Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has kicked off what appears to be the final story arc of Season Five with the team returning to present-day Earth from a future where the planet was destroyed, having saved what was left of the human race from their Kree oppressors before they left. Now they need to stop that Earth-ending disaster from ever happening—but they’ve returned to a world where S.H.I.E.L.D. is in shambles, and they’re hunted fugitives. It looks like their mantra in this final arc of the season will be one previously used by the X-Men in the comic books: “Sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them.”
The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. have been in dire straits before, but their current difficulties look even worse than the situation they faced in the future. They are wanted by the authorities, afraid that whatever they do will trigger the destruction of the world, and down to their last few remaining resources. Fortunately, as we get into the episode, we learn that those resources look better than the team might have expected. But then again, the threats look even worse.
Secret Plots and Governmental Misadventures in Marvel Comics
In the episode “Rewind,” after Fitz and Hunter escaped, the USAF officer General Hale murders a junior officer and civilian agent in cold blood because of their failure. This lack of respect for the disciplinary procedures in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and civil service regulations not only marks Hale as a villain, but also establishes her as one in a long line of governmental or military officials in the Marvel universe who go rogue, abusing their positions and authority.
There are too many of these incidents to catalog in this column, but I will touch on a few. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we saw this theme play out in a big way in Captain America: Winter Soldier, when agents of Hydra had fully infiltrated the shadowy World Security Council and the ranks of S.H.I.E.L.D. itself—something that has reverberated through all five seasons of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show. The fact that the World Security Council was willing to nuke New York City in the first Avengers movie was, in retrospect, a big clue that not all was as it seemed.
In the comics, a shadowy group called the Secret Empire infiltrated the U.S. government over many years. First appearing as a sub-unit of Hydra in Issue 81 of Tales to Astonish in July 1966, the Secret Empire eventually broke with its parent organization and wound its way throughout the government. Captain America and the Falcon finally defeated the organization and unmasked its “Number One,” with Cap horrified upon finding out this figure’s identity. While the comic didn’t make the link specifically, the plotline hinted at the real-world misadventures of Richard Nixon and his eventual downfall. It also led to Steve Rogers stepping away from his role as Captain America, just as he did in the MCU in Captain America: Civil War.
Alien beings have been trying to secretly infiltrate governmental organizations since the early days of the comics. The shape-shifting Skrulls have been doing this for decades. An early alien plot, which will soon be replayed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, took root when Mar-Vell, a Kree officer, assumed the identity of NASA scientist Dr. Walter Lawson. His people were interested in the growing space travel capabilities of the humans, and Mar-Vell soon ran afoul of NASA’s Cape Canaveral security chief, Carol Danvers. Becoming sympathetic to the human race, he took on the mantle of Captain Marvel, and became a defender of Earth. Danvers, a former USAF officer, eventually gained Kree superpowers and took on the mantle of Captain Marvel herself.
A military organization that strayed from its original mission was the Hulkbusters, a joint Army/Air Force team charged with stopping and neutralizing the Hulk, which first appeared in Issue 148 of Incredible Hulk in February 1972. Their leader, General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, became so obsessed with stopping the Hulk that he often threw caution and regulations to the wind. And interestingly enough, the Talbot who has played a role as a sometime antagonist and ally of S.H.I.E.L.D. got his start in the comics as a member of the Hulkbusters.
Marvel history is full of renegade military leaders, double agents, secret identities, spies, and traitors. And with General Hale, it looks like S.H.I.E.L.D. will be encountering yet another high-ranking person in a position of trust who cannot be trusted.
What We Knew Going In:
At the end of the last season, General Talbot lay near death after an LMDaisy tried to assassinate him—and since the existence of the LMDs is not known to the rest of the world, it was Daisy herself who got the blame. The S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ was left in shambles. Jeff Mace was dead under mysterious circumstances. The mysterious General Hale is searching for any sign of our agents. Disney Channel star Dove Cameron has joined the cast as Ruby, daughter of General Hale, who appears to be somewhat obsessed with Quake.
Here are the synopses for the first three episodes of the new arc, as provided by ABC:
Episode 511, “All the Comforts of Home” synopsis: Coulson and team set out to rewrite the course of humanity’s fate, but they’re unaware that their efforts will dramatically change one S.H.I.E.L.D agent’s life. (Aired on 2 March)
Episode 512, “The Real Deal” synopsis: In the milestone 100th episode, Coulson finally reveals the mysterious deal he made with Ghost Rider, which will impact everyone on the S.H.I.E.L.D. team. (Airs on 9 March)
Episode 513, “Principia” synopsis: The team goes in search of Gravitonium in order to help save the world. (Airs on 16 March)
The Second Arc Premiere: “All the Comforts of Home”
The episode begins as young Ruby fights with her mother, General Hale, about skipping class. Ruby asks her mom if she’s “a good guy.” The General replies that her orders are to capture Daisy Johnson, that we all must answer to someone, and she is making a better world. To do that, she needs to put an end to S.H.I.E.L.D. Then the S.H.I.E.L.D. team reappears, still in the Lighthouse…but it is in the present day. They made it home! They trigger a video in which a pompous bureaucrat, General Stoner (Patrick Warburton), explains how the Lighthouse was established back in the 1970s. Coulson mentions that the Lighthouse doesn’t even exist in Fury’s toolbox, which means that they should be safe from detection. Daisy awakens, and she is angry with Coulson, but he says he wouldn’t accept leaving her behind. May and Fitz find Kree monoliths while touring the facility. They meet Noah, who is a Chronicom like Enoch, and he takes them to his observation center. He says people are looking for them, and May comes close to breaking the fourth wall by replying wryly that S.H.I.E.L.D. has a small, but active, fan base. May sees a sign of alien contact, a light from the sky.
The light has been intermittent, shining down in St. Louis, MO. Daisy stays with Noah to run backup. They know they are being hunted by General Hale, so the team is cautious. They use tunnels leading into the nearby town of River’s End, enjoy the fresh air, and borrow an old minivan. Daisy jumps on a keyboard to look for alerts, and finds the S.H.I.E.L.D. team at the top of America’s Most Wanted lists. Deke suddenly appears in a nearby park. How did he get pulled back from the future?
Deke sees a bar, and samples the pleasures of the present day, including Zima, burgers, fries, and onion rings. He gets drunk and the bartender calls the cops. The S.H.I.E.L.D. team finds the Zephyr and head to St. Louis. Coulson and May share a moment, and he admits he isn’t feeling well. Fitz realizes that the light is a Kree beacon. Mack and Yo-Yo have some quiet time, and they talk about the tortured future version of Yo-Yo. Mack promises that they can change the future. In the ops center, Daisy catches up on the world while eating “sugar bomb” cereal, a hacker back in her element. She finds out that Deke has been arrested. Noah will not intervene, because it is not an extinction level event, so Daisy heads out on her own. The S.H.I.E.L.D. team breaks into the facility where the Kree beacon is hidden. There is someone in there, but it turns out to be Piper—a former S.H.I.E.L.D. operative who has been continuing to fight the good fight while the team was gone. In jail, Deke spills everything he knows in a drunken rant. Daisy shows up, pretending to be a social worker. One of the cops, however, is suspicious. General Hale has been notified.
Piper says she has been keeping an eye out both for the team and for alien threats, which is why she showed up at the beacon. Fitz disables the beacon, but Piper pulls a gun. A masked team comes in, and everyone is in a standoff. A masked woman arrives on the scene, and Piper admits that the beacon was not intended to call aliens; it was there to attract S.H.I.E.L.D.
The S.H.I.E.L.D. team know they are outgunned, and put down their weapons. The masked woman orders her team to kill them, but Yo-Yo takes all of their weapons using superspeed. The team fights back, and discovers that their attackers are robots. Piper, seeing them using lethal force instead of bringing the team in for a safe debriefing, realizes that she got played and backs Coulson. The masked woman uses a kind of Xena-style boomerang knife ring which chops off Yo-Yo’s arms, just like they were cut off in the future. The S.H.I.E.L.D. team escapes. Daisy and Deke make it back to the Lighthouse. May and the Zephyr are coming in fast, and land in an underwater hangar. The team does what they can for Yo-Yo. Mack is devastated. The masked woman walks into Ruby’s room where General Hale waits, and it turns out to be Ruby behind that mask. They talk, and all I can say is, she is a vicious psychopath, and General Hale is a terrible mother. Or, Ruby is a robot, like the rest of her team. From what Hale says, it seems that the beacon is some sort of Trojan Horse. The daughter’s room, which looks normal, is actually in some sort of government facility. At the Lighthouse, the beacon begins to heat up; Noah tells the team to run, and he throws himself on the beacon, which explodes.
In the stinger, we see a hooded jogger in Philadelphia. An SUV pulls up, and in it sits General Hale. The jogger is Creel, the Absorbing Man, and she wants him for a team she is putting together. He gets in the SUV. Hale definitely plans to play dirty.
In the preview, we see hints from the next episode, the 100th for Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. It appears the team’s past will be coming back to haunt them as they face down threats from throughout their careers—while wondering if there is any S.H.I.E.L.D. left to fight for.
Final Thoughts
The episode moved at a fast, action-packed clip. The Lighthouse of the present looks like a good base for the team’s operations going forward, and I hope we see more of Patrick Warburton and his ironic monologues from the 1970s. Deke’s return was a surprise, and led to some good comic moments. It was a nice twist to have Piper trying to do the right thing, only to realize that she’d been duped. She was always a solid character, and it’s good to have her back. General Hale looks like a good antagonist going forward, as does the ruthless Ruby. They will be a potent threat for the team to face. Noah was also an intriguing guest, but unless he has the power to absorb earth-shattering kabooms, his appearance may have been a one-shot. And speaking of earth-shattering kabooms, the team should be facing the threat of a real one in this season’s upcoming episodes.
There are reports that showrunners Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen are crafting a final episode that will also work as a satisfying end to the series. ABC had reportedly considered cancelling the series after last season, and with Friday being a tough night for shows to get traction with viewers, ratings for Season 5 have not been spectacular. With that in mind, we may see a lot of narrative threads being wrapped up in the coming episodes.
Now it’s your turn to discuss the show. What did you think of the team’s return home? What do you think will happen next? What were your favorite quips in this episode?
As we’ve done in the past, this post will kick off a discussion thread I will shepherd as the season unfolds, adding new comments every time another episode airs. If you want to follow the discussion, the best way to do it is to use your Tor.com user account. If you don’t have one, it’s easy to sign up. Then you’ll be able to follow the thread using the “My Conversations” feature, which makes it a lot easier to participate in discussions on the website. Feel free to come back each week and discuss the latest episodes, or share any S.H.I.E.L.D. news you might hear.
And, as always, I leave you with the words of the indomitable Stan Lee, “Don’t yield, back S.H.I.E.L.D.!”
Alan Brown has been a fan of S.H.I.E.L.D. from its comic book beginning over fifty years ago. He still remembers reading that very first adventure in Strange Tales #135.
Tapping in to join the conversation.
I like the actor who played Noah. Sorry to see that he looks to be one and done. Yes, Ruby looks to be utterly viscious. I loved seeing Daisy play Social Worker/Lawyer (and seeing Deke try to pay with his wrist implant was amusing). I liked the view of the Zephyr landing in the big sinkhole just off the Lighthouse. And while I hope they’re able to do something to save Yo Yo’s arms, the future seemed to suggest that’s not especially probable. At least we know, through Coulson, that there is technology in this world that would allow them to give her some pretty high-tech prosthetics.
I should’ve guessed that they’d keep the Lighthouse sets as the team’s new secret base. It makes sense. Keeping the same standing sets lets the show save money. This whole season’s storyline has been visibly shaped by the need to cut costs; the first half took place almost entirely in the same standing sets with a limited number of guest stars. Now they’re still using those sets, and I expect a lot of the stories and action will be structured to take place within them, even though they’re back on present-day Earth now and can shoot on location again.
What’s always amused me about Piper is that she’s essentially the same character as Brianna Venskus’s other recurring genre TV role, DEO Agent Vasquez on Supergirl. Both are background members of the secret pseudomilitary organization the heroes work for, frequently present but rarely standing out. There was even a time last season where Venskus reappeared on both shows just two weeks apart after being absent for a while from both, and in both cases it was in an episode where the base was on lockdown because of infiltration by enemy impostors (LMDs in AoS, White Martians in Supergirl). So I sometimes suspect (jokingly) that Vasquez and Piper are cross-universal doubles leading parallel lives, or perhaps the same pandimensional individual popping between universes, sort of like the role Stan Lee is now assumed to have in the Marvel movies going by his Guardians 2 cameo.
Although I guess we can now say that Piper has diverged significantly from the two characters’ parallel courses, unless we get an upcoming Supergirl episode where Vasquez betrays her team for what she thinks are good reasons.
The fight scene with the robots struck me as weak. If Yo-yo could take all the guns, I see no reason she couldn’t hold on to one and, you know, use it. Also, nobody even tried to take out the obvious leader (Ruby).
@1 I’m hoping they can find YoYo some sort of prosthetics. Her double amputation, as someone else mentioned in a previous discussion, matches the story of YoYo in the comics, who lost her arms while a member of the Secret Warriors team.
@2 I love the little meta moments created when you see an actor in multiple roles. Piper/Vasquez are so close in their respective roles and personalities, it does feel like they are doppelgangers in parallel universes or something. And I also like to see background actors come to the fore as a series continues. Like actor Joshua Cox, who became a regular presence on the bridge of Babylon 5 as LT David Corwin.
@3 Good point about using those weapons. That was a missed opportunity.
@3 Sophist: I assume they had Yo-yo make that (poor) decision so they could circle* around to the future (and the comics) and cut off her arms. I assume that’s also why they pointed out that the attackers weren’t alive, so the team felt able to lethal force against them. Not attacking the leader was definitely a nonsensical error though.
I really hope the show doesn’t get cancelled. It keeps getting better and better and I want to see Shield react to the events of Infinity War.
*sorry I couldn’t help myself
@4/Alan: I’m generally not a huge fan of gags that are predicated on simply acknowledging that an actor played more than one role, because, duh, that’s their job. But Vasquez and Piper are virtually indistinguishable characters appearing respectively in DC and Marvel series at the same time, so the jokes write themselves. Although at this point, Vasquez has some catching up to do with Piper on the character development front.
@5/Yonni: I gather that Infinity War is coming out a couple of weeks before the AoS finale, so its events could have an effect on the end of this season.
A solid episode. A few things I noticed:
1. You mention that General Hale gets notified, but not by the cop in the small town. That was a fake-out to make the Piper betrayal more of a surprise. Hale says “keep them there.” and Piper does just that, by giving them a story/puzzle to work out. Nobody ever shows up for Daisy/Deke nor moves to stop them after the paperwork gets filled out.
2. Two wonderful nods to two other great sci-fi works, wondering if you caught them?
First, when the team arrives back in the present, Fitz says “That was a hell of a thing.” just like Tony Shalhoub’s character Fred Kwan in Galaxy Quest after their team gets transported by the Thermians to their ship.
Second, when Deke arrives in the present, he gazes around confusedly and then upon realizing where when he is, utters a wistful “Oh boy.” just like Scott Bacula’s character Sam in Quantum Leap after each time-jump.
The fight scene was rather ham-fisted just to get Yo-Yo’s arms detached.
What kind of bartender serves a guy enough Zima to get drunk and a huge meal and never once asks if he wants to start a tab or pay immediately? The whole “Deke won’t be able to pay.” thing was hugely telegraphed.
Hopefully they are trying to write an episode that works both as a series finale and season finale, but I fear it will be the former. Sadface.
“A well-known politician attempting to delete his FBI files. An Asgardian spotted in the city.” The second event is probably a reference to Odin living on Earth until Ragnarok (it’s not Thor, as Thor was with Loki so it wouldn’t be an Asgardian), or it could be about Elliot Randolph. But what is the first event about?
I like that they have a stockpile of monoliths: that means the show is probably going to explain what they actually are (hopefully they’ll have time to get to that)! I still don’t know how chronicoms know about the lighthouse, when even the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t. And why does everyone acts as if Enoch is dead, when he’s supposed to be watching over Fitz’s body?
I don’t see why Deke had to be rescued. What could he have told anyone? Even if anyone were to believe him about the Kree invasion and the end of the world, that would be a good thing. And all he can say about S.H.I.E.L.D. is maybe where they were months ago, and irrelevant facts about what they did in the future. I guess he could reveal that Daisy is not able to use her powers right now. But that’s really the only useful information he has, he has no idea where the team is! Even if he tells the authorities that they should be in the area, nobody has ever found the lighthouse.
The worst problem in this episode is everything about General Hale and Ruby. We already knew she was stupidly evil, and it’s not getting any better. Nothing about her makes sense.
First, how is it possible for her daughter to skip class when she’s being held inside her bunker-room? Then, how stupid can you be to bait anyone with the threat of an alien invasion? Hale is lucky the installation was not attacked by the Avengers! (and I didn’t get whether the device actually was actually transmitting to the Krees: is Hale really that stupid?).
As mentioned before, the fight with Yoyo makes no sense; there are clear limits to her powers, but none of them are relevant here, she should have easily won. And how was she incapable of avoiding chakrams moving at 2cm/hour in her time referential?
How is it possible that Fitz wouldn’t detect the bomb, and how would Hale know he wouldn’t? And for that matter, how did she know when to detonate it, when S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn’t been seen in months? In fact, how many years was Piper supposed to wait in that facility, since they had no way to know the S.H.I.E.L.D. would come?
Finally, Creel. “I don’t want to work for you” “But I’m assembling a team” “Oh, alright then!”. How lonely is he that the fact that there will be other people working with him is a sufficient reason to join?
So who could that team be? Going through the wiki, I didn’t find many of S.H.I.E.L.D. enemies: they all tend to die.
Lash is definitely one of them. How does Hale control him? Considering how reckless she tends to be, I’m guessing she doesn’t.
Hellfire would make sense. So would Tucker Shockley.
Ian Quinn has to be on it. Especially if gravitonium is involved.
Felix Blake would be a logical choice.
The Superior wouldn’t make sense, but again, Hale doesn’t make sense.
Daisy’s dad is too well hidden, and wouldn’t want to do it anyway. His team is alive though, if Hale is really desperate: Karla Faye Gideon, John Bruno, Wendell Levi, Francis Noche and David Angar (I miss the time when people didn’t have to be inhuman to have powers)
Lorelei. If Hale was able to reach an alien planet before it got destroyed of course.
Vijay Nadeer, if he ever woke up from the bottom of the ocean. Same for Donald Gill.
Marcus Scarlotti was captured by Talbot, so Hale wouldn’t have to look far to get him at least. Other nonpowered normal humans include: Sebastian Derik, Yuri Zaikin, Victor Orlov, Camilla Reyes, agent Hauer, Vanchat… Some are less impressive than others. If she gets really desperate, there are also various members of the Watchdogs, some low level HYDRA agents, as well as the people who fought over the Berserker staff.
When Deke stuck out his arm to get his tag scanned I was half expecting him to say “mooltipass!”, he had a similar grin on his face.
I’m guessing this Zima is some sort of alco-pop? ie a cheap soft drink with alcohol added?
Maybe they are Kree? Or someone daft enough to think that inviting the Kree is a good idea. We do know that in the near future the Kree do arrive, so I’m pretty sure it was transmitting to them, intentionally or not.
Nice episode. Glad to see Piper back, and hopefully, she stays with the team. Agree with JamesP, too bad to see Noah gone, and the Zephyr landing in the Lighthouse sinkhole was cool.
