divine Pairings, however, they’re made aware of their role and reject it outright. Dagger refuses to leave Cloak to turn off the valves, knowing that he will die. Instead, she fights her way to his side, and the two unite their powers to dispel the energy affecting New Orleans. It looks as though Cloak and Dagger have broken the curse of the Divine Pairing, with neither making the final, fatal sacrifice.
Page 2 of 2: What Happens Next with the Divine Pairing?
The Disaster May Not Have Been Averted in Cloak & Dagger Season 1
There’s a crucial difference between the season finale disaster and the ones shown in history, though. Those historical catastrophes were already affecting vast tracts of the city when the Divine Pairing came into play: famine had already struck the Choctaw tribe before the girl’s sacrifice; a storm was already striking New Orleans in 1793; over 54,000 suffered during the Spanish Influenza outbreak, with New Orleans suffering one of the highest death rates in the nation before the crisis ended. In all of these cases, the death of one of the Divine Pairings brought a close to a horror that was already ravaging the city. In contrast, the season finale of Cloak & Dagger just doesn’t feel like it’s operating on the same kind of scale. It has the potential to do so, it’s true - the pumps were failing across New Orleans and, certainly, some areas near the pumps were out of control - but it hadn’t reached anything like the kind of scale seen in this historical disasters.
That raises the disturbing possibility that the curse of the Divine Pairing is not yet over. By that reading, Cloak & Dagger season 1 has been about setting the scene and establishing the core concepts that will be brought into play further down the road, including presumably both the Divine Pairing and the energy beneath New Orleans too.
Roxxon’s experiments have proved that something lies beneath New Orleans, and other players could well be interested in exploring this power. Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that this mysterious energy was consistently compared to oil, existing in a pressurized state beneath the city. Roxxon has relieved a little of that pressure, and the power will be seeking another release. As of the season finale, New Orleans is in a very dangerous and unstable position, and it would only take a little more meddling to trigger an explosive release of dark energy. It’s entirely possible that this is the true disaster, the one that will only be averted by the death of a member of the Divine Pairing.
If the Divine Pairing Has Been Broken, New Orleans Is Still In Trouble
But what if Cloak and Dagger have actually broken the curse of the Divine Pairing? They may have left New Orleans in an even more dangerous position, because it’s impossible to know whether the Divine Pairing can ever happen again now. The first known Divine Pairing was the Choctaw children, one of whom was sacrificed in some sort of ritual. That’s the only example in history where a ritual is mentioned, and it’s possible that this actually began the cycle. Anything that has a beginning can also have an ending; in refusing to bow to the curse, Cloak and Dagger may well have unwittingly ensured that they are the last of the Divine Pairings.
If that’s the case, Cloak and Dagger’s triumph is bittersweet. The next time disaster strikes New Orleans, there will be no future Divine Pairing to protect the city. In the short term, that means it rests upon Cloak and Dagger alone to continue to stand against the forces of darkness in New Orleans. In the long term, however, New Orleans will be vulnerable. Cloak and Dagger will age and ultimately die, but the crises that called upon the Divine Pairings will continue long after they are gone. Only this time, there will be no protection. A good comparison would be with the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; imagine a scenario where the line of Slayers ended, but the demons and vampires still existed.
It’s distinctly possible that Auntie Chantelle would deduce this, and even try to restore the line of Divine Pairings. If Cloak and Dagger really have destroyed that line, then Chantelle will feel a sense of responsibility for it. After all, the key difference between Cloak and Dagger and previous Pairings is that they knew their fate, and that’s thanks to Chantelle. She cares passionately about New Orleans, and would no doubt seek to restore the city’s defenses.
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At this stage, it’s impossible to know what scenario Marvel will explore in Cloak & Dagger season 2. One thing is certain, though; the concept of the Divine Pairing is too central, too fundamental, to this show. This idea binds the series to its New Orleans setting, and to the Vodun religion that has been a key part of it. So the Divine Pairing is sure to be important in season 2 and beyond.