I loved General Stoner too, and “you’d think the 80s have come sooner”. I was shocked by Yo-Yo loosing her forearms, though I should have seen it coming.
@3 – Sophist: Yes, I found it stupid that they didn’t fire back.
@@.-@ – AlanBrown: Ah, yes, I thought I remembered Yo-Yo in the comics with cyber prosthetics… but I thought I was getting confused with Quake’s gauntlets.
I really hope to see more of Patrick Warburton and his glorious mustache throughout the rest of the season………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@8/Athreeren: “‘A well-known politician attempting to delete his FBI files.’… But what is the first event about?”
Presumably a reference to the Trump administration or its MCU analog.
“First, how is it possible for her daughter to skip class when she’s being held inside her bunker-room?”
No doubt her “class” is some sort of training setup within the military base. I get the impression she’s not a normal daughter, but more some sort of dangerous entity (LMD?) that Hale has adopted and trained.
@9/phuzz: I had to look it up, since I’m a teetotaler, but apparently Zima is what they call a “cooler,” a mildly carbonated, citrus-flavored beverage with a similar alcohol content to a typical beer (around 5%). That actually surprises me a bit, because I thought it was just some kind of sparkling water or soft drink. I figured Deke was just getting overcome with enthusiasm and self-indulgence, not actually drunk.
The politician deleting FBI files thing could be a reference to an upcoming movie — Infinity War or Ant-Man & the Wasp, perhaps.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@11 – krad: And his glorious 70s outfit. Those pant legs! That tie!
General Stoner being in the 70s could overlap with the original Ant-Man & Wasp, if someone wanted to throw in a movie cameo.
(Possibly a young Carol Danvers too, if what we’ve heard about Captain Marvel is true.)
Back on to add:
I agree with KRAD @@@@@ 11 – Patrick Warburton brought a delightful level of camp to that cameo.
Athreeran @@@@@ 8 – What about Mike Peterson/Deathlok? Also, I went back to look, and had completely forgotten that Raina had been killed, or I would have thought to add her. What about the Asgardian played by Peter MacNicol? He wasn’t bad, but maybe they can exploit a grudge?
Mike Peterson is a SHIELD ally, not enemy.
@16: They do have some allies still alive. Including S.H.I.E.L.D. agents we never hear about, so the current size of the organisation is really unclear. Powered allies include Asgardians Lady Sif and Eliott Randolph, Robbie Reyes, a few inhumans (will we get to see Joey Gutierrez again?), and Peterson. I’d love to see him again, but certainly not with his programming forcing him to attack his friends: that man has suffered enough already!
I wonder if the episode could fit in a different model of Aida in there too? Or a Radcliffe LMD?
Where’s Lance, the psychic girl, and her mother? Weren’t they at hiding at the Lighthouse?
@19 That’s a very good point. Robin and her mother were definitely there when Fitz left. How much time has passed since then, I wonder? I wonder if they’ll address that?
Given the few times it’s cropped up in passing, I’m expecting gravitonium (and Dr Hall?) to become important.
@21 ABC’s episode synopsis promises that ep 513 will be all about the search for gravitonium in an effort to save the world.
Quick Recap, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Episode 512, 9 March 2018, “The Real Deal”:
Here’s the pre-show ABC episode synopsis: “In the milestone 100th episode, Coulson finally reveals the mysterious deal he made with Ghost Rider, which will impact everyone on the S.H.I.E.L.D. team.”
First Thoughts: Lots of flashbacks to previous adventures here, but things still move at a pretty good pace.
Synopsis: One of Fitz’s drone checks out the scene of the exploding trojan horse beacon. There is a strange energy rift on the wall, the drone goes down, and Lash (?!?) picks it up. (Is it just me, or does that rift look like the same one as the 11th Doctor Who faced a few years ago?) Fitz is upset at himself for not seeing the booby trap General Hale placed in the beacon, whose explosion destroyed three Kree monoliths simultaneously. There is now a level on the Lighthouse’s elevator, deep under the earth, that opens to what appears to be an outdoor forest. And there is that strange pulsating rip in the fabric of spacetime. Daisy may not be the destroyer of Earth, but the process may have already begun.
Mack visits YoYo in her hospital bed and tells her he loves her, and will take care of her. Daisy and Deke look through the supply warehouse, and his enthusiasm grates on her nerves. A Kree warrior attacks them out of nowhere, and disappears into dust when Daisy shoots him. Fitz thinks their fears are coming to life, leaking out of some sort of “fear dimension.” He thinks Deke’s belt buckle, which manipulates gravity, might be able to help if placed near the rift. But someone needs to put it down there, and Coulson says he will step up to the plate. The team bickers, but he insists. He says Daisy is needed for the future, to inspire SHIELD–Coulson still believes in the dream. But as they argue, he collapses.
Coulson gives Deke instructions to get some goods in town, and then goes into the ops center. The team is subdued. Simmons says there is necrotic tissue spreading throughout Coulson’s body, and there is no cure—he will die. Coulson has known since the deal he made with Ghost Rider. The team feels betrayed because he kept it a secret, especially Daisy. Lots of sad violin music accompanies this news and everyone’s reactions. In the med bay, Simmons tries to suffocate YoYo, but it is an LMD, which the real Simmons shoots, and it disappears into dust.
Deke steps outside and is startled by a helicopter. Troops are pouring out onto the streets, led by General Hale. He picks up some stuff and tries to make some phone calls. May asks Phil if the illness was the reason he took a step back. He says he already got one second chance, but, “Just because I’ve made peace with dying, doesn’t mean I’m in a hurry.” Coulson preps for his mission, knowing he will be facing everyone’s fears. Fitz gives him a .50 cal pistol for the fears along with the gravity modifying device. Coulson tells Fitz people need things to believe in, they need hope. He takes a deep breath, and heads down. Daisy watches his cam, while Coulson wonders if he’ll meet a giant Sta-Puff marshmallow man. The screen goes blank, and he’s on his own. He sees Mike Peterson, aka Deathlok, the cyborg SHIELD ally, who says he will tell Coulson what’s really going on here.
Deathlok says what’s happening is all in Coulson’s head. All of it, ever since he was brought back after being stabbed by Loki, is a dream. Meanwhile, the team argues about going to help him. Deathlok makes him doubt everything, saying the dream was his chance to experience everything he had missed out on. A call comes into the ops center–a SHIELD quinjet is incoming, and it lands through the secret water entrance. Onboard is Deke, with a whole bunch of folks, including the real Deathlok. It looks like at least one of his phone calls got through. Near the rift, Deathlok attacks Phil, but real Deathlok arrives, and kills the dream version. Hive attacks, but they take him down, and they fight off a whole bunch of those alien “roaches” from the future. It appears the gravity device works. Coulson asks this new Deathlok if he is real, and he says he is. Fitz tells Coulson the gravity device is holding the rift in check for now. Deke is delighted because he not only brought help; he was able to bring back Zima. Coulson and Fitz head out of the elevator into that mysterious open field, where everyone is waiting, along with Simmons in a white dress. Coulson leads a wedding ceremony, which only loosely follows standard formats. Fitz and Simmons exchange some very sweet vows. She wrote hers down, while Fitz improvises. They exchange rings. On the surface, General Hale finds DNA for Deke matches two people; Fitz and Simmons!
Stinger: No stinger this time around.
Next Time: Lots of the usual shooting, while May tells Coulson he should do what he can to save himself. It appears the containment of the rift is failing.
Final Thoughts: It was a pretty well constructed episode, with lots of action, lots of emotional moments, and a lot of call-backs to past adventures. It was good to see Mike Peterson again. We finally got to see Fitz and Simmons marry, after five seasons of “will they or won’t they.” But no one looks like they will be resting on their laurels.
This show really is feeling the budget crunch. You expect a 100th episode to be big and epic, but this was practically a bottle show, going much more intimate with the character developments. Which is good, in its way, but it might’ve been cool to have something that was both big and important to the characters. The whole “swirly thing in space that brings our fears to life” idea was a cliche, but it wasn’t really a major part of the story until the climax, where it was used really well.
So Coulson’s dying, then. You know, when they posted the Kevin Feige interview today where he said that the question of whether the Avengers would ever find out Coulson was alive would be “resolved in a very surprising way,” it occurred to me that if Coulson died at the end of AoS, that would sidestep the issue for the movies, so that could be the surprising resolution he was hinting at. So he may not get out of this one. (Or he might end the season by apparently dying in a way that could be reversed if they get renewed, maybe.)
And we get confirmation of what some suspected, that Deke is Fitz/Simmons’s grandson. Kinda sad that he gets to witness his grandparents’ wedding and doesn’t even know it. The wedding was a sweet way to end the episode… but is it legal? Coulson seemed to say that nobody vested him with powers except the couple themselves, so will they have to go through a more proper ceremony later, assuming they’re ever cleared?
“What makes more sense? You tell me. That you were brought back from the dead after many days? Your mind programmed with false memories? In a world with alternate realities and rocks that tear holes in space-time? Or that your brain is being stimulated with electricity to revive it, and your conscience is trying to make sense of random synapses firing off in your brain?”
No, Phil, the truth is that you’re dying of having been stabbed by an alien god with an infinity stone! It obviously makes so much more sense!
“Is it just me, or does that rift look like the same one as the 11th Doctor Who faced a few years ago?”
My reaction too!
I loved how Daisy called Fitz “Leopold” when he’s doing moral calculus: the team knows exactly where those ideas are coming from: the Professor is still in there (also in the previous episode, when a cop came to check their van, Fitz was the only one to go for his gun)
I loved this episode.
@25 Athreeren:
That little speech by Fear-Peterson was surprisingly convincing and rational. If the show would have gone with the ‘it was all a dream’ trope, it might even have worked. But of course they didn’t.
And I also loved how right at the moment when fear Fear-Peterson repeated Daisy’s statement, about there not being a SHIELD any longer, Deke flew in with remnants of SHIELD, including the real Peterson.
Coulson did not have the powers of marriage invested to him. Fitz said it would be symbolic in any case when they discussed it earlier. But that’s something you only catch on a rewatch.
On a side note, I doubt I was the only one who realized what was going to happen when Coulson asked Fitz if he was stalling, in the elevator scene. ;)
@19 JeffH:
I seem to recall Lance saying back then protecting Robin and her mother would be a good project for him and Bobbi. I guess he took them out to wherever Bobbi was. OTOH, May had scenes with Robin in the Lighthouse, but that was after her mother died IIRC, and we do not know where to place that on the timeline…
Nice episode, I thought I was going to hate the whole “fears made real” story, but it wasn’t that heavy into that. Loved seeing Coulson face “Mike” and doubt if it was all a dream, then having actual Mike come by and deathlok-blast the fake one.
Also, having Mike show up, means we might see more cyborg tech to give YoYo her hands back? Yes, we’ve had Coulson all along, but they seem to forget he has a prosthetic hand.
The wedding was nice, although I was afraid from the start the forest would collapse around them… but it’d be nice to have them keep it. And I didn’t see the reveal about Deke coming. Very cool.
@24 – Chris: I said the same thing to my kid. The wedding is just symbolic in this case, with no legal binding. I do agree the episode was a bit understated for a 100th episode, but it’s nice they got to do something special for it, particularly since we don’t know if we’ll get another season, let alone a 150th episode or 200th one.
@25 – Athrereen: I spotted the same thing when she calls him Leopold, same thing with the cop.
@26 – Fiddler: Well, they had hinted the marriage might happen (in interviews and social media posts), so I expected it… then when the episode took a different turn, I thought it wasn’t happening. But that elevator scene did bring the thought to my head.
I’m half expecting a scene of Coulson and YoYo (because I don’t think we’ve seen him chat to her yet) where he takes off his hand to remind here that he does have some idea of what she’s going through.
The episode as a whole did seem to drag a bit for me personally. I checked at one point to see if it was going to be longer than normal, because I was expecting it to spend much longer on Coulson going down into the basement, but that seemed to get wrapped up quite quickly.
I rewatched it over the weekend. On the quinjet, on the way to the beacon, when Yo-yo was sitting on the floor looking at and flexing her hands, it seemed to me that she was thinking about future Yo-yo and the possible/probable loss of her arms. So sad that she was actually on the way to that incident at that time.
I can’t help but wonder if, had Ron Perlman not passed away, they wouldn’t have used his character instead of Mike Peterson to be the “convince Coulson this isn’t real” speech guy.
I mean, they had to bring Deathlok back anyways, so maybe not. But the line of Peterson being “an orderly in the operating room” seemed tailor-made to be for Ron Perlman’s character (though a doctor not an orderly, obviously).
@30/Kalvin Kingsley: What are you talking about? Ron Perlman is alive and well, and he’s never been on Agents of SHIELD.
EDIT: Oh, you must mean Ron Glass, who played Dr. Streiten in season 1.
@30 and @31 Ron Glass would have been a good spokesman for Coulson’s fears, as the doctor who brought him back to life. But then you wouldn’t have had the Deathlok versus Deathlok moment, which was a lot of fun, along with Coulson asking “Are you real?”
And speaking of Ron Perlman, while I know it wouldn’t be feasible, I would LOVE to see him guest star on SHIELD.
Alan: Why wouldn’t it be feasible? Perlman has done television before, from Beauty and the Beast to Sons of Anarchy.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I actually started a rewatch of Season 1 this week, after reading an article on Den of Geek about how the show would have a fitting end with Daisy as Director of SHIELD, and implying the show is really about Daisy’s evolution. (I said the article is implying it, not that I think the show is about it, so don’t start a debate with me about this, please)
It’s amazing how many little setup clues there are in the first season that could be seen as foreshadowing toward this ending if that were the case (and in this episode Daisy did refer how Coulson found her in an alley, which was true). In this light, I see KalvinKingsley’s point, since I just saw the episode where Ron Glass was saying he *should* have let Coulson die…
@33 I was thinking of all the reports of how tight their budget is these days; doesn’t sound like they have a lot of money for high profile guest stars. But I would be delighted to be wrong!
This is a bit off topic, but I just rewatched Season 1 Turn, Turn, Turn (there is a season ;) ) and I had forgotten how strong an episode that is.
I remember not trusting Garret at some point, but Ward’s coming out blew me away…
Among the best in the show, if not top…
@31 CLB Yes, Ron Glass. Thanks for catching that. Ron Perlman would be great on AoS. Maybe he could start out an episode with a voiceover about Infinity War. Something like:
“War. War never changes.”
I loved the Deathlok vs. Peterson battle scene. And before that, the vision of Peterson playing on Coulson’s big fear that it’s all in his head (and quite convincingly, I might add; I understand why Coulson almost fell for it). But to quote Albus Dumbledore, “Of course it it happening in your head, but why on earth should that mean it’s not real?”
I thought the wedding scene was touching. And while I didn’t think about it before (and had no idea it was being speculated), I did catch the grandparent reveal when Deke said his grandmother had a ring like the one he had found.
Quick Recap, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Episode 513, 16 March 2018, “Principia”:
Here’s the pre-show ABC episode synopsis: “The team goes in search of Gravitonium in order to help save the world.”
What Happened: A young man is under psychiatric treatment, young von Strucker from a few seasons ago. He attacks the therapist, and the guards drag him off. At the Lighthouse, YoYo is doing well, but Mack is a bit too attentive. Coulson tries to convince YoYo having a fake hand is not too bad. Fitz reports the gravitonium device is not holding up well, and the rift will reopen soon. They need more gravitonium. Cybertech, another outfit from a few seasons ago, had both gravitonium and cybernetic prosthetics that YoYo could use. But all the gravitonium scientists are recently dead, with death certificates signed by the same guy. Young Strucker wakes up in an austere facility and finds a break room, stealing food and a knife. Ruby comes in and gets food, totally ignoring him. Daisy and Coulson confront the death certificate guy in a parking garage (Jake Busey from Starship Troopers, playing Tony Caine). They greet him and rattle off a list of aliases. He fires, jumps in a car and tries to get away. But Mack and May cut him off, and Daisy and Coulson arrive behind him. It looks like the shooting will start again, but then he recognizes Mack; they’re old friends–Candyman and Mackhammer (Mack was an MC Hammer fan in college).
Caine is a former SHIELD agent who roomed with Mack. He worked on a kind of Operation Paperclip, reforming former Hydra scientists. In the Lighthouse, Deke wants to play baseball, but Fitz is busy; the rift has reopened. YoYo is not doing well, she worries the future cannot be changed. Candyman admires the shotgun axe, and finds Mack is a different, tougher man. Coulson doesn’t like the idea that Cybertech scientists got a free pass, and doesn’t want anyone working on saving him. But May and Daisy have other ideas. Meanwhile, Ruby works a punching bag, and Strucker comes in. Strucker remembers her, he used to play with her. He remembers her mom, too, and apparently not fondly. He threatens Ruby with his knife.
Caine and Mack find a scientist on a bench beside a harbor. He tells them the Cybertech gravitonium was on a ship that sank in a thunderstorm (which is odd, because in decades in the Coast Guard, I never heard of a thunderstorm sinking a ship). Fitz says there are no signs of the wreck, and Simmons comforts him, while Deke continues to drive Fitz crazy. Fitz and Simmons do get to share a kiss. At the military facility, Strucker confronts General Hale. He wants nothing to do with Hydra. She says she can use him, to build a better future. She tasks Ruby to gain his trust and love. At the Lighthouse, Deke discovers Twinkies and loves them. His mom shows up, one of those fear dimension apparitions. She tells him to walk away, and not care, when a Kree warrior stabs her, and she turns to dust. Deke stabs him, and he also disappears into dust. Simmons finds Deke, and he gets an idea; maybe the thunderstorm hit the gravitonium, activated it, and the shipwreck sunk up instead of down. The Zephyr goes to look, and there among the clouds is a Navy destroyer.
At Hale’s HQ, Strucker has bad dreams, and Ruby flirts with him, playing a kind of reverse psychology game. Her creepy idea of flirting would give me bad dreams. The SHIELD folks board the ship via their white transfer module, using oxygen because they are so high in the atmosphere. They find the crew dead of hypoxia. There is someone moving; one of General Hale’s tactical robots. Most of the gravitonium is gone, but Mack finds the small amount that keeps the ship aloft. Deke coaches them how to handle it, and they box it up. They head toward their transfer module, as they don’t have much time before the ship falls, but Mack runs into the robot. We get a teaser for the new Avengers trailer.
There are lots of killer robots, and lots of fighting. They have less than a minute. Mack holds them off; “it’s Hammer time.” The ship falls, and the transfer module flies back to the Zephyr. Sensors tell Hale someone found the gravitonium. Caine and Mack say their goodbyes; he will keep in touch. YoYo talks to Simmons, and Deke hears the words he heard from his mother coming from Simmons. He’s figuring out who grandma and grandpa are. The team is buoyed by their successful gravitonium mission (get it, buoyed by gravitonium?). Mack dragged back a robot so they can repurpose the arms for YoYo.
Stinger: Ruby finds Strucker, who is willing to stick around and give the team thing a try. She introduces him to Creel, the Absorbing Man. Hale is happy, but Ruby has her own plans for the future.
Next Time: The Superior makes his return, and Creel confronts the team.
Final Thoughts: Good episode, with a nice guest appearance by Jake Busey, leading to lots of fun interactions with Mack. We are getting a lot of callbacks to previous seasons, which is enjoyable. While SHIELD is getting their ducks in a row, so is General Hale, and hers are evil ducks indeed.
Stop. Hammer Time…
(I always wanted to use that MC Hammer phrase, but you cannot do that easily, because U can’t Touch This)
I lived and loved the nineties, and I have to bow down to the show writers. This is by far the best pop culture reference in a show ever. MC Hammer and Rick James, SHIELD salutes you.
Funnily enough, I rewatched Starship Troopers last night. Imagine my surprise at seeing Jake Busey here. I loved the Academy stuff and Jake commenting on the Shotgun Axe (that thing should be categorized as mythical weapon, right next to the Vorpal sword)…
I had misssed the Strucker connection. Hale saying Hydra were a bunch of boy scouts was interesting. Especially since Hydra was a cult devoted to a powerful Inhuman…
I liked the grandparents vibe between Deke, Fitz and Simmons, but I hope that isn’t going to be a theme for the rest of the season.
Ruby, meh. I am just not interested in her. I find her a boring plot device.
Also, I finished the end of season one yesterday, so I caught the reference Coulson made about not wanting to be the next John Garrett…
Coming back on my remark on John Garrett, I know the show is preparing for a possible shutdown and wanting to go out in style, with multiple endings.
In that light, I love how in the last few episodes there were many references going to earlier seasons, especially season 1…
Also, I want to see Agent Maria Hill back to take names and numbers, but that is me being a fanboy… ;)
That’s all I ask, Santa. If you can bring in Fury as well, and make a scene with those two and Coulson and May, that would be awesome. ;)
@40/Fiddler: Pretty sure Hale said that Hydra was a boys’ club, i.e. overly male-dominated, not Boy Scouts. She said something about an excess of testosterone as well. And she has a point. Of all the Hydra leaders we’ve seen in the MCU, the only woman was a bit character called the Baroness who was one of the multiple minor leaders who were killed off in the Hydra leadership purge in season 2. All the major Hydra leaders have been male — Red Skull, Arnim Zola, Daniel Whitehall, Alexander Pierce, Wolfgang von Strucker, Gideon Malick, John Garrett, Grant Ward/Hive, etc.
The whole time Busey was on the screen I expected him to take over the ship and launch nuclear missles.
@Christopher, I rewatched the episode and you are right. Hale said Hydra was a Boy’s Club. Either with Hale leading or Ruby, it’s going to be interesting.
I laughed at the MC Hammer stuff again. Coulson saying to MackHammer ‘You can’t touch this’ while he was catching the gravitonium in a plastic box. Classic.
Don’t forget the one bit of very dark humor from Yo-Yo. When they return and Mack is telling her to guess what he brought her (beer) she glances down and says “I don’t know, I’m stumped.” Yeesh.
@40,42: Hydra. It’s such a boy band!
Fun episode. I enjoyed having Jake Busey, but at first I thought it was his dad, Gary. Also, his teeth have always been prominent, but he had some whitening done to them and they blinded me. On another note, it was interesting to have him point out how much Mack has changed.
Loved Deke realizing who his grandparents are, and realizing ship was now floating was brilliant too, as well as knowing how to handle the gravitonium.
The MC Hammer bit from Coulson was gold, as was YoYo’s dark joke.
A friend gave me a tour of a local air traffic control tower the other day, which reminded me that it would be very difficult for a destroyer to be floating among the clouds without anyone seeing it on radar. Between the commercial towers and military surveillance, someone would have noticed. And a destroyer has a crew of hundreds, which would trigger a quite vigorous search. I suppose General Hale could have manipulated things to suppress information, but it would be pretty tough to conceal both the ship itself, and the story of its fate.
I agree with the others that Busey was a delightful casting. He’s kind of perfect as the guy who might be the bad guy, but turns out to be the good guy.
Generally speaking, the villains in this arc aren’t doing it for me. Both Ruby and Hale are just a bit too “meh” for my taste.
I loved Deke figuring out the puzzle with the ship. And I’ll admit, the moment the vision of his mom gave the little steps speech, and said that her mom had said it to her, I knew for a fact that he was going to hear Simmons say it at some point. I believe TV Tropes refers to that one as a “Meaningful Echo,” but I could be wrong about the specific name of the trope. Either way, I loved the puppy-dog level of attention he was giving to Fitz and Simmons (especially Fitz) in this episode, and the dogged determination (sorry, not sorry) to prove his worth to them.
@@.-@8 – Alan: It’s easy, the gravitonium disrupts radar signals, and only people like SHIELD can find the boat. They have the right equipment and know what they’re looking for.
@@.-@ – JamesP: Oh yes, when she used that saying, it was obvious one of his grandparents was going to echo it, but that didn’t make it any less sweet.
MaGnUs @@@@@ 50 – Oh, make no mistake. I agree that the reveal to Deke was sweet, especially as Simmons was helping Yo Yo to walk, giving a significant literality to the quote. I just meant that I saw it coming from 10 miles away.
@50 I can go with that explanation. Gravitonium is a kind of hand-wave-ium substance that, in addition to its obvious properties, can also serve whatever purpose the plot requires.
@52 AlanBrown re: Gravitonium/Handwavium including, I suspect, keeping alive a scientist that our intrepid Agents had assumed dead when he fell into it. Perhaps that is how the world will end?
Even without hand-wavium, my explanation pretty well works within the confines comic book science.
I am in Season 3 now in my rewatch, and I just watched Lance Hunter infiltrate an ATCU building wearing a hoody over a t-shirt saying ‘Damn the Yanks’.
@Alan, is there any possibility for a rewatch starting Season One? I noted a lot of possible forshadowing…
My question is not related to my comment on the t-shirt. I just found that one funny…
@55 If you search TOR, you should find columns and discussions covering the entire history of the show. I started the reviews with Season Three, and all my reviews will come up if you click on my name at the top of this column.
Quick Recap, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Episode 514, 23 March 2018, “The Devil Complex”:
Here’s the pre-show ABC episode synopsis: “As Fitz and Simmons race to find a way to seal the Rift, they are faced with one of their greatest fears manifested.”
Synopsis: A “fear being” forms in a NASA spacesuit, similar to what Simmons saw on the Hydra planet. Fitz and Simmons are hard at work on their gravitonium. The being attacks them, but Simmons takes it down. Mack and YoYo work on her new arms. She wants to fight, not rest and heal. Fitz needs to compress the gravitonium, and hopes Deke can help, but Deke just knows how to use the stuff. Fitz asks folks to look for Doctor Franklin’s original notes. Daisy has a tracking hit on General Hale, who is getting yelled at by someone on the phone. Her limo drives right up the ramp of the cloaked Zephyr and Coulson captures her. Deke tries to talk to Fitz, but it is not Fitz, it is evil fear being Hydra Fitz, from the Framework, who decks him.
Coulson interrogates Hale. He wants to know why she’s at war with him. She says she’s just doing her job. She apologizes for YoYo’s arms being cut off, but blames him for the attack on Talbot. Daisy can’t find any notes from Doctor Franklin, and Fitz is losing it. Fitz encounters Hydra Fitz, who says he will do what good Fitz is unwilling to do. Mack and YoYo get attacked by a robo-minion. Fitz is really coming unglued because of Hydra Fitz. A shot rings out, and Fitz runs to see what happened. Coulson and Hale talk about saving humanity. She wants to show him what they are really up against, but he refuses. She tells him she deliberately let him find her; she wanted to be captured. It turns out her car was driven by Creel, the absorbing man, who confronts May and Piper. He has a bomb strapped to him.
A quinjet docks with the Zephyr, and the Superior, the evil Russian oligarch, walks out. Fitz tells the others about Hydra Fitz. The Superior is working for Hale, and wants her brought to him. Simmons tells Fitz to confront his evil self, and see if he can find information that can help them. They are afraid that Hydra Fitz, who experimented on Inhumans, is after Daisy. A robo-minion grabs Daisy. On the Zephyr, Coulson agrees to go with Hale to find out what she is up to. May is NOT pleased. Daisy wakes up, strapped to a table, with Hydra Fitz standing above her.
Hydra Fitz is restoring Daisy’s powers, which she is afraid of, not wanting to destroy the Earth and all. On the quinjet, Coulson banters with the Superior and Creel. Hydra Fitz says Daisy can compress the gravitonium, and close the rift for good. Simmons goes to look for Fitzes and finds it isn’t a fear ghost at all, Fitz is just imagining Hydra Fitz. It was him that decked Deke, programmed the robo-minion, and operated on Daisy. The whole Framework thing is causing his personality to split. The robo-minion takes Simmons prisoner. Fitz pulls the Kree power-dampening device from Daisy’s head, she screams in pain, and the room begins to quake. I suspect that any honeymoon for Fitz and Simmons will either be delayed, or incredibly awkward.
Fitz gives Daisy instructions on compressing the gravitonium, and the plan seems to work. Simmons asks Fitz how long he has been seeing Hydra Fitz. They have Fitz in a cell. He feels guilty, but believes he did the right thing. Simmons says maybe they do need to make harder choices, and he asks, “What does that make us?” He says he doesn’t know where they go from here. He and Simmons are finally together, but further apart than ever. Deke tries to comfort Simmons, who thinks Fitz is losing himself, and she is losing him as well. Deke says she hasn’t lost him, and is amazingly perceptive. He admits he learned all this from his mother, and he knows everything will be OK. Simmons realizes Deke is her grandson.
Stinger: General Hale meets her master, who stays in the shadows, but represents something called the Confederacy. She says she has gathered the final piece (Coulson?). He gives her poison to use in case she fails, and says, “Hail Hydra.”
Next Time: Hydra is back, Coulson is like, “oh no,” and the vanguard of an alien invasion is on the way. It looks like SHIELD is not quite done with spaceships during this season.
Final Thoughts: This was an incredibly twisty episode. I probably should have seen the whole Fitz personality split thing coming, but missed all the clues. Iain De Caestecker deserves some major kudos for his portrayal of both Fitzes. I was impressed with Hale’s ability to stay one step ahead of Coulson, although I hated to see the SHIELD team on the losing end. And I can’t wait to see exactly who is behind the alien invasion. I suspect it is the Kree, since they were tied into the Hive storyline, and need to show up at some point as things move toward the Earth’s possible destruction.
Oh, hell, why did they have to bring back Hydra? I’m sick of Hydra. It was going so well up to then.
That was a neat trick, spending weeks setting up the “fear dimension” manifestations as a red herring for Fitz’s hallucination/dissociative break. I’d forgotten that Fitz had a history of hallucinations due to his brain injury. So that was an effective misdirect.
I disagree with Christopher. Some of the best episodes in this show were about the struggle between SHIELD and Hydra. The stuff with the Real Shield and the Inhumans was interesting, but not as good. Season 4 made up for that with the Hydra angle in the Framework. Which showed to have effects in this episode.
What I am trying to say is that SHIELD and Hydra are each other’s Nemesis. It’s the core of the show IMHO. Personally, I would love to see Brett Dalton back in the show as Grant Ward because I always loved the dynamics between him and the team. But only if it were done in a convincing way (which would probably mean a clone, but hey, the show hasn’t gone there yet after so many other boundaries so one can hope).
On last night’s episode: Awesome. Den of Geek gives it 5 stars out of 5, and I couldn’t agree more.
Iain De Caestecker did a top class performance in acting here. We had seen some signs of Leopold in him before thanks to some sharp people in here. And as much as I hate to say it, Leopold did what needed to be done; in a second view, Fitz is announcing it actually (those strings attached to the chip were awfully long though). I can just hope Daisy can forgive at some point. Maybe after the Earth hasn’t blown up ( I only noted today that the opening shows a full earth, not sure how many episodes that has been the case). But in the end, the rift got shut down. Greater good can be a bitch like that.
Also, Leopold Fitz acted, and was ready to take the consequences.
The scene where Simmons realized Deke is her grandson was very strong, even if she puked. And for her, it was a needed solace. Especially after the even stronger scene with Fitz, Leopold, Simmons, Deke and Daisy…
I have a suspicion that the robot arms YoYo is getting are going to be a huge plot device… Also, if I were a woman, I would marry Mack on the spot…
Hale saying to Coulson Daisy shot Talbot while denying Coulson’s claim saying it was an LMD is Rich. FTR, I am hoping for Talbot to show up again too.
Hale: “Sometimes people have to die, and I am willing to pull the trigger”. Yes, like those two subordinates you shot in the head after Fitz escaped…
I loved how May knew it was Creel after Piper reported they couldn’t lift him. On a side note, imagine him transforming into uranium and then detonate…
May saying to the RussianBot “or are you just another Russian invading our Democracy?”. Please don’t go there, Showmakers.
In the banter between Coulson and RussianBot, Hale revealed she has his real brain. ‘Head in a bar’…
YoYo may die. To break the loop and save Earth…
Simmons admitting to Fitz they have to make harder choices, with a dying Coulson away gives food for thought.
@56 Alan
I was thinking of a rewatch with what we know now. Because there is much more foreshadowing than you think. :)
@58 I might not like Hydra returning if it was just the Earth-bound bunch of Nazi dead-enders we see in the comics. But I was fascinated by the storyline that suggested Hydra had origins out among the stars, and was far older than we ever imagined. “Cosmic” Hydra could be an interesting entity.
@59/Fiddler: “I disagree with Christopher. Some of the best episodes in this show were about the struggle between SHIELD and Hydra.”
I never said they weren’t. There were some terrific episodes and storylines about Hydra. But those storylines were wrapped up and the show moved on. Just because something worked before, that doesn’t mean it works to keep bringing it back incessantly. Eventually even a good idea wears out its welcome.
And good grief, you’re right, the Superior is literally a Russian bot now. Yes, showmakers, please do go there, if only for the sake of that pun.
@59. With the Rift closed, I’m kinda surprised we didn’t see non-Hive Grant Ward as a fear manifestation. I guess after “his” heroic turn in the Framework no one’s really scared of (or haunted by) him anymore.
@61/Alan: I’m not comfortable with divorcing Hydra from its Nazi roots. It feels like apologism or avoidance. Nazism is resurging in the real world, and it’s important to confront it in fiction, not tiptoe around it or soften it by retconning the evil Nazis into evil space cultists instead.
I could buy it, though, if some alien force is just using the trappings of Hydra in order to manipulate Hale. Although I still feel Hale is a less interesting character as a Hydra agent than as a well-meaning but ruthless US officer.
@63/Cybersnark: Or else they just couldn’t get Brett Dalton because he’s busy doing something else. But in-story, you’re probably right.
A couple of things – Hydra is “back” but I don’t think it’s going to be how we envision it. I think this is going to be people who were Hydra but ran from it when SHIELD was squishing it. Now they have been brought back together to face this alien menace.
I also think this alien menace is going to tie in with Marvel’s Inhumans. Black Bolt was very concerned about something terrible heading toward Earth and that he was the last defense against it.
I’m not certain if Disney/ABC will do a true tie-in (having the actors from Inhumans show up on AoS and all) but I wonder.
I agree with whoever said Yoyo may die to break the loop. I think I saw a bit of realization in her eyes when she was explaining to Mack and when Mack said “Yeah but we’re trying to AVOID that future, so you might die, so just stay safe.” Like she worked out that if she dies, she’ll have definitely changed the future…
@62 The Superior is a Russian bot. I hadn’t thought of that, but you are right on the nose! ;-)
And regarding Hydra, just because they have deeper roots than we thought doesn’t negate the fact that they were enthusiastic Nazis when they had the chance. I was tickled when someone during the Framework episodes (I think it was Simmons) made the clear connection that Hydra equals Nazis.
I think General Hale left “well meaning” behind many years ago. No matter how enthusiastic an officer is about her orders, it is unthinkable for a US flag officer to gun down subordinates for their failures.
@66/Alan: Sure, on a strictly “factual” level, that’s still true in-story as far as it goes. The problem is, retconning Hydra into a much more ancient or alien thing that was just co-opted by Nazis feels like it weakens the core idea. Of course, that ship sailed a couple of seasons ago, but I didn’t like it much then either.
Indeed, the whole reason the show needed to do that “Yes, they’re definitely Nazis” thing you refer to is because the retcons weaken that message and so that needed to be compensated for.
Contrary to the others, Fitz had 6 months to think about what happened to the Framework before getting back into frenzied action. So regardless of how much of him is the Doctor, there is no doubt that he will always love Jemma and will do anything for her. And even though Jemma obviously wants to fight the darkness in him, she still loves him and is only afraid of losing him. Now if only they got a little time together, I’m sure they could work things out.
Talking of spending time together, when did they have time to conceive Deke’s mother (as woman vomiting will never mean anything but a pregnancy in TVland)? Fitz looks like he didn’t have any sleep in weeks! (Sure his last nap lasted a century, but that doesn’t count). And by the way, once Leopold had manipulated everyone so that the surgery was the only option, I would have preferred if Jemma had done it: Fitz was in no condition to do anything this precise. He needs to sleep now!
We have already got to the real origins of Hydra, I don’t think we should push it further. Hale is trying to join a Confederacy, meaning she’s not with those people yet. It is possible that when S.H.I.E.L.D. was building alliances with Asgard, Hydra was reaching out for the Kree.
@64: Nazism is not about racism as it was understood back in the days. In the 30’s, racism as a scientific theory hadn’t been fully discredited yet. Nowadays, Nazism is something different that is abhorrent in a different way (now it’s cultures rather than races that are claimed to be superior to others and for this reason shouldn’t mix), so it makes sense that Hydra would change with the times.
@68/Athreeren: Not what I’m talking about. I’m not splitting hairs over facts, I’m talking about the use of Nazi-related characters in a work of fiction and what message or symbolism it conveys to the present-day audience. And in the present day, we have more need to speak out directly and emphatically against Nazis and related ideologies than we’ve had in decades. I just don’t like the “Oh, they were really started by ancient aliens” angle because it seems to be pulling away from that.
Am I the only one who thought the guy in the shadows looked blue? I thought the Kree invasion was already in the works!
@Athreeeren
Good points on Jemma possibly being pregnant. I had missed that option.
On Nazism, the link between Nazi-Germany and Hydra was obvious, and plated to us as told in the movies and the uniform stuff was obvious, maybe a little too much. Whitehall closed that deal for the viewers.
Yet, Whitehall had his own agenda and Hydra let him have that because it wasn’t against their agenda. I have no problem with the view where Hydra as a cult just got opportunistic and went with the ride back in the thirties/fourties. They could have used Stalinism as well, but Nazism was the better option back then, it being in the western world. And now Hydra is using the US Air Force to create a Power Base. It fits.
But still, the Hale statement about Hydra being a boy’s club needs reviewing, since she clearly is a subordinate…
On a side note, I am watching Season 3 right after Coulson plummeted in. Mack named Daisy as Tremors. Another gem…
@70/Simka: The guy in the shadows was Peter Mensah (he was listed in the opening guest credits, and his voice is pretty distinctive), who’d certainly be a good choice for a Kree, but his skin tone looked like his natural dark brown to me, not blue. Of course, we’ve seen before in this show that Kree can disguise their complexion to look human. And Korath in Guardians of the Galaxy was a brown-skinned Kree.
@71/Fiddler: I’ve said repeatedly that I’m talking about how I feel about the creative decision to retcon non-Nazi origins for Hydra, about what it implies on a metatextual and thematic level, not just whether it fits the continuity or makes sense in-story. That’s by far the most superficial level of analysis and critique of a work of fiction. But for some reason, it’s the only level fans seem to want to engage in anymore. I’m starting to think that the rise of TV-show Wikis has gotten people so hooked on cataloguing the in-universe facts and stats of TV shows that they’ve forgotten how to look beyond the surface and evaluate the creative process itself.
As for Mack’s habit of giving people nicknames, I’ve always found it odd that they didn’t use that to give the characters their actual superhero/villain names — e.g. why he didn’t call Daisy “Quake” instead of “Tremors.” Basically how The Flash uses Cisco as the designated namer.
@70: That the guy was a Kree was my interpretation as well. The guy was in the shadows the whole time so his actual complexion was hard to see, but he was clearly bald like we’ve seen most Kree. There was also the shifting symbols that made the scene look alien. Most of all, however, was the actual dialog. General Hale said she’d die before she allowed failure and was told that before that happens she should drink the vial she was handed and fight to her last in a wave of savage glory. That sounded exactly like the vials of berserker juice that Kasius had. I never considered it might be poison until I read the recap here, though I think my interpretation is the correct one. I’m calling it now. That guy is Kasius’ father.
@75 bwardj You are correct about the vial. The shadowy figure even called it “the odium” which is the name Kasius gave to the vial of stuff he drank.
@Christopher
As for Mack’s habit of giving people nicknames, I’ve always found it odd that they didn’t use that to give the characters their actual superhero/villain names — e.g. why he didn’t call Daisy “Quake” instead of “Tremors.” Basically how The Flash uses Cisco as the designated name
I think he used the name in other episodes after as well. :) I place this in the area of personal puns. He did the YoYo call sign as well…
@77/Fiddler: But in the comics, Yo-Yo Rodriguez is her actual given name (or at least the civilian name she goes by) and her superhero name is Slingshot. So calling her Elena and making Yo-Yo her nickname is a retcon by the show. The only time AoS has used the name “Slingshot” was as the title of the miniseries of online shorts revolving around Elena. That’s my point — the nicknames Mack comes up with for people are never the same as their superhero/villain names in the comics. Which seems like a missed opportunity to me. (Daisy was given the “Quake” name by the news media during her period as a rogue.)
Not much to say that hasn’t already been said.
I will agree with CLB @58: I also thought “Leopold” was a fear hallucination, rather than a manifestation of Fitz’s splitting personality.
I thought the scene between Simmons and Deke was very touching, and count me as another who didn’t catch the implication that Simmons may be pregnant.
Breaking SHIELD-related news: Clark Gregg will be appearing in the new Captain Marvel movie alongside Samuel L. Jackson. As the film is set in the 1990s, this will be his first appearance chronologically in the MCU. The presence of the two of them hints that we will see what SHIELD was like in those days.
@80/Alan: I was wondering what Coulson’s earliest chronological appearance onscreen was to date. According to the MCU Wiki, it was the flashback in episode 4×14, “The Man Behind the Shield,” which showed one of his early missions with Melinda May. The date info on the site is kind of vague, but it may have taken place in 2003. So, yeah, this would push back the date of his first chronological appearance. I assume there will be some digital de-aging involved.
Totally called Fitz’s breakdown, but it was still enjoyable. Poor guy, and great acting from De Caestecker.
I loved the little smile Coulson gave Hale when May calls him aside after he says he’s going with them.
@59 – Fiddler: I agree. HYDRA is SHIELD’s archenemesis.
@68 – Athrereen: I just saw Gemma puking because she’s feeling emotionally distressed.
@76 – KalvinKingsley: Oh, I missed that!
Yo-yo said that if she were to die, that would have to break the loop. Similarly, not conceiving Deke’s mother would change something important in the timeline. So it was essential for the story that she’d already exist when Jemma learns of her own future.
Quoth Christopher: “I assume there will be some digital de-aging involved.”
Not that much. Clark Gregg honestly doesn’t look that much different now than he did 20 years ago.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
A wig, maybe? Coulson with some 90s hair.
I thought Yo-yo was lying when she told Jemma her death would break the loop. Future Yo-yo dies and is brought back to life many times by Kasius; who knows when the first time she dies is?
Maybe she plans on getting killed in a way there’s nothing left to resurrect.
@84/krad: Yeah, not much de-aging, but probably some, on both Gregg and Samuel L. Jackson. Heck, most big-budget movies these days do subtle digital touch-ups on their actors as a matter of course.
Quick Recap, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Episode 515, 30 March 2018, “Rise and Shine”:
Here’s the pre-show ABC episode synopsis: “Coulson uncovers General Hale’s true agenda, and it could be the end of the world if S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t help her.”
Synopsis: Coulson gets a dorm room in Hale’s basement; she says his questions will be answered. He knows she is not running a USAF organization; she admits she is Hydra. Flashback to 28 years ago, where a young Hydra Academy student (Hale, of course, in the same facility where Coulson is being held) heads out to class. She sits with young Sitwell (remember him?). Graduation is tomorrow, and only one final exam. Daniel Whitehall (remember him?) addresses the class, namedrops Captain America, and talks about an infusion chamber that can create supermen. Fellow student Strucker (the elder, remember him?), harasses Hale, and she takes him down, hard. Her dog is missing, and Strucker smiles nastily. Whitehall summons her, and it turns out Strucker didn’t do anything to the dog, disposing of her dog was one of her final tests. Whitehall has selected her for his program; engineering a perfect human. He wants her to be artificially inseminated to produce the perfect Hydra agent. She isn’t happy, but with a “Hail Hydra,” she accepts her fate.
Flashback to two years ago, Ruby wakes up in her dorm room, with her dog. She dresses in her Hydra Academy outfit (some things never change) and does combat training. Ruby is vicious, and the new leadership hasn’t decided what to do with her; after all, Whitehall is dead. Hale’s phone rings, and she heads to the Pentagon. SHIELD has captured Gideon Malik, and her boss, a four star, Fisher, is panicking. He talks about contacting the Chitauri and an interstellar Confederacy, and tells her to carry on the project. General Talbot (remember him?) comes in and tries to arrest him, but Fisher takes cyanide. Talbot doesn’t realize she is Hydra herself. When Hale returns home, Ruby is arguing with her teacher, and refusing to kill her dog. Mom guns down the teacher. Hydra is collapsing, but they plan to survive.
Flashback to six months ago. Talbot wakes up in a hospital, and works on cognitive exercises with his son. Hale is there to transfer him to another facility, and he wakes up in her dorms, with no medical support whatsoever. He heads out to explore the halls, and finds the cafeteria. He grabs some junk food, and Ruby walks in with her headphones on, ignoring him. He confronts her, she takes him down, and Hale walks in. She tells him that she has a new purpose for him. She shows him a strange teleportation device. The Confederacy gave them the device so they could meet with them, and struck a deal to avoid a war coming to Earth. She admits she worked for Fisher. Talbot asks her what flag she flies; he goes with the stars and stripes. She tells him that it is about Humanity, not Hydra, SHIELD or the USA. Talbot hid the Hydra contraband, and refuses to talk. They chain him to a wheelchair; he says they will never break him.
In the present, Coulson wakes up. He goes to the cafeteria, and Ruby walks in, ignoring him. Coulson heads back to his room to eat cereal. Hale walks in. Coulson asks who the girl is; he guesses she is the one who cut off YoYo’s arms. Hale takes him to the star drive, and they are transported to the black alien chamber with blue letters. She introduces him as one of Earth’s mightiest heroes. A menacing man in the shadows puts a device on Coulson’s forehead that shows him a huge alien warship. Hale wants him to help arm alien warlords; he says she need to fight back. And she agrees. She wants the particle infusion chamber that Whitehall was working on. Hale admits Ruby is not suitable, but Daisy might be. The codename for the project was “Destroyer of Worlds.” Uh oh! Coulson tells her they were in the future, and know what that project will lead to. She doesn’t believe him. He gets dragged off just like Talbot, refusing to cooperate. Ruby comes into his room, and asks him about the future. She appears jealous of Daisy, and wants to know where she is, but he refuses to talk. She shows him the last guy who said no to her, Talbot, a mumbling wreck.
Back in the Lighthouse, and Daisy and May figure out Hydra is behind things. May says we have a supervillain who can help us, and goes to Fitz. She points out she was Hydra in the Framework just like him, and wants him to embrace that. Simmons and Mack are finishing surgery on YoYo’s new robot arms, and he talks about how hard that double life in the Framework was. Mack is concerned; YoYo thinks she is invulnerable. Fitz figures out the gravitonium is for a weapon, and asks for a few hours access to the computers and labs. Daisy refuses to let him out of his cell, and quakes him when he says he didn’t have a choice for restoring her powers. He points out that Daisy has betrayed the team a few times herself. May confronts Daisy, who wants to find Robin, the precognitive.
Stinger: Simmons brings Fitz tea, and shows him a multitool she got from Deke, who got it from his grandfather. It matches Fitz’s, and shows they survived. But he points out that led to the birth of a Deke. She also feels she is invulnerable.
Next Time: Coulson is not being treated well, Daisy wants to rescue him, and Ruby wants to be the Destroyer of Worlds. What could go wrong?
Final Thoughts: This felt like one of those Doctor Who episodes where the Doctor barely appeared, placed in the schedule to give the main actors a break. The writers seem determined to namecheck every bit of SHIELD and Hydra history from every previous season before the end of this one, and showed us a lot of past events from the Hydra point of view. Which ended up being more fun than I thought it would be, possibly because the episode was packed with good one-liners. And Adrian Pasdar, as usual, was great. With only a few shows left in the season, we are headed toward a big finish, and with all these aliens, I think it will hint at things to come in the next Avengers movie. My big concern: way too many people on the SHIELD team think they can’t be killed, which suggests that some may be mistaken.
The actress who played the young Hale was fantastic. Her reaction to Whitehall telling her that, for all her hard work and accomplishments, the Hydra patriarchy still only valued her as an incubator — that was a superb performance.
They keep finding ways to tell stories that are mostly confined to the Lighthouse and Hale’s base. This time, they took advantage of the limitation by telling parallel stories taking place in the same settings over time, but the need to work within a tight budget — to do what’s practically a whole bottle season — remains evident. If the show does get another season, I hope they get a little more money to spend on sets and locations so they don’t have to be so claustrophobic. I’m getting a little tired of all the corridors.
Nice to see that Talbot survived — and surprising to see how loyal he’s gotten to SHIELD. I hope we see more of him. Hey, between Adrian Pasdar and Brianna Venskus, that’s two actors who are juggling recurring gigs on Agents of SHIELD and Supergirl this season.
Another great episode. My biggest complaint is that when it went to the final commercial break pre-stinger, I looked at the clock and said “It can’t be over already!” Partly because it was great to see all the familiar faces (and young versions of some familiar characters) but also because the overall plot didn’t really advance a whole lot since the end of the previous episode.
The backstory fill-in was definitely necessary, don’t get me wrong. But the only real movement forward was:
Daisy heads out to find Robin.
Fitz learns Deke is their grandson.
Simmons performs the surgery on Yo-Yo.
And of course the biggie – Coulson (and therefore the viewer) learns how the Earth was really destroyed. Or partly. Still 7 (I think?) episodes to go, so plenty of time to dole out trickles of hints as to the real story.
After typing all the things that happen, I guess it seems like more than it did while watching. Just the breakneck pace of most of the rest of the season didn’t feel in play on this one, largely due to the first 1/3 being all flashbacks.
Oh and I had to add this – favorite line of this episode? Talbot calling Hale a Calamari Matahari.
If Daisy goes to find Robin, does this mean we’ll get to see Enoch again? I hope so!
I was so impressed by Young Hale’s acting and that entire scene. Now we really understand her comments about a boys club. Does Ruby hitting her head have something to do with her inadequate temperament or was that a red herring? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Daisy: “I can’t believe we’re still fighting nazis.” They heard the complaints and referenced them. Only explanation.
Also if Fitz or Simmons dies, I might be forced to strangle a screenwriter.
@93/Yonni: I found out that the actress playing young Hale is named Alyssa Jirrels. She doesn’t have many credits yet, but I expect she will.
“Daisy: “I can’t believe we’re still fighting nazis.” They heard the complaints and referenced them. Only explanation.”
I think it was clearly a metatextual commentary on what’s going on in real life, because we actually are having to fight Nazis again. Same as May’s line last week about “another Russian bot infiltrating our government.”
@92 Athreeren Enoch is not with Robin, he is with Fitz who is cryogenically frozen. Not on Earth.
Robin and her mother are being guarded by Hunter. And possibly Bobbi. It’d be great to see either/both of them again.
I third the compliments about Jirrels’ acting.
It’s clear that this sense of invulnerability is going to backfire. I’m just not sure yet on whom.
From “The Last Day”:
“Nothing we do matters. Because we can’t change time. […] For all I know, we’ve tried a thousand times! Always ends the same. It’s like a record that keeps on skipping, and we are repeating this loop again and again and again! And every time, Jemma dies. They all die. Robin can’t change it. Voss couldn’t change it. Even Daisy couldn’t change it. She saw the aftermath, and she still destroyed the world.”
It’s not clear whether this was in the previous loop or the coming one, or whether there is a difference. Still, even if Jemma is destined to die, I don’t see how she could die before giving birth to her daughter if Deke has her DNA…
Yeah, Gemma’s likely safe until she delivers. Otherwise we’re in <I>A Sound of Thunder</I> territory.
I’ll add more props to the actress playing the young Hale. And, my attention was a little divided early in the episode, so I didn’t see if there were framing captions on the initial flashback. But before I was certain what was going on, I thought the other actor looked like a young Sitwell, so kudos to the casting team on that one.
I will echo the sentiment that the feelings on invulnerability are going to bite someone in the butt before the end of the season. And I wonder if it may be intentionally so on the part of the bitee. Something along the lines of “If I die, the future has to be different.” Honestly, that’s where I thought they were going with Yo Yo a few weeks ago.
I loved Fitz’s reaction to finding out Deke was their grandson.
Great episode. I love how they get creative to re-use the facility. Good to see Talbot, hope he can recover. Also, “YOU FILTHY CALAMARY MATA HARI!” is one of the best lines ever. Right after watching it, I was in a roleplaying session, and someone who looked a lot like a person my character trusted turned into an octopus-being, so I had my character yell that line. It was glorious, too bad no one at the table but me and my son had seen the episode.
I do hope the oncoming invasion the Confederacy wants to “help Earth” with is the Infinity War. I loved how they used Fitz as a HYDRA resource, and I loved how Gemma is trying to convince them that they will recover from this, and Fitz’s reaction to learning Deke’s parentage.
@90 – Chris: Yes, she was great, plus she looked a lot like her adult counterpart.
@100/MaGnUs: “I do hope the oncoming invasion the Confederacy wants to “help Earth” with is the Infinity War.”
That could be, but I’m kind of thinking it might tie into the oncoming threat from space that Black Bolt was warned about in the last episode of Inhumans. I recall hearing that AoS planned to do some kind of crossover, but there’s been no sign of it yet. And given that Inhumans is very unlikely to be renewed, AoS is the only place to tie off its loose threads.
CLB @@@@@ 101 – For what it’s worth, there’s no reason it can’t be the same threat, but if it’s not, you’re probably more likely to be right, since there’s even less spillover between the TV and Movie wings of the MCU these days than there was back in Season 1 (and there wasn’t much then).
My guess is that the Confederacy is an alien alliance that is using Thanos’s impending arrival (I’m 99% certain that the ship that Peter Mensah’s character showed Coulson is Thanos’s ship and that footage of same is from Infinity War) as a cover to fleece Earth of its Inhumans.
I love the fact that Coulson didn’t even come close to falling for the trick that Ruby played on both young von Strucker and Talbot. Coulson really is Earth’s mightiest hero. And Adrian Pasdar’s return was greatly welcome. As great as the “Calamari Mata Hari” line was, I laughed even harder at his referring to Ruby as “Cross-Fit Tinkerbell.”
My kudos also to Alyssa Jirrels, who did a letter-perfect Catherine Dent impersonation. Kudos also to Adam Faison, who also did a letter-perfect impersonation of Maximiliano Hernandez.
But the best performance was from Reed Diamond, who once again hit it out of the park as Whitehall. That moment when his face just hardens when Hale asks if she has another option, and only softening slightly when she meekly says, “Hail Hydra.” Whitehall remains the best villain this show has had, and Diamond’s presence has been sorely missed.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’m not entirely sure how the timelines match up, but all of Asgard is heading towards Earth after the third Thor film as well, so it seems like there’s plenty of alien races heading their way. Also, if the threat that this ‘Commonwealth Confederacy’ is actually Thanos, presumably they can’t stop him and probably have no real intention of helping. It’s a scam basically.
(edit, getting my words mixed up)
I’m guessing they’re two related things, yes. An alien scam taking advantage of Thanos’ coming sounds like it.
@103 – krad: I loved Coulson not falling for that too, and yes, “Crossfit Tinkerbell” was very funny.
Quick Recap, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Episode 516, 6 April 2018, “Inside Voices”:
Here’s the pre-show ABC episode synopsis: “Coulson is forced to team up with surprising allies to save the world, while the S.H.I.E.L.D. team attempts to track down and rescue him.”
Synopsis: Coulson is talking to a security camera in an empty room. Hale has abandoned her USAF uniform, and gone full Hydra. The infusion chamber is being built. Ruby wants to get the power now, but mom wants her to wait. Creel touches the gravitonium and it sucks his hand in. He barely escapes, and says it’s alive, he sees images of Doctor Franklin Hall, who had merged with the gravitonium way back in Season One. Meanwhile, YoYo works out with her new robo-arms. Mack is concerned about her trying to move too fast, and thinking she is invincible. Deke and Fitz (who is still locked up) grapple with the implications of their family relationship. Simmons wants to know more from Deke about her future; he says he called them Nana and Bobo. Deke is worried that Daisy has become too much of a hardass. Daisy says Fitz is sick; she doesn’t trust him. Simmons wants to lean into the fact that she, Fitz and YoYo are invulnerable (uh oh!). YoYo finds Deke is their grandson, and says she is sorry. Simmons wants to draft her to search for the gravitonium. Only Mack has the key to Fitz’s cell, so how do they get him out?
Creel can hear voices in his head, from whoever is in the gravitonium. Hale wants another test. Daisy has found Robin and her mom at a SHIELD safe house, and is bringing her back on the Zephyr. Strucker works on infusion chamber plans, and Ruby pouts. Her mother is pissing her off. Strucker agrees that the gravitonium is for Ruby. As the Zephyr heads home, Daisy tries to draw Robin out. She wants help finding Coulson. Mack is impressed with the new robo-arm performance. YoYo asks him to release Fitz so they can find a weapon that might lead them to Hale, and he refuses. Creel continues to have visions, and breaks out of his cell. He goes to visit Coulson, and says the gravitonium wants him dead. Coulson tells Creel about Talbot (his old friend) being broken. And Creel takes out a robo-guard.
Robin is still silent, but her last drawing shows what might be her death. Then she calls May ‘mommie,’ just like she did in the future. Creel and Coulson find Talbot, who is babbling. And Creel agrees to help free him. Coulson just needs Talbot to use his ‘inside voice.’ Simmons is running an experiment to prove she can’t be killed. It is a chemical version of Russian roulette. But she apparently guesses wrong, and collapses.
Mack lets Fitz out to help Jemma, but YoYo locks Mack into the cell. It was a con. But Simmons guessed right after all, convincing herself even more that she is invincible. Fitz, Simmons and YoYo head out on their mission. Robin talks to May, who says they want to make the bad future not happen. They must find Coulson, but Robin says he will die. May finds a picture of Coulson near a mountain. Creel, Coulson and Talbott are on the loose, while Creel continues to hear voices. A robo-guard detects them. Strucker and Ruby find out about the escape. Hale wants the escapees alive. YoYo, Fitz and Simmons head out on a quinjet flown by autopilot. Creel and Talbot take out robo-guards, but one punches Coulson hard in the chest, and there is no pulse. Creel improvises a defibulator with his powers and jolts him back to life. Then Ruby shows up with robo-guards, and orders them to fire. So much for taking them alive.
The Zephyr brings Robin home. Mom and May talk about her connection with May. Creel opens a last door for Coulson and Talbot, and but Ruby catches up. Coulson and Talbot use the teleportation device, and disappear. Creel and Ruby have an epic fight, and Creel turns to wood to save himself from her steel frisbee ring. Ruby says she is the destroyer of worlds, and mom says, “then go get them.” Coulson and Talbott materialize in the woods in front of the mountains that Robin drew.
Stinger: Four years ago, a woman opened a case, and the gravitonium inside absorbed a man. I think it is Raina, the woman who often wore a flowered dress, and Ian Quinn, the evil industrialist, who we first met way back in Season One.
Next Time: Ruby and Hale go toe to toe, and then Ruby and Daisy go toe to toe!
Final Thoughts: The SHIELD team is fracturing without Coulson to keep them together. The “we are invincible” faction of Simmons, Fitz and YoYo continues to head toward what will probably prove them wrong. Daisy gets what she wants from Robin. Creel turns out to be not so bad, after all, and his fight with Ruby was an impressively staged set piece. And Coulson and Talbot continue to be a delight whenever they are together.
Yes, that was Raina and Quinn, and it was actually a deleted scene from the first-season finale:
https://twitter.com/MarkKolpack/status/982526924235800577
They did actually credit the actors in the end titles afterward, though. So Ruth Negga and David Conrad get an unexpected bonus in their paychecks without having to do any additional work. Nice.
My problem with the Creel-Ruby fight was, why didn’t he absorb a steel door or something before the fight and stay in metal form the whole time? Why risk his life by fighting her without absorbing anything? I know they’re being stingy with the budget this season, but surely doing practically the whole season as a bottle show on a few standing sets has left them a few extra dollars in the VFX budget by now.
@107 CLB Thanks for the info that it was a deleted scene. I was thinking “Wow, they actually got Ruth Negga and David Conrad to come shoot a 30-second scene?”
Also, I agree with you about Creel – I was thinking the moment he said “I’ll hold her off” – or hell, even long before that when they were being shot at – why not absorb some steel from the walls or whatever so as to be bullet-proof? I get that DURING the fight she was on him too much for him to do that (I guess) but yeah.
I love the hints we got about Quinn being in the Gravitonium throughout the episode, though we never saw it. But when Creel said “They don’t agree on much but they both say I shouldn’t help him!” when Coulson was dying, and then later when he said “Can you hear them arguing?” – nice foreshadowing. And I didn’t see it coming at all. Also when Hale said “The only person who knows anything about Gravitonium is Ian Quinn and he’s been missing for years.” Heh.
I love that Yo-Yo used the wrong word when trying to talk Mack into letting Fitz out – she said “He thinks Hale is using gravity to make a weapon.” I don’t know if that was a misspoken line by the actress or if they wrote it that way, but Yo-Yo isn’t one to get all of the words right, especially when it comes to the science stuff so it was a nice touch either way.
“Evil League of Evil.” Heh.
@107: not only Kreel doesn’t use his power in that fight, despite being in a room full of cast iron, and being hit with it several times, but he ends up turning himself into wood when Ruby throws her chakram at him, even though in the exact same situation, Yo-Yo didn’t have time to use her powers. Finally, it appears those weapons are made of vibranium, and yet Kreel wasn’t tempted to make a fully invincible body for himself out of them?
@110 Athreeren
I think Yo Yo couldn’t do anything because Ruby threw the chakram at where she was anchored (remember, Yo Yo always has to return to the place she starts from) and timed it right for Yo Yo returning.
Speaking of Yo Yo, that stuff she and Simmons are pulling off with the ‘we are invincible because we have proof from the future’ really annoys me, especially combined with the stuff about dying breaking the loop.
Also, I don’t think Daisy will take this kind of insubordination/ mutiny too well…
Regarding Creel and his fight: Not using his powers wisely fit his personality in the comics perfectly. He has never been the sharpest knife in the drawer.
@112/Alan: It’s not about not using his powers wisely, it’s about him not using them at all. And that was clearly motivated more by budget limitations than by character issues. In the comics, and in animation, the Absorbing Man will typically change his whole body to take on the property of a material he touches and keep that property continuously, until he chooses to absorb something different. The AoS version doesn’t seem to retain absorbed traits unless he’s touching the item in question, and he rarely transforms his whole body. It’s weakening his powers for the sake of saving money on FX, and it works against the effectiveness of his action sequences.
On a side note, by turning into wood, Creel disarmed Ruby when it came to the chakran, making sure she wouldn’t get it back. If that thing is made of Veridium, he’d have had the chance to gain that flavour.
But he didn’t get the chance (yet; I am not sure if he still has it). So I am not sure if this was because of budget, as Christopher suggests. Could be both, of course.
What *is* a low budget thing is that Talbot and Coulson’s scene where they appeared in snowy woodlands was obviously in a studio setting.
Oh, and on Talbot, Re: Calamari Mata Hari and Crossfit Tinkerbell, I recently finished my rewatch, and there are more gems like that in earlier episodes, although I cannot recall any atm, I didn’t take notes.
My personal favourite would be Crossfit Tinkerbell though.
@113 I agree it was probably budgetary, I was just trying to put a better face on it! Come up with the kind of excuse that used to get you a “No-Prize” from Stan Lee! ;-)
I enjoyed the episode, particularly’s Coulson’s attitude and his team up with Absorbing Man and Talbot, but I couldn’t much buy the part with Gemma feeling invincible… it’s just bad characterization to me. I know she’s desperate to get Fitz out of there, and all that, but someone like her should be taking into account the idea of different timelines. They could die, and Deke simply comes from a timeline where they lived.
Robin ignoring her mom and calling May “mommy” was heartbreaking.
I was a bit annoyed by Creel not using his powers fully, he took out one robot easily, but then he fights the others without powers? And he only thinks to turn into some other material when Ruby’s about to kill him? Yes, you could say the gravitonium has fucked him up, and it did… but they just showed him eagerly fighting without using his powers.
Interestingly, Ruby is being treated by her mother the same way HYDRA treated her; robbing her of her “destiny”.
@111 – Fiddler: Daisy is not one to talk about mutiny.
@112 – Alan: Creel in the comics is a thug, so he will always use his powers because they’re his biggest advantage.
Do we have any proof or hint that Ruby’s weapons are made of vibranium?
@Magnus, I agree Daisy is on a moral lowground.
What I meant is that atm she is in charge, and can make calls…
About Ruby’s weapons: the source is here. I don’t think anything has been said about them in the show though.
About the timeline: I only ask of comic book physics to be consistent. If the multiverse theory doesn’t make sense to that world’s physicists (who include Hank Pym and Bruce Banner, and maybe soon Reed Richards, so we might as well consider their model of physics as an exact explanation of how the universe works down to the smallest detail), then sure, it’s only logical for Simmons to disregard it. The problem is that this episode illustrates how nonsensical the one timeline theory is. Simmons had a 75% chance of death in that experiment, but she could have done it with more beakers: how high could that probability get? It’s not as if fate was guiding her hand, just that she knows that after that random choice, she will still be alive, so we have to admit she chose the right beaker. But unless they believe that this universe is plotted (sure, it is, but that’s exactly the problem for my suspension of disbelief), the timeline is supposed to make sense without being contrived; 25% chance of survival isn’t contrived, but the experiment would also work with a 10^-500 probability, which would definitely be.
For all of Gemma’s insistence that her stunt was “science”, it wasn’t. At best it was based on a hypothesis, one that most scientists do believe but also one which will have to be false in some way if they’re to avoid the destruction of Earth. Yo-yo has already proposed one way, there may be others.
I’ll admit, I have the same problem as Talbot: my inside voice … projects. That segment rang very true to me.
I did get a chuckle at, “You die more than any man I know,” and the fact that Coulson was done with sandy beaches and palm trees. I remember him telling, was it Sitwell back in Season 1, that Tahiti sucked.
I still completely expect that the “Invincible Trio” is going to find out the hard way that they’re not.
I liked the first part of this season pretty well. I’m not liking how this second half is shaping up based off these most recent episodes. The Fitz Fakeout was as fine an episode as the show has done, but I have big problems with the way both the SHIELD and HYDRA plots are developing.
First, the problem with General Hale and the rump HYDRA. The MCU has never really grappled with the fact that SHIELD is inherently compromised and cannot be redeemed. It was infested with Nazis from the get-go. The entire system and structure of SHIELD was fascistic–that they could get so far in making a global surveillance/target elimination network without any apparent pushback from the top is proof of that. It cannot just be a matter of rooting out the ‘bad guys’ from SHIELD–the organization’s rotten from the root. Cap correctly diagnosed the problem in The Winter Soldier, but subsequent movies haven’t maintained that conviction, and obviously it is a serious problem for the show.
So Agents of SHIELD has mostly dealt with that by not dealing with it. The stakes of the show are personal, not philosophical. I mean it is interesting that Daisy (Skye) started out as a SHIELD skeptic who became its most ardent defender, but the show doesn’t really have the conviction to examine what that actually means. Last season’s arc in the Framework could have been very revealing–after all, we see how easily Melinda May and Fitz slid into their roles as HYDRA agents. But even with Fitz’s betrayal, I have a hard time believing that they are really thinking through the implications of this. The stakes are still basically interpersonal here–the show thinks the problem is not that our heroes are only a step removed from actual Nazis, but that Fitz betrayed Daisy.
And the reason I don’t think they are taking it seriously is because they re-introduced HYDRA as two-dimensional villains, and they are coding them as this–there is no doubt that team HYDRA stands in contrast to our heroes in SHIELD. Making the conflict within HYDRA be between two women is an interesting coloration, but it doesn’t change substantially that they are pretty straightforwardly villains. Even when Coulsen almost looks like he is going to work with Hale, I feel like we are meant to take this as him playing out the scenario rather than a demonstration of how close Coulsen, SHIELD agent among SHIELD agents, really is to being HYDRA himself.
This tiess into the second story thread: the ‘invincibles.’ Beyond the fact that Gemma and Yo-Yo should be smart enough to know that even if they can’t die, they can get other people killed–and that is a big problem–the betrayals stacking up inside SHIELD still feel like a major philosophical problem in the way the group handles problems. This is borderline supervillain thinking they are engaging in, and that doesn’t seem like a problem the show doesn’t seem very interested in digging into.
Maybe I will be proven wrong. Maybe we will find out that the world being destroyed was their fault, because of these decisions they are all making, and they will come to some deep realization that SHIELD is a bad idea. I’m not optimistic about that though.
@122: I think I disagree with you, but this is nevertheless a fascinating analysis of the themes of the show!
Quick Recap, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Episode 517, 13 April 2018, “The Honeymoon”:
Here’s the pre-show ABC episode synopsis: “While an agent’s life hangs in the balance, Fitz, Simmons and Yo-Yo attempt to neutralize a weapon that could play a role in Earth’s destruction.”
Synopsis: In England, Fitz, Simmons and YoYo head via quinjet to look for Hydra’s gravitonium weapon. They put on some parachutes (unconvincing low budget chutes that look like repurposed school backpacks) and jump, leaving the quinjet on autopilot. In the snowy woods, Coulson and Talbot are freezing. Talbot is dumbfounded by Coulson’s tale of time travel, and not doing well; his captivity has shaken him. In her mom’s base, Ruby goes to the teleportation device and activates it. It takes her to the same spot where Coulson and Talbot emerged, and she starts following their tracks. On the Zephyr, Daisy, Deke and May decide to look for Coulson on foot. Ruby is in hot pursuit, but just as she attacks Coulson, Daisy and May arrive. Ruby and Daisy, after some trash talking and verbal sparring, begin their battle. Deke lurks nearby with a gun, hoping to help. Daisy finally quakes Ruby into a tree, and she goes down hard. But then gunfire hits Deke. It is Hale and her robo-minions. She is not pleased with her daughter.
Deke is in critical condition, and no one can find Fitz, Simmons or YoYo. They are off at their English industrial site. YoYo uses her new arms to crush a lock, and Fitz puts his foot in his mouth trying to compliment her. Deke is doing better, and Daisy reads him the riot act. He yells back, and collapses in pain, coughing up blood. Deke may pay a price for Simmons being away, as no one has the medical skills he needs. Ruby and Hale bicker, and Mom confines her to quarters. In England, the team detects an encrypted radio signal; there are robo-minions incoming, along with The Superior.
Piper and Mack do their best to help Deke, while Coulson brings Talbot up to date regarding the fate of the world. May pulls Coulson aside to discuss his stupid decisions. She thinks he is not trying, and Daisy is not ready to lead. May doesn’t want him to accept that it is the end. She barks out that she loves him, which shuts him up. In Hale’s HQ, Strucker visits Ruby. He has found the key to using the gravitonium chamber, and encourages her to mutiny. Fitz, Simmons and YoYo find the chamber, guarded by The Superior. They set off a bomb as a distraction, and find the chamber. In Hale’s HQ, she and Ruby share a creepy mother/daughter moment. Ruby wants control over her life, and feels she is a disappointment. She calls Hale her one weakness, takes her down, and locks her up. Strucker shoots a couple of minions, and orders the survivor to program the teleportation device. Way to motivate the troops, kid!
Talbot sees Daisy and flashes back to the LMD shooting him. She apologizes, and so does he. He just wants to talk to his wife and son. She needs help figuring out her next move. In England, Fitz starts destroying components, and he and Simmons talk technobabble. He is still concerned they can’t change the timeline. YoYo tells them her future self said trying to save Coulson is what led to the Earth’s destruction. The robots arrive at the door, and YoYo finds that her new arms aren’t super-speed compatible. Piper and Mack work on Deke, and he finally stabilizes. Fitz and Simmons send YoYo to find the quinjet; they have promised not to leave each others’ sides. It looks like a Butch and Sundance moment. Her gun jams, and he is running out of ammo. YoYo finds the Superior standing in her path.
Fitz and Simmons bicker about the nature of space and time, and YoYo battles the Superior, ripping his robot chest open, and pushing him out a window. All the robo-minions go catatonic when their part-robot master goes down. But just when things are looking good, a Hydra quadcopter arrives. Back at the Lighthouse, Deke has pulled through, and is still high on painkillers, babbling about liking Daisy. Daisy comes in; they are getting a ping from Fitz’s locator. In England, Strucker and Ruby find Fitz and Simmons, ordering them to fix the smashed machine. Fitz agrees, feeling they don’t have a choice.
Stinger: Daisy visits Talbot and gives him a secure phone to call his family. His wife, under duress from a Hydra minion, reads him a coded message that triggers mental programming. Oops.
Next Time: Talbot is programmed for evil, Ruby gets into the repaired gravitonium chamber, gravity goes crazy, and things look bad.
Final Thoughts: A good, solid episode. The fight scenes were well executed. May’s profession of love to Coulson was right in character. Deke is becoming a fun part of the show, and his drugged confession of love for Daisy was pretty clever. Everything is moving toward the destruction of Earth despite our Agents’ best efforts.
Another great episode. They are really doing what they can with their low budget. They’ve built a ton of backstory on the various powers and abilities that the players have, so they can show “superhero” moves/fights without needing a ton of CGI.
The Talbot-programming was a nice twist that I didn’t see coming.
I had a terrible thought/idea when thinking about how they are going to move this show forward – the whole time-loop thing. I hope the show-runners wouldn’t do this to us, but here’s a what-if scenario:
What if future Yo-Yo didn’t mean they have to let Phil Coulson die in the present. What if she meant that they have to go to the past – right after the Battle of New York – and shut down the T.A.H.I.T.I. program (thereby essentially retconning AoS’s 5-year run out of existence)?
Think about it. No Phil Coulson, no locking-away of the gravitonium (with Charles Hall trapped inside it), none of that. No Daisy Johnson (Skye goes on being a hacktivist and never goes through Terragenesis), Agent May sits at a cubical for the rest of her SHIELD days (and probably retires after HYDRA is discovered). No Fitz and Simmons romance (they probably go their separate ways eventually if they aren’t put on a specialized unit like Coulson’s). Mack stays a mechanic. No “inhuman outbreak” via fish oil pills, so Elena never becomes Yo-Yo.
Lots of bad things happen, but the Earth doesn’t get destroyed.
And that’s how Marvel can explain the MCU MOVIES never being affected by the events of AoS, while the show(s) are shown to be affected by the movies – the events of AoS never ended up happening.
Some other agent ends up getting the Helicarrier up and running for Nick Fury to use at the end of Age of Ultron. Other SHIELD groups chase around the HYDRA stragglers.
They wouldn’t do that to us, would they?
@125 I sincerely hope you are wrong. If you are right, I wasted five years of TV watching. ;-)
@126…. Yeah, about those five years.
Worth it just for that.
I’d love to know what part of Hertfordshire that was supposed to be, because it’s really quite a lot greener and, well, less Californian than that. Although Simmons saying something about it being “nice to be back in England” in front of what looked like eucalyptus trees did make me chuckle :)
Perhaps, in the MCU, global warming has hit the UK particularly hard.
May in particular is definitely not going to like the idea that they have to let Coulson go.
I don’t understand what Fitz, Simmons and Yo-yo were trying to achieve (also, I can’t believe they haven’t tested using her arms while in superspeed. In fact, didn’t she have to use them to lock Mack inside the Lighthouse’s cell?). If time is not fixed, they’re very likely to die. And if it is fixed, then they can’t accomplish anything. In The Sarah-Connor Chronicles, because the nature of time is very inconsistent from movie to movie, the characters were playing for all options: even though most of the episodes were about preventing Skynet from being created / taking over, some were about making things easier from the resistance when they eventually fail. In AoS, Fitzsimmons could for instance try to gather some more gravitonium and design a strategy to start repairing the world once the Krees have finally left.
I’m still not sure who’s going to die. Flashbacks have shown Fitz talking about Simmons’ death, but the fixed nature of time means only he can die before Deke’s mother is born.
Since Superior bot are controlled from Ivanov’s brain, why would they collapse when the robot is destroyed? I understand that the LMD was probably the relay (but then, why does he have to give mental commands?), but why not put a relay in all the robots, so that Ivanov can control any he wants? It’s not as a safe guard for Hale, since he can already control them by verbal commands, so any safe guards Hale has against that could be generalised to direct control.
The final scene was really obvious (although I thought it would would be more like Bakshi’s undying devotion to Ward after he tortured him into submission. I believed the call was to secretly transmit information to Hale rather than being the time he would be activated). Things like that is why they really need to have a mental health specialist in the team. Preferably one who is not a Inhuman homicidal monster.
Talking of which, this episode made me finally realise how comic book science works: it’s not that a few people are extraordinarily brilliant, but rather that everything is is easier. So you could become a competent surgeon by reading “Surgery for Dummies”. So someone really should pick up the “Psychology/psychiatry/conditioning for Dummies” book really quick!
@125: That’s an interesting idea. Every major problem in the show came from Coulson’s S.H.I.E.L.D.: Captain America had mostly stopped Hydra, and Coulson’s team was doing the clean-up work. Then they led Hydra to the Kree city. Then they caused the terrigenesis crystal to fall into the sea, and transform thousands of people. Then they were the ones to bring Hive back from Maveth. I don’t remember what happened exactly with Eli Morrow, and I’m not sure Ghost Rider couldn’t have handled that on his own. Fitz created LMD’s and the Framework, and they’re really helping with the Destroyer of Worlds project. So not saving Coulson would indeed help a lot. Also, this is coherent with Robin’s powers: her visions can only affect the timeline in which she got her powers, so knowing the vision can’t help to change anything within that timeline. But preventing the timeline from happening in the first place could work.
@129/Athreeren: “Since Superior bot are controlled from Ivanov’s brain, why would they collapse when the robot is destroyed?”
Because that wasn’t a robot. It was Ivanov’s actual living head being carried around on a robot body. There was a shot where you could see the flesh and tissues of his neck grafted onto the mechanical torso.
I would say that fighting Yo-Yo was kind of a dumb risk for him to take, but Ivanov never seemed like the sharpest villain. It doesn’t quite square with what they said a few episodes ago, where it sounded like Hale had Ivanov’s head and was forcing him to do her bidding. Oh well.
I feel like Deke should have died here. Besides the rather ridiculous surgery scene, that might have been the proper wake-up call to how irrational Fitz and Simmons are being–that their risks can have consequences for people other than themselves. What are they doing, really? They are betting that they can’t change the future, and therefore they are behaving recklessly in order to… change the future? Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to fatalistically prepare for the destruction of Earth?
I am curious what they do with Deke though. It seems like there are only two options–either they are saving his death for something more ‘meaningful’, or he becomes a walking paradox when they change the future. Moreover, it feels cheap–a meaningless death in this episode would have been much more hard-hitting than a sacrifice later. The former makes more sense if they somehow save Coulsen and keep going another season, but feels like a retread of what they did with Lincoln. The latter makes more sense if he steps in to replace a deceased Coulsen in the roster.
I agree re: where are they’re going with this? There isn’t a good way out of time loops in shows but I will be so mad if they retcon the whole show with Tahiti.
I hate to hope it’s Elena who dies, but I don’t want FitzSimmons separated again. I know death is the one separation they haven’t had, or they could both die, but come on. How did Deke get to know his grandmother if Simmons died before they were all living in the lighthouse as was implied by one of Future-Robin’s memories? I guess it could be Fitz who dies, if Simmons is already pregnant, but that doesn’t make sense either. Nothing makes sense in a time loop.
On another note, maybe FitzSimmons will have a boy and Deke will be a leftover product of the “original” timeline. I feel like it would be weird if he met his baby-self.
In real time, the show flowed pretty well, but after reading everyone’s thoughts, I am realizing how foolishly some of our characters are behaving. Not to mention the lack of teamwork. There is plenty of drama in their situation without adding more by pitting team members against each other.
On the invulnerable trio and who is going to get bitten by that attitude, I have good reason to believe that will be Yo Yo.
Since I can’t back that up with convincing plot evidence (except maybe FitzSimmons getting second thoughts about the invulnerability, and she doesn’t), I won’t elaborate in case it would be considered a spoiler.
Poor Talbot. This show keeps mistreating the poor guy in every way it can.
Also, I can’t wait to see Simmons reacting on her grandson almost dying because She and Fitz decided to go rogue…
I’d put the “likely to die” candidates in this order: Coulson, Yo-Yo, Fitz, others. I’d say Daisy and Gemma are the least likely. Pure speculation on my part.
@134: My concern is that the show isn’t even going to make Fitz and Simmons feel the consequences that their actions had upon Deke. Currently they are trapped elsewhere, and it doesn’t seem likely that they are going to be returning to base soon. And the MO of the show since the second season has been relentless forward momentum; even if they reunite with the team by the end of the next episode, I suspect so much will have already happened that the edge of Deke’s near-death experience will already be blunted.
I mean they are making Deke and Daisy into a bickering odd couple, without ever really taking seriously that he sold her into slavery. My biggest gripe about the show is that it doesn’t follow through on the consequences of its characters’ actions.
Quick Recap, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Episode 518, 20 April 2018, “All Roads Lead”:
Here’s the pre-show ABC episode synopsis: “The team must find a way to stop Ruby before the prophesized chain reaction that can destroy the Earth is put into motion.”
Synopsis: Talbot, fulfilling his Hydra programming, gets a gun. Mack talks to him, and shows sympathy. At the Hydra facility, Fitz repairs the chamber, and tells Ruby he needs Jemma freed. She thinks their affection is cute. Ruby does not believe their warning the world will be destroyed. Strucker has discovered The Superior is dead. He programs their robo-minions to destroy, and has the gravitonium delivered. Fitz and Simmons work on the device but try to stall for time. Ruby threatens to start removing body parts if they don’t hurry. Meanwhile, a wounded YoYo is on the quinjet. And May confronts Coulson, but won’t let him talk about the “I love you” elephant in the room. Daisy briefs what’s left of the team on Hale’s facility. They are sending in a team, but want Coulson and Deke to stay behind. At her base, Hale confronts her minion, and finds The Superior is dead. She knows Ruby is trying to finish the chamber. And visits Creel, who is ranting about the voices in the gravitonium. Hale realizes that Quinn and Franklin’s conciousnesses are in the gravitonium.
Mack is working on some sort of cage, and he and Coulson talk to Deke about being in love with Daisy, but because of their own problems, neither of them feels qualified to give him advice. Talbot finds Robin’s drawings of the future. On the Zephyr, May and Daisy are launched in the transfer pod, blow a hole in the facility and make their entrance. Daisy quakes a bunch of minions, and then she and May use fists of fury to finish them off. They confront Hale, who surrenders, and tells them her daughter is forcing Fitz and Simmons to finish the chamber. She wants them to work together. At the same time, Ruby and Strucker are getting impatient, and torture their captives.
A robo-minion finds YoYo and she takes him out, but her arms aren’t working right. Robin and her mom find Talbot in their room. He says he wanted to look at the drawings because he misses his boy. Robin is wary. May and Daisy brief the rest of the team on what they found, and everyone bickers. Robin tells Talbot the world will be shattered soon. Talbot attacks her mom, and takes Robin with him.
The Zephyr lands with the joint Hale-and-Daisy-led team. Hale doesn’t want Ruby to be hurt, and promises to talk her down if they are too late. Ruby finds out SHIELD has arrived, but the chamber is ready. Fitz and Simmons warn the gravitonium is dangerous, but Strucker gets it into the chamber. Coulson realizes Robin is gone, and finds her mom unconscious. Mack realizes it was Talbot, and they figure out he was brainwashed. Ruby is in the chamber, and gives Strucker an icky villain kiss. She is being infused with gravitonium, and starts screaming. Hale arrives, and tells them to shut down the machine. Ruby only got 8% of the gravitonium, but can hover above the floor. She hears the voices, and accidently crushes Strucker’s skull with her new powers.
Ruby is in agony. She throws Fitz and Simmons against the wall. At the Lighthouse, Coulson and Mack try to stop Talbot. Hale tries to talk to Ruby, but she is freaking out. Daisy tries to talk to her also. The voices are trying to take over in her head. May finds YoYo, who decides to help Daisy. Talbot is considering suicide. Coulson tells him to turn the gun on him, and that gives Mack a chance to shoot Talbot with an icer gun. Ruby starts to torture Daisy with her power, but Hale gets her to stop. Hale apologizes for pushing her too hard. YoYo arrives and realizes Ruby is the one who cut her arms off. The lab is shaking apart, and Ruby’s throat is cut (by YoYo?). Ruby dies, and then there is a big flash of light. Hale is gone. YoYo says she just saved the world, so I guess it was her that cut Ruby’s throat.
Stinger: Hale appears on the alien Confederacy spaceship, and tells her alien contact she has found the gravitonium. She wants vengeance.
Next Time: The aliens arrive, and attack the Lighthouse. There is lots of shooting, and ominous music.
Final Thoughts: I’m glad they talked Talbot down, as it would break my heart to see him killed. The SHIELD team is going to have their hands full with the aliens, but I’m not sure they are the biggest threat. I still wonder what that flash of light was. Do we now have a gravitonium being of some sort freed from Ruby’s body and wandering the Earth?
More comments later. But for now I only want to say I loved May and Daisy going at it; add Bobbi and we have Charlie’s Angels 3.0…. May needed to blow off some steam for sure… Coulson is a brave man…
Anybody else think Ruby might come back? Just a sense I have.
@139 That is entirely possible. You will note that my synopsis did not use the word “dead.” In fact, my first thought was, “mostly dead.”
I was struck at how much YoYo’s act of revenge was like Coulson’s, when he killed Ward on the Maveth planet. Which begat the menace of Hive. I suspect something similar will happen here.
This show has built up a lot of sympathy for these characters over five seasons. I feel like they are working very hard in the end of this season to squander that. Barely a month ago Fitz tortured Daisy and gave her dangerous surgery against her will that he assumed she would turn down–without even bothering to talk about it first. Then Simmons and Yo-Yo betrayed Mack and Daisy again. This week Fitz and Simmons are expressing how they’d rather destroy the world than live without each other. This is a scary couple of mad scientists, but I think we’re still supposed to be rooting for them.
Oh, and Yo-Yo is a cold-blooded murderer now, yay. The comparison to Coulsen’s murder of Ward is interesting; Coulsen was essentially acting out revenge because Ward had murdered his lover. They gave him a bit of time afterward to process and acknowledge his actions, and regret them. The way they staged Yo-Yo’s murdering could have been similar; she had reason to want revenge on Ruby. They could have staged things so that there was better cause–she could have walked in when Ruby was strangling Daisy. But instead it was presented as an unforced and reasoned-out decision to murder.
This season hasn’t given me much reason to hope that they’re going to take Yo-Yo’s actions seriously. The only way I can see out of this mess is for them to fail–for everyone to realize what terrible people they have been, and send messages to their future past selves (past future selves?) on how to be better people. Even time-travel doesn’t quite undo the choices these characters have been walking into though.
@141/Colin R.: “This week Fitz and Simmons are expressing how they’d rather destroy the world than live without each other.”
I think that’s a misrepresentation. What they said was they couldn’t stand to see each other killed. Even knowing that it would prevent the destruction, they just couldn’t find the strength to sacrifice each other so soon after their wedding. From an emotional standpoint, that’s understandable. Each one was being used as a hostage for the other. If someone agrees to give in to the villains’ demands because they can’t bear to see a loved one killed, that doesn’t make them callous or amoral, it makes them human. I don’t see how it’s any different from Coulson agreeing to be taken prisoner to stop Hale from killing his friends.
As for Yo-Yo’s choice, this is hardly the first time this season that they’ve contrasted Elena’s history as a resistance fighter willing to do whatever it took to survive against Mack’s and Coulson’s more idealistic approach. It came up in the first half of the season when Elena framed Grill’s assistant Zev for her thefts and got Zev killed as a result. And that did get a followup where Mack and Elena debated the morality of her action. This is yet another followup, an escalation of that ongoing thread. So it stands to reason that they won’t just let it drop, because it’s an arc they’ve been developing all season.
I am being a little uncharitable to Fitz and Simmons, yes–but the past couple episodes have given me some cause to be uncharitable I think. Over the past few episodes they’ve made bad decisions in both moral and practical reasoning, and those poor decisions are exactly what put them in this position. That is a situation that is ripe for drama, but instead the show played up the more traditional melodrama of them not wanting to see each other hurt. It works because we care about the characters, not because it is connected to what they have been doing in the story. And this is a story about time-loops and causality–the consequences of their actions have to be the central focus in order for this to work.
I don’t think it is unfair to ask the show to be a bit more careful in its moral consideration, and in taking the consequences of its characters’ actions seriously. Partly, it should do this because it is part of the MCU; even if these characters are spies, it wants us to consider these people in the same moral universe as people like Captain America. But it should also just do it because it is good storytelling; shows as varied as Farscape and Breaking Bad were great because when characters made bad choices, those choices had weight and consequences.
(I had mostly forgotten about Yo-Yo framing the guy and getting him killed; but again, that didn’t feel like it carried much weight…)
That is a situation that is ripe for drama, but instead the show played up the more traditional melodrama of them not wanting to see each other hurt. It works because we care about the characters, not because it is connected to what they have been doing in the story. And this is a story about time-loops and causality–the consequences of their actions have to be the central focus in order for this to work.”
Colin R like . ChristopherLBennett said it’s about emotion.
Fitz and Simmons desire to stay together. Each action demonstrating that fact is their plot. In order to care why we care about them physically and verbally doing A, B, and C we need story, the emotional justification. It come down to a motivator called love. Hope, admiration, acknowledgment, delight, intimacy, passion, commitment… etc clarify what could have been an idea THE END. I’m not going to analyze the importance of love for them, but the emotion CLEARLY steers their action regardless if any of us don’t like or do like how consequences unfold. The importance behind the consequence of Fitz ignoring Daisy’s anatomy is emotional. Yes there’s also a physical one: “…but in a few hours, the town up there would’ve been affected…” He did out of necessity and we the audiences knew something drastic needed to be done to save a population of people. If he had wanted to harm her, he wouldn’t have needed “the doctor”. If this was prose we would enter his mind, understanding he saw no way out other than to split his moral compass. That’s what we visually saw. Sure it was messed up, but we don’t always have to apperacite what protagonists do. Why should their plot always satisfy us? AOS’s staff did deal with the consequence, but not in relation to the worldbuilding hat revolves around your “time-loops and causality”. Fitz and Simmons learned their relationship comes with unprecedented baggage, Fitz got locked up, and understanding if a difficult, questioniable task must be done they will do it. The MCU isn’t changing. It can’t because Netflix, Hulu, and Freeform, and Amazon, films lock ABC out. The only thing that changes is the emotional lives of our protagonist. That’s where the best consequence lies. Just because things get emotional doesn’t imply melodrama. It’s earned emotions. Just like Jimmy breaks down over Chuck. I didn’t care the physical consequence was a court session and blah, blah, blah in the long run. The emotional impact is what kept me hooked.
“I don’t think it is unfair to ask the show to be a bit more careful in its moral consideration, and in taking the consequences of its characters’ actions seriously. Partly, it should do this because it is part of the MCU; even if these characters are spies, it wants us to consider these people in the same moral universe as people like Captain America. ” No. Fitz and Simmons scale themselves in relation to themselves. Self progress. They started in one place and now are in a different place.They are obsessed with becoming the best version of them-self. That best version is a duo in love, therefore they think all conflicts facing them threaten it.
@143/Colin R.: “And this is a story about time-loops and causality–the consequences of their actions have to be the central focus in order for this to work.”
I think that, for most of the viewing audience, this is a story about feelings and relationships. That’s what brings most people back to a TV show week after week — not the complex convolutions of temporal mechanics or moral consequences, but seeing the characters they care about go on emotional journeys. We don’t care about the plots and the philosophical questions unless we care about the people going through them. And the Fitz-Simmons romance has been a fan favorite for years. Even Ruby acknowledged that with her “I ship that. I really do.” Audiences don’t want to see Fitz watch Simmons die or vice-versa because of a cold strategic calculation. They want to see love conquer all, to see Fitz and Simmons stand relentlessly by each other and find some better way to save the world at the same time.
If the show is about emotions and interpersonal melodrama, that’s fine, but the emotions and interpersonal drama also need to make dramatic sense. That’s part of what I’m talking about! I don’t want to see Fitz and Simmons die–I’m not asking that they suffer just to please me. I’m asking that she show take itself seriously enough to honor its characters, its actors, and its fans. Elizabeth Henstridge and Iain De Caestecker are probably the best actors on the show; they are capable of giving us a better and more nuanced performances than what they’re being asked to deliver these last couple of episodes.
We already know Fitz and Simmons care about each other; that’s not new. That’s why it’s not dramatic or interesting that they can be compelled to do something wrong in order to save each other; it didn’t tell us anything new or interesting about the characters, and I never really felt any tension that Ruby was going to seriously hurt them. If the focus of the drama had been on their realization that they had caused this problem, that would be new.
We had a (great) episode about Fitz making a cruel choice to do something dangerous and painful to Daisy–and while we had a short bit angst from Fitz and Simmons over this that was good, this hasn’t seemed to actually have any impact on Daisy herself. It happened; she was angry; by the time she and Fitz share a real scene again together I suspect it will have become so distant that it barely matters anymore. Maybe they don’t write write this because the kind of scenes that would make sense here aren’t really to Chloe Bennett’s strengths; I think that the show’s breakneak pace has always been intended to cover up some of these weaknesses.
A lot of my complaints then come back to the type of story that they are telling. In earlier seasons they could always handwave away logical storytelling or emotional beats because there was always another crisis on the doorstep. And this usually has worked! But now the SHIELD team is the crisis. What they do or do not do that destroys the world is the central problem. A Time Loop demands some sort of logical or moral solution from the participants–some missing information or moral choice is what breaks them out of the inevitable. This calls for tighter storytelling than they have been delivering.
@146/Colin R: “A Time Loop demands some sort of logical or moral solution from the participants–some missing information or moral choice is what breaks them out of the inevitable.”
Sure, yeah, but why would you expect it to happen this week? Surely it’s not going to happen until the finale four episodes from now.
Finally caught up, I hadn’t seen episode 17, and I watched both that and 18 this weekend. I thought Ruby was going to stab her mother when they hugged. Was I the only one who found Strucker caring that much for Ruby a bit rushed? Or a bit of a stretch that Mac and Paige can operate on Deke just with field medic training and a tablet? (I now see that yes, others feel the same way about the surgery.)
The chamber looks like a Project Rebirth one, like the one they put Steve Rogers in to make him Cap.
Of course poor Talbot was a sleeper… poor guy. I was afraid he was going to kill Robin.
@125 – Kalvin: About use of powers, well… they have Daisy use her powers a lot less than she should. It’s the same on Legends of Tomorrow, were Steel (a historian, not a fighter) fights without turning into metal 95% of the time.
@129 – Athreeren: You’re right about them not testing Yo-Yo’s arm’s and speed together.
@146 – Colin: But Fitz didn’t make that choice. He has mental health issues, a sort of split personality, caused by his experience in the Framework. He’s not in control.
@147– Of course not. But the Time Loop isn’t a single episode–it’s the lynchpin of the entire season. Everything that leads up to its resolution has to make some logical sense; the characters have to behave consistently and logically throughout in order for the payoff to work.
If the issue is a moral one, then the characters need to have a coherent moral framework; if it’s a puzzle of missing information then their logic up to that point has to make a certain amount of sense. I have been willing to let that kind of stuff slide in other scenarios, but the showrunners wrote themselves into this situation–I’m just holding them to their own story. If at the end of the arc everyone owns up to how awfully they have been behaving, I will take this all back, but the history of the show doesn’t make me optimistic.
@148 The show is um, very inconsistent in depicting what Fitz’s mental state really is. But Fitz himself seemed to be arguing against the split personality thing in that episode; the hallucination seemed to be more a way for him to process what he intended to do to Daisy, just like his delusions of Simmons in S2 were I think meant to be understood as him processing his grief, not an actual psychotic break. They never seem to be suggesting he is taking anti-psychotic medications, anyway.
@148/MaGnUs: “The chamber looks like a Project Rebirth one, like the one they put Steve Rogers in to make him Cap.”
I had the same thought.
“But Fitz didn’t make that choice. He has mental health issues, a sort of split personality, caused by his experience in the Framework. He’s not in control.”
I don’t agree, and neither would Fitz. It’s not a split personality. From his perspective, he lived an entire life in the Framework that shaped him into the ruthless Doctor. It’s who he became as a result of the experiences he had and the choices he made in that other life. And those memories and ways of thinking are as much a part of him now as his old life was. His current personality is shaped by both sets of experiences, and he usually chooses to be guided more by his original life and beliefs and renounce who he became in the Framework.
Fitz does have mental health issues, but they were caused by the anoxic brain damage he suffered at the end of season 1. That led him to have hallucinations in season 2, to imagine himself talking to Simmons when she wasn’t there. His recent stress and sleep deprivation led to renewed hallucinations of the “Doctor” persona, which functioned sort of like a dissociative disorder in that it allowed him to make ugly choices he was ashamed to make by blaming them on a separate persona. But any such dissociation was temporary.
Quick Recap, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Episode 519, 27 April 2018, “Option Two”:
Here’s the pre-show ABC episode synopsis: “The team finds themselves trapped and under siege at the Lighthouse.”
Synopsis: We move in from space, toward the Earth, where SHIELD is preparing the Zephyr for space ops, hoping to send the gravitonium into the sun and destroy it. The team has been augmented by additional agents. May has been talking to Tony Kane (Jake Busey), Mac’s friend from a few episodes ago, who can watch Robin and her mom. YoYo’s decision to kill Ruby is not going over well, and the team is coming apart at the seams. Coulson steps in and takes charge again. May talks to Daisy, and tells her Kane may have found something that might help Coulson with the whole dying thing. Deke is talking about multiverses, hoping he is proof that they are not caught in a time loop, and takes the gravitonium to the Zephyr. Talbot is muttering numbers, and wants Coulson. Talbot realizes he sent a signal on their landing beacon, giving the enemy their location. And a gigantic spaceship appears over the Lighthouse.
The team heads to the control room, the recorded General Stoner (Patrick Warburton) gives them a canned brief on surviving emergency situations, Coulson chooses the nuclear attack option that locks all doors for 15 years, and May chastises him for not listening to the entire menu of options. Then the computer system goes down, the alien commander appears on their screens, and Coulson gives him a piece of his mind. Mack and YoYo talk. He doesn’t want to hear about the time loop, and she wants to do what she can to prevent it. He says they’ve been through too much and she is messed up. But she argues they need to make the tough choices. They love each other, but it may not be enough to hold them together. Then May gives YoYo a pep talk. May admits that she sent Daisy on a mission to find a way to keep Coulson alive. YoYo thinks this is how they lose; they need to let Coulson die. Coulson realizes that the enemy can teleport. The lights start to go out, and alien troops move in. Deke hides out, as SHIELD agents start going down (the new agents may as well be wearing red shirts).
Systems are glitching all over the facility. Deke recognizes the invaders as Marauders, who cannot be stopped. Phil wants to abandon the Lighthouse. Elsewhere, Daisy meets with Kane, who makes reference to crazy things happening in NY (an Infinity War tie-in?). Kane has a serum that Agent Garrett had obtained, but it needs an additional component, and he shows Daisy a location which she recognizes. YoYo frees Talbot from his cell, but cuffs him. Fitz and another agent are on the move, and the corridor goes dark. The redshirt agent dies, and Deke saves Fitz. The override has been destroyed, they have no way out. The alien commander activates a warrior who we do not see.
Coulson, Mack and May talk about making a last stand in the control room. Simmons needs help getting stuff out of the lab. Fitz (with Deke) warns that the enemy can disrupt anything that functions on electricity. YoYo and Talbot see the Marauders. Piper and Davis are helping Simmons, when the lights flicker, and Talbot and YoYo arrive. Piper, Davis and YoYo will defend the lab from the corridor, while Simmons and Talbot will hunker down in the lab. Mack, with his shotgun axe, arrives to help Deke and Fitz. The Marauders are quick, and things are going south fast. Alone in the lab with Simmons, Talbot decides that he can fix the gravitonium chamber, and ices hers. He gets into the chamber, the gravitonium flows, and he screams. Uh oh!
Fitz lights a fire, and tells Deke not to call him Gramps. Mack gives Coulson the shotgun axe. The electronics in the control room are going out—it is last stand time. Something is pounding on all the doors, but then the noise shifts. The Marauders are in. Epic gunfight time. Meanwhile, the lab door blows off, and a wounded Marauder crawls out. SuperTalbot emerges. In the control room, everyone is back to back and running out of ammo. It is hand to hand, and Coulson is down. Then SuperTalbot arrives, lifts the Marauders into the air with his new powers, and implodes their bodies. Piper and company find Simmons, and she realizes what Talbot did. Talbot blasts open the ceiling, and lifts himself and Coulson out of the control room. The team, for once, is speechless, until the recorded General Stoner cheerfully breaks in with the good news that no radiation has been detected, and it is safe to leave the facility.
Stinger: Daisy digs up her mother’s grave, apparently where the component she needs to help Coulson is located.
Next Time: Coulson, Hale and SuperTalbot are on the alien ship, and SuperTalbot is taking no guff from anyone.
Final Thoughts: Good episode, with lots of action, and the whole “base under siege” thing going on. The tension was relieved by some lighter touches, including the Patrick Warburton bits, and some of the now-inevitable Deke jokes. I didn’t see the SuperTalbot thing coming, and that certainly adds a wild card to the proceedings, as he was a bit unhinged before he absorbed the gravitonium, and presumedly, the two warring personalities that had been contained in it. Next week should certainly be interesting!
The location of the last component is “Jiaying”. As in, anywhere Jiaying is: It’s her cells, that’s what Whitehall used to stay alive. Which begs the question: they didn’t burn Jiaying body? She managed to survive whatever Whitehall did to her! She could probably have survived what Talbot did to the marauders even: even leaving ashes might not be safe…
Talking about which, Talbot is the last person I would have expected to get into that machine. That’s definitely an interesting development. I wonder if the gravitonium has absorbed Kreel’s personality: that would be interesting for Talbot.
It was nice to see a bigger team for once. And even more so to see General Stoner! It is so absurd that two alien civilisations would be technologically matched when they meet, yet in every 80’s alien invasion movie, that same tech was enough to win, so as ridiculous as it may seem, that old tech should be just as likely to win as our modern gadgets. Or are we to believe that today’s aliens are just slightly more advanced, so they couldn’t be infected by a computer virus anymore?
So this alien invasion just happens to be a few days before Thanos arrives (or even at the same time, if Caine’s comment is indeed a tie-in)? Talk about bad timing! Then again, the timeline of the MCU has got so confused, Thanos might not come for a few years.
@152/Athreeren: I assume that the Candyman’s comment about the weirdness in New York was a reference to Infinity War, and that the plot involving the aliens cutting the Lighthouse off from the outside world was a way to isolate the storyline from the movie’s impact — quite a change from the approach in earlier seasons.
And I suspect the aliens’ timing was intentional. It sounds like they’re scavengers, traveling the universe to steal technology and resources. It makes sense that they’d capitalize on invasions, wars, etc. waged by other parties, come in under the cover of the chaos to take what they needed.
“Because the Candyman can?” I snickered at that… I love it when Daisy gets one liners in like that, “Hale Hydra?” being another. If the show does get renewed, I would love to see more of the Candyman. :)
I also love May’s reaction to Coulson hurrying up the menu, first the eyerolling, then the listening to the menu remark. Her facial expression after Coulson threatened the alien leader and asked if that was too much. May seems to be the only one being calm and rational in this episode.
What I didn’t like was Yo Yo’s justifying her killling Ruby, but that may be because I never warmed up to her that much, while I always appreciated Mack as SHIELD’s conscience…
@152 Athreeren
Which begs the question: they didn’t burn Jiaying body? She managed to survive whatever Whitehall did to her! She could probably have survived what Talbot did to the marauders even: even leaving ashes might not be safe…
Jiaying would not have survived Whitehall’s treatments without her husband, an accomplished doctor, sewing her back together again, and adding the life force of a whole village’s inhabitants. Also, if I saw that scene right, her grave was initially unmarked (with with I mean the tombstone was not on the surface. I thought I saw Daisy *covering up* the tombstone with dirt, assumedly after she got what she wanted, making me think she is the only one who knows where Jiaying is buried…
I agree with Christopher on the timing/ scavenger comment.
A good episode with plenty of twists. The lack of budget really shows though – the Marauders look an awful lot like stunt/parkour humans with masks on, for instance. I’m hoping/assuming that means they are conserving budget dollars for the season (series?) finale episodes. The finale itself is named “The End” which is ominous in several ways.
A few points on the recap:
1. They didn’t suddenly gain these new agents, they are just getting screen time in this episode. They came with Agent Davis and the Quinjet a few episodes ago.
2. You mentioned May chastising Coulson for not listening to all the options, but didn’t mention that the option he ended up skipping was “Alien Invasion.” Because of course it was. WHY AREN’T THESE IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER?
3. “The alien commander activates a warrior who we do not see.” – that sequence was poorly done, I think. I’m assuming that was done to explain how the Marauders knew how to get to the override deal, and he was sending in more (to start there were only 3, then there were dozens?)
4. Typo in the paragraph about Talbot shooting Jemma – you have “He ices hers.”
Re: the comment about “the weird stuff in New York” it has to be an Infinity War tie in. Which is interesting because really, until then we had only a vague idea of where AoS was in comparison to the MCU timeline.
Spoilers for Infinity War below:
I’m wondering if the final episodes will deal with the result of Infinity War. // Specifically, will some of our beloved Agents turn to ash and cease to exist right before our eyes? Will Thanos’ use of the Time Stone somehow break our own time loop? Will the team learn of the events at all?
@154/Fiddler: Jiaying’s name was fully legible on the grave marker, although her last name was covered with fallen leaves (I guess the producers don’t want to reveal it for some reason). Daisy wasn’t trying to cover up the marker; she was exhuming the grave, no doubt to get the healing element she needs from Jiaying’s body, and the dirt just “happened” to land on the marker because that’s what the camera was pointing at and they needed the audience to see that dirt was being dug up offscreen.
SPOILERS FOR INFINITY WAR AHEAD IN WHITE: Come to think of it, if the Infinity War is taking place while SHIELD is fighting off the alien invaders, does that mean… half of our characters will soon disappear in a puff of smoke? That would be rather awkward from a storytelling perspective.
@157/Alan: Spoilers, please. I already made the mistake of reading that particular spoiler earlier today (and it’s kind of easy to guess if one is aware of the source story), but let’s try to avoid giving anything else away, okay?
Thanks for the spoiler warning, Christopher. I changed the font color to white so people can avoid the spoilers if they so choose.
@157 AlanBrown I made that comment in my own spoiler-section. I’m thinking they’ll avoid it, but I’m curious too.
I guess we do need to discuss spoilers now… Do we wait until the conclusion of Infinity War is mentioned in the show? For Age of Ultron, there were a few episodes leading up to the first scene, and in the next episode dealt with the consequences with two lines of dialogue. If it’s the same, considering “New York” has already happened, I believe we should be able to discuss spoilers starting Friday evening.
That’s going to be a long week.
The shadow scavengers looked like rejects from a Mortal Kombat movie.
So far, I’m still not sold on how this is playing out. The bickering at the start of the latest episode didn’t really clarify any of what has happened. Did Yo-Yo murder Ruby out of revenge, or as a cold calculation about saving the world? One minute she says it was justifiable, but the next minute she’s saying it was justifiable revenge–and then calling out mother-hen Mack for not supporting her revenge? She does know Mack, right??
Why has she not mentioned what her future-self told her about Coulsen? A third motive for her murdering Ruby is brought up–that she wanted to save Coulsen from having to die. But then, the mutineers seem to think that Daisy was unduly focused on saving Coulsen, so how does that make sense? It’s okay for someone to have conflicted motives, but we should be able to understand what they are. There is a hint that Fitz and Simmons have some other objection maybe to having Daisy lead them, but it’s never really articulated.
The dilemma about Yo-Yo sucks up a lot of the oxygen, so Fitz and Simmons basically get off for their misdeeds with a little bickering (why didn’t they lock Fitz back up??) Daisy sounds kind of petulant in calling them out, but they betrayed her and Mack twice over: both as friends and as subordinates. And they just stood in their wedding, I think as Best Man and Maid of Honor!
The elements are there for this to be a lot better, if they would just be clearer about what peoples motivations are, and if those motivations were true to the characters we know. Instead people seem to be acting how the plot needs them to, one week at a time.
She did. There was a whole discussion about it with May and Coulson, though I can’t remember offhand if she mentioned her future self at that time.
Different time frames. Ever since her conversation with her future self, Yo-Yo thought there were no other options than having Coulson die so she participated in the mutiny. After the mutiny, when she got the chance, she killed Ruby (perhaps) in the hope of saving him. In her still later conversation with May and Coulson she realized that this wouldn’t work.
@149 – Colin: Those hallucinations sure indicate he’s having severe mental issues, and his judgment is impaired.
@150 – Chris: Not a split personality, but he’s not the same person he was before the Framework. This means that Fitz, at least the Fitz the others are used to, the original Fitz, is not completely in control. Both you and Colin obviously don’t agree wth me, so don’t sweat it.
OK, but if Fitz is mentally unstable why isn’t he locked up like Talbot? They can’t have it both ways here; either he isn’t responsible for his actions and he shouldn’t be on active duty, or he is in control of himself and he made terrible decisions and also shouldn’t be on active duty. Or else Coulsen is so desperate and out of control of his organization that he can’t make that kind of call, in which case they should acknowledge that’s what is happening.
Oh, I agree that they should have him locked up, but obviously they’re desperate, and Fitz is their teammate, unlike Talbot, who at best has been a grudging ally.
@164/MaGnUs: It’s not about control. Fitz is not two personalities. He’s one person who’s been transformed by subjective years in the Framework. Those experiences are part of what shapes who he is now. He chooses to try to be like the old Fitz, the non-Hydra Fitz who does things for the good of others, but the more ruthless habits of thought and action that he learned in the Framework are still there as well, even though he generally resists acting on them. The “split personality” was a temporary aberration resulting largely from his extreme sleep deprivation, which can cause hallucinations and temporary psychosis-like symptoms. The fact that he had a prior susceptibility to hallucinations due to his anoxic brain damage at the start of season 2 was a contributor too. But it would be a mistake to read that specific concatenation of factors as his typical mental state. He’s not “mentally unstable.” He became mentally unstable after going for days without sleep, but so would anyone else. And the symptoms of sleep deprivation are easily remedied by a good night’s sleep. Once Fitz was locked in a cell and no longer had his work keeping him awake, he got better.
And arguably he channeled that temporary instability in a very controlled and rational way, because he used it to achieve the thing he knew was necessary to stabilize the rift, namely removing Daisy’s implant, but couldn’t bring himself to do under normal circumstances. His sleep-deprived brain turned its temporary break from reality into an advantage, using the hallucinatory fiction of a dual self to compartmentalize the part of Fitz that could do what needed to be done from the part that was too compassionate to do it.
I agree that it’s probably not a split personality, but I do not agree that this is not a mental problem, caused by having two different lives, with two different moral compasses, in the same brain. Please stop trying to convince me, particularly after I have already acknowledged we don’t agree.
It’s a conflict between sides of his character, yes. But that doesn’t equate to a mental illness, not unless it impairs his ability to lead a normal, functional life. It’s just that he’s been changed by his lived experience over time. Like someone who had a sheltered childhood but then had to go to war and do horrible things to survive. It would change them, make them struggle to go back to being who they’d been, but that’s not a mental illness. The writers have made it pretty clear that the characters were all permanently changed by the Framework, that those experiences were emotionally real and lasting in their impact for all of them, not just Fitz. So if you think Fitz is mentally ill, you should logically think the same about Mack, Coulson, and May. They all went through the same kind of life-changing experience. Is Mack mentally ill because he grieves for a daughter who never physically existed?
1) You can be mentally ill and have a functional life.
2) Fitz is the only one of the main characters that in the Framework was raised HYDRA and worked as a Mengele for them. Not even May, who was a HYDRA agent in the Framework, likely had the same upbringing as Fitz, who got to live with his father, a man who was awful in both realities.
3) Yes, Mack, in particular had a hard awakening from Framework to reality, but different people deal differently and are affected differently by similar experiences.
4) Fitz is the only one who actually went and sicced robots at his teammates, attacked them, and performed surgery on a friend that quite vehemently said she did not want to undergo that procedure. I’d call that being mentally ill. You wouldn’t, I got it the first time.
5) You can’t drop a discussion even after you’re asked to? You’re not going to change my mind, and I’m not going to change yours. We can discuss books, shows, movies, etc, and learn from one another, but there’s no need to be needlessly antagonistic after we’ve both stated our points of view already.
@170/MaGnUs: “You can be mentally ill and have a functional life.”
I’m referring to how mental illness is usually defined in modern times. An atypical neural or behavioral condition is generally not considered an illness unless it impairs your ability to function.
“Fitz is the only one of the main characters that in the Framework was raised HYDRA and worked as a Mengele for them. Not even May, who was a HYDRA agent in the Framework, likely had the same upbringing as Fitz, who got to live with his father, a man who was awful in both realities.”
Yes, that’s my point. The reason he has more trouble living with his Framework experiences is because they were such an extreme change, not because he’s mentally ill. Inner struggle is a very different thing from illness.
” Fitz is the only one who actually went and sicced robots at his teammates, attacked them, and performed surgery on a friend that quite vehemently said she did not want to undergo that procedure. I’d call that being mentally ill. You wouldn’t, I got it the first time.”
Again, the episode made it clear that he did that under extreme sleep deprivation. Read the link I provided. Extreme sleep deprivation can cause temporary mental instability or schizophrenic behavior, but it is not an ongoing condition. He was mentally ill that week, but not since, because he finally got some sleep.
“You can’t drop a discussion even after you’re asked to?”
Not when you’re ignoring a relevant fact, i.e. Fitz’s sleep deprivation. Facts are not subordinate to opinions. Facts remain true whether you want them to be or not. It is a fact that the episode in question showed Fitz as extremely sleep-deprived. It is a fact that sleep deprivation causes temporary psychosis-like symptoms. It is a fact that Fitz has not behaved in a psychotic or schizophrenic manner since that episode. Therefore, the logical conclusion is that the writers intended his condition to be a temporary state resulting from the lack of sleep and the extreme stress he was under.
So, Infinity War gave me a thought…
FitzSimmons are expecting Deke to vanish as evidence that they’ve fixed the timeline. That may happen, but not signify what she thinks it does.
Well, it’s probably going to happen to other characters, not just that one, so…
@172 Ooh I like that. I mean, I hate that, but I like that.
Adrian Pasdar has been quoted as saying there will be things happening in the background of upcoming SHIELD episodes that reference what happened in Infinity War. So we will see…
Quick Recap, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Episode 520, 4 May 2018, “The One Who Will Save Us All”:
Here’s the pre-show ABC episode synopsis: “A newly determined Talbot takes Coulson to meet the enemy and attempts to stave off the destruction of Earth.”
First Thoughts: Only two episodes to go after this one. The next is titled “The Force of Gravity,” while the season finale is ominously titled “The End.” In previews for this episode, we see Talbot dressed in a costume just like the supervillain Graviton wears in the comics. The power to shatter the earth is now in the hands of a man whose mind has been shattered. As they say in the Star Wars movies, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Synopsis: Talbot and Coulson float up to the alien ship, and head toward the bridge to “show ET who’s boss.” In the control center, the SHIELD team predicts a major psychotic break in Talbot’s future. Mack goes to make sure all the alien threats are neutralized, and of course they aren’t, as one of the marauders takes a berserker formula. They duke it out, and when Mack gets the upper hand, May orders him to take it prisoner. Talbot thinks he has everything under control, but is free associating in a rather disconcerting manner. The alien commander says his deal is with Hydra, and starts bossing the guys around, when Talbot says the ship is his, and uses his gravity powers to squish one of the bridge crew. He tells the commander to kneel, which he wisely does. Coulson is not in his comfort zone here.
YoYo and Mack talk, and he flinches away from her touch. May interrogates the marauder, who starts ranting and dies. Simmons has his berserker formula and his body to experiment on. The alien leader tries to reassert control of the situation, but Talbot is having none of it. Coulson finds and confronts Hale. She is in a cell, feeling her life was wasted, and Ruby died for nothing. Coulson asks for her help, but when Talbot sees her, he is furious until she offers to assist him. He likes hearing he is the only one who can save the world. Talbot wants an audience with the Confederacy. In the Lighthouse control room, Deke helps Fitz bring the systems back on line. Daisy returns from her mission, and YoYo confronts her angrily. She grabs Daisy’s bag, finds human remains, and Daisy decks her.
Daisy and YoYo have a knock-down, drag-out fight, and May intervenes. She tells them to knock it off, and that the Zephyr will be ready for a space mission soon. The aliens have given Talbot a haircut, shave, and nifty alien suit with a long coat. Coulson tells him he looks pretty cool, and Talbot transports out to the Confederacy’s meeting place. The ‘Six’ are present. Talbot tells them it is time to renegotiate with “Earth’s Mightiest Hero,” AKA himself. In the Lighthouse, Deke drops in on Daisy, who tells him her mom’s remains are in her shoulder bag. Deke wants to tell her something. But she tells him that people who get close to her die, and tells him about Lincoln, who she still hasn’t gotten over. She says Coulson means more to her than anyone, and Deke says he will help save him. When Daisy asks Deke what he wanted to say, he tells her Fitz and Simmons are his grandparents. In the Confederacy meeting place, the emissaries are not impressed. They tell Talbot there are only six members of their council, and no place for him. He extrudes gravitonium tentacles, absorbs the green council member, and says, “Looks like there’s a spot for me here after all.”
Mack works on the Zephyr, and Fitz arrives with the gravitonium. They plug it in, and SHIELD’s first spaceship is ready. Fitz and Mack try to hash out their issues; Mack’s ethical boundaries have been compromised. Fitz still feels that killing Ruby was justified. Mack tells Fitz he needs fixing. Simmons works on her alien cadaver’s exploded heart, and Daisy gives her a caterpillar device, and her mom’s remains. Simmons says they will be crossing an ethical line, but Daisy convinces her saving Coulson is her top priority. A SHIELD team heads out on the Zephyr, leaving Piper and Mack in the control room. A Kree representative, Kasius senior, sucks up to Talbot (“bwardj,” if you’re still following this conversation, you called it!). An attack is coming, but the Confederacy, who promised Hydra they could protect the Earth, say they cannot stop it. The attack is Thanos, and Kasius says maybe there is a way Talbot can help stop him. Talbot tells Coulson about Thanos coming. Talbot wants them to make him invincible, and help him tap into underground deposits of gravitonium. Coulson warns him that could be disastrous, Talbot starts getting paranoid, and tells them about Kasius. Coulson knows that name, and tells Talbot Kasius can’t be trusted, but Talbot is getting tired of criticism, tells Coulson to kneel, and forces him down with his powers. Coulson wisely, but grudgingly, complies.
The Zephyr heads into space (nice special effects). They cloak to avoid detection, and head toward the alien ship. Simmons congratulates Fitz on his space flight designs. They talk about the centipede formula. On the Zephyr, the strike team is ready. It turns out Talbot has access to all the memories of people absorbed by the gravitonium. The aliens detect the Zephyr, and Talbot feels betrayed. He orders the aliens to take out the SHIELD team. But Daisy’s quake powers make short work of the aliens. It is a standoff between Daisy, May and Talbot, with Coulson floating in the air as a hostage. Hale tries to talk sense into Talbot, and he puts Coulson down. Then she tries to use his mental programing to get him to comply, but he sees through her plan, and squishes her. Daisy quakes him, but he just smiles, and knocks her out. May surrenders. Talbot tells the alien crew to treat the SHIELD team as prisoners of war. Talbot says that Coulson was always his enemy, and he only now has the clarity of mind to see it.
Stinger: In the alien meeting room Kasius plots over Daisy’s unconscious body.
Next Time: Kasius offers Daisy a chance to be his disciple. Talbot visits his son, and tells him his dad is a superhero like the Avengers. The SHIELD team wants to fight, and Daisy says she is the Destroyer of Worlds. Coulson is down, and seemingly near death.
Final Thoughts: There was a lot going on in this episode; lots of well-staged fight scenes, lots of good quips, but also a lot of menace hanging over everyone’s heads. And there was a lot of talk about ethical boundaries; between YoYo and Mack, Fitz and Mack, Daisy and Simmons, and finally Fitz and Simmons. Which, since the scriptwriters were hitting me over the head with it like a hammer, makes me think that ethical dilemmas and morality will loom large as things race toward a conclusion. I can’t see Daisy cooperating with Kasius, but maybe with Talbot being such a threat, she doesn’t see any choice. With Talbot being erratic, it appears the destruction of Earth might be likely. Maybe his kid can talk some sense into him; Talbot has always been a good family man.
Oh, damn, I wish I could afford to see Infinity War right now. Heck, I haven’t even seen Thor: Ragnarok yet.
So they managed to get Talbot into the Graviton costume by justifying it as alien finery. I guess that works. Pasdar’s certainly a better choice for Graviton than the guy who played Hall all those years ago.
The Zephyr becoming a rocket was an impressive shot. I liked the space-launch terminology, like MECO (main engine cutoff).
And I guess we can say… Hale and farewell.
If Talbot used all the gravitonium, where does the one used to fly the Zephyr come from? With all the minds in Talbot’s head, you’d hope one of them would be sane enough to guide the gestalt. Nope!
I thought they were keeping Daisy away from the Gravitonium, to avoid any chance: why didn’t they send Yo-yo instead? Right, Daisy does whatever she wants now.
I preferred the Federation in Star Trek.
I’m really uncomfortable with the team having Jiaying’s remains next to a substance that accelerates metabolism to a crazy level. Had they been in a comic book rather than on a TV show on a budget, Jiaying would have come back to life and would be even crazier than before!
They need to add some heart-shaped herb, Stark nanobots, Pym particles, Ggravitonium and inhuman blood to the centipede serum. It’s starting to look a bit weak…
@178/Athreeren: We were shown a few weeks ago that FitzSimmons siphoned off a portion of the gravitonium for use in the Zephyr‘s antigravity drive. That was before the rest of their supply was taken and used for the infuser.
And I’m hoping Jiaying does get regenerated. More Dichen Lachman is always a good thing.
This episode is Gold. I kept laughing at Talbot’s and Coulson’s dialogues in the first 20 minutes.
I said it last week, Mack is Shield’s Conscience. :) I loved his inner monologue when the alien took the Berserker drink. And of course the shotgun axe in play. I always love that.
I have seen Infinity Wars. If I were in the theatre next year for the follow up, and Adrian Pasdar showed up to kick Thanos’s purple butt, that would be perfect. I know this will not happen, but I cherish the thought… So I will stick with Captain Marvel for that ;)
@Christopher, you really need to see at least Thor: Ragnarok. That movie is even funnier than Avengers 1.
EDIT: this episode could be considered as a tribute to Talbot. He was not wrong when telling Coulson how often SHIELD played him. Adrian Pasdar certainly deserved a spotlight episode…
Thanks for the mention, though I wasn’t quite right in my prediction since it wasn’t the one Hale met with that was Kasius’ father. But still, I was close.
I’d like to say that I really like how, unlike previous movie tie ins, they aren’t just having the entire movie happen off-stage between two episodes. That the events of the movie are on-going over at least a couple episodes is a nice touch, especially given what a culmination Infinity War is for the MCU thus far. I’m expecting the season/series ending will roughly line up with the movie ending. I sure hope the show gets another season so we can see how things are after Infinity War and see how next year’s Avengers affects them as well.
@180/Fiddler: A friend has offered to loan me a copy of Ragnarok, fortunately.
Good. I’m interested to hear how you like it. :)
I think this most recent episode crystallized for me where some of my problems with this season have come from. The show is so fast-paced that some of the main characters don’t really have relationships. Their personal arcs have been compartmentalized in groups that only occasionally overlap: Fitz/Simmons; Coulson/May/Daisy; Mack/Yo-Yo. Some of the tensions in the back half of this season are relying on conflicts between characters whose relationships don’t really have enough flesh on them to work: e.g. Fitz and Daisy, or Daisy and Yo-Yo. (I’m still not sure where they are going with Deke, whose struggle to make a connection to any of these characters has been his entire arc.)
Some of that probably comes down to actor chemistry. I don’t really remember Coulson and Talbot being as chummy as they have been lately, but Clark Gregg and Adrian Pasdar sell it anyway. When Daisy and Yo-Yo fought in this most recent episode though, it was probably smart that they relied on physical violence rather than words–because I don’t think there is enough of a bond between the two women for words to work. Likewise, whatever Fitz did to Daisy seems mostly forgotten–but even though they have been on the show from the beginning, I still don’t quite understand how Daisy and Fitz relate to each other, so I don’t know what drama they could milk out of that. It’s a little curious really–Fitz has crackled with male characters like Mack, Radcliffe, and Hunter; but his non-romantic relationships with women have been pretty indistinct.
That explains why Mack is such an important character, though; with established and comprehensible relationships to Fitz, Coulson, Daisy, and Yo-Yo, he is the closest thing they have to a character who can tie all this together. When he expresses how Yo-Yo and Fitz have hurt him, I believe it; I just wish that he articulated a little more clearly how he squares his midwestern regular-guy decency with working as a spook.
The show needs to die and the last few episodes starts its death. Its got a little nutty.
This show is more fun than most airing currently, and it’d be a shame if it was cancelled without a replacement. I don’t follow spoilers, so SHIELD continually surprises me (though admittedly, I don’t put much effort into foreshadowing clues). The new direction they’re playing with Talbot is great, I’ve enjoyed the offhand comments about what’s going on with the Avengers (New York, Thanos) and Colson is always a treat. For those of us who can’t stand some of the darker stuff (walking dead, westworld), this is just an easy to watch escapist show.
ftr, I posted my thoughts on Infinity War vs AoS, with a reasoned out scenario, and checked the white out in the preview. It didn’t show up after I committed the post.
Do not blame me if spoilers do get shown. I’m not going to wait all night. ;-)
It makes me sad that Talbot has been turned into Graviton, and we lost his amazing one-liners. That “Show ET who’s boss” was gold, and I was sad when he didn’t refer to Ruby as “crossfit Tinkerbell”.
On another not, even accepting that they’re trying to save budget to give us this (possibly last) season, the crappy warpaint on some of the marauders is very cheap.
Regarding actors spotted in other genre shows, General Hale played a prosecutor in last week’s Arrow episode.
@179 – Chris: If you have access to Netflix, Lachman is in Altered Carbon.
@188/MaGnUs: Yes, I’ve seen Altered Carbon, and it certainly proves my point that more Dichen Lachman is always a good thing. I never expected I’d see that much Dichen Lachman, in more ways than one. ;)
They certainly showed a lot of her. :) Did you catch her years ago on Last Resort?
@190: I think I caught the first couple of episodes of Last Resort and lost interest. Lachman seemed wasted there.
Yeah, she wasn’t an important character. Then again, she’s become a bit more important in recent years, and that gets her bigger parts, like the one in Altered Carbon.
Ok, I’ll try again, Infinity War vs AoS.
How will this pan out (white out from here) –>once Thanos flicks his thumb?
Here is my list of people who will probaly cease to exist:
– Piper and the guy who’s been flying the Zephyr lately. They’ve been brought up slowly. The pilot guy even got lines. Possibly some other redshirt agents too.
– Graviton, and Kasius the Elder. Especially these two are heavily involved with Earth’s blown apart future.
– For drama, YoYo and Deke. Especially if Deke would go, FitzSimmons might think this is a sign they won. And all for the wrong reasons, see above. This and the minor agents should be close enough to get to 50%…
– Possibly, Robin’s mom.
– If the season doesn’t get renewed, Coulson is a candidate. If it does, he’ll live. (remember, the last episode is said to be adaptable for both situations).
Here you go, Thanos actually did save the Earth, although not in the way he thought.
end of whiting out.
-F
Quick Recap, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Episode 521, 11 May 2018, “The Force of Gravity”:
Here’s the pre-show ABC episode synopsis: “Daisy’s future as the destroyer of worlds could take a critical change.”
First Thoughts: It’s the penultimate episode of the season, and possibly the penultimate episode of the show’s entire run.
Synopsis: In the alien command center, Daisy meets Kaius Senior. He says he is her future. In the alien brig, the alien commander tells prisoners Coulson and May if they try anything, he will vaporize the Lighthouse with missiles. Talbot has agreed to help the aliens get the gravitonium they want. Meanwhile, Fitz and Simmons talk about using Centipede technology to fuse Inhuman DNA from Daisy’s mother into Coulson to prevent his death, breaking the time loop. On the Zephyr, the lights go out, one of the crewmen dies, and Deke and Davis take cover. It is Talbot, with some Confederacy warriors, heading toward a quinjet, which he needs only to breathe while he uses gravity powers to fly to Earth. Cue a nice CGI shot of the quinjet leaving the Zephyr with Earth in the background.
Mack and YoYo are in the Lighthouse command center, having seen footage of Thanos-related destruction in New York, trying to figure out how to stop Talbot. In the brig, May wants to talk about Talbot, and Coulson pours out all his regrets about what happened, saying you still have to try to save people, and activates the x-ray feature in his artificial hand. On Earth, Talbot visits Creel. Despite his transformation, he apparently still cares about the troops. He tells Creel about the gravitonium, and says he can control the voices that come with it. Kasius offers to make Daisy his disciple, but she isn’t tempted. Then he lets her know this conversation is in her head–she is unconscious, with some sort of control disc on her forehead, being dragged down a hall. Mack goes to the lab and asks Fitz and Simmons if they can reverse Talbot’s transformation. In the alien brig, the door opens and Deke shows up to rescue Coulson and May. Talbot ‘helps’ Creel by absorbing him, gaining more strength in the process (so much for caring about the troops).
Mack and YoYo see what Talbot did to Creel, and head out to stop him. Daisy and Kaius are continuing their virtual conversation, but she uses her power to destroy the control disc, re-enter the real world, and take down her captors. Fitz and Simmons talk about the possibility of having to kill Talbot, perhaps by using Centipede technology to inject the Kree Odium berserker serum into him. On the alien ship, Deke, Coulson and May stumble across Daisy, who is in full badass mode. Deke wants to escape, but the others want to finish the job. In the Lighthouse, Mack tries to figure out where Talbot will go next, and remembers his desire to be a good dad. Talbot shows up at his home and says hi to his son.
Talbot’s wife is rattled, he tells his son he is now a superhero like the Avengers, and lifts a Lego toy to show his power. He offers to take the boy flying, when his wife says they need to talk. He is distracted, the Lego toy falls and breaks, and he attacks his wife with his gravity powers, smashing her into the wall. His son is terrified. The alien commander sends minions to capture Daisy and kill the rest. Coulson and company head toward the bridge. May orders Coulson to head back to base with Daisy when the Confederacy warriors attack, he activates his SHIELD energy shield, and gives May a big kiss while bullets bounce off it. May and Deke head to the bridge while Daisy teases Coulson about the kiss. On Earth, Talbot confronts his wife, who he thinks has betrayed him. Then black SUVs show up. It is the SHIELD team, led by Mack. Talbot tosses their SUVs into the air. SHIELD opens fire, but the bullets just stop in midair until Talbot throws them back at them. On the alien ship, Deke drops in on some Confederacy warriors, who chase him right into May, who goes full ‘cavalry’ on them. May tells Deke to retarget the missiles aimed at the Lighthouse rather than deactivate them.
Talbot’s son tells dad he is not acting like a superhero, but he doesn’t listen, and flies off to gather more power. On the Zephyr, Coulson and May go to help Davis, last survivor of the crew. They take out a team of Confederacy warriors and head to Earth. May is programming the teleportation device for her ride home. The alien commander shows up, and goes toe to toe with May.
May’s fight is epic, and Deke finishes the reprogramming while avoiding being slashed to death. Back at the Lighthouse, Daisy continues to tease Coulson about making out with May. The alien commander, tired of fighting May, launches his missiles, but they aren’t heading toward the Lighthouse, they are heading back toward his ship. Deke and May teleport out just before the epic kaboom, and the alien ship is blasted out of the sky. May and Deke arrive safely, and Mack is heading back to base. Coulson collapses, and the world goes black. May comes to see him in the infirmary while sad music plays. The deterioration is accelerating, and Coulson doesn’t have long. But Fitz and Simmons only have enough Centipede solution to either save Coulson, or neutralize Talbot’s powers and save the world.
Stinger: Talbot has prisoners, Robin and her mother. He wants Robin to tell him if she saw him tear the Earth apart, pulling something out of the ground. She says yes, and he wants to know where.
Next Time: Coulson provides a voiceover about heroes while scenes of the finale play in the background. Between the scenes, words appear: “Not everyone makes it out alive.”
Final Thoughts: The show is racing toward the finish line at a ferocious pace, almost too fast for the viewer to fully process what’s happening. Even Coulson and May’s big kiss happened in the midst of a gun battle. The Confederacy threat has been eradicated, but Talbot is still on the loose. His plan involves saving the Earth by getting gravitonium for the Confederacy, but they are gone. Is he still rational enough for that to make a difference? And what will the team do with their finite supply of Centipede formula, save Coulson or neutralize the threat to the entire planet? And the show keeps teasing the threat of Thanos, which makes us wonder if the concluding events of the movie will impact SHIELD’s big finale.
That look on Daisy’s face when she came around the corner and saw Coulson and May kissing was priceless. It actually made her stop for a second before blasting the aliens shooting at them.
“Uh..”
“Not a word, Agent Johnson. That’s an order.”
“Copy that, HotLips.”
I always love to see May fight. :D
I think they will use the centipede serum on Coulson. The team should be smart enough to realize that a Graviton in Berserker mode is not a good idea and might actually cause the Earth exploding into pieces.
Besides, Graviton will be taken care of. See the whited text in my above post @193
At some point Simmons said to Fitz that they had come full circle, using the centipede serum they encountered at the start. That’s true. The same goes for the Gravitonium being in plot again at this stage.
“I also know 0, so I know six numbers”. And with 6, that’s make seven. 7 would make eight and so on. The maths was inside him all along!
You call them “Kree warriors”, but I thought they were Remora. Did I get that wrong?
@197/Sophist: Close — Remorath. But you’re right, they’re not Kree. Taryan (Kasius’s dad) is the only Kree we’ve seen in the Confederacy.
Thanks on both counts.
Ooops…I’ll fix that. I just thought they were Kree with some sort of different makeup. Confederacy warriors it is.
Well, they’re definitely charging for the finish line. I will agree with Fiddler @@@@@ 195 re: the look on Daisy’s face when she saw Coulson kissing May.
Now we understand just what the dilemma is regarding saving the world vs. letting Coulson die, and why it’s a Sophie’s Choice in the first place. And while I like the prospect of there being an easy way out (see Fiddler @@@@@ 195/193), considering the theorized likelihood that such…solutions…would be temporary, and open to reversal, I think they need to do something more permanent to get rid of the AoS problem at hand. Mind you, I don’t know what it is, and I hope we don’t lose Clark Gregg, but I’m steeling myself for the probability of such.
I loved the fight between May and the Alien Commander, and while the end was very satisfying, I was kind of hoping throughout that she’d somehow be able to kill him with the blade. I also liked Daisy sticking it to Kasius, showing that her power of will was strong enough to overpower the Kree mind thingy.
This being a Whedon show, I’m pretty sure they’ll save Coulson. And probably save the world that way too.
Very fun episode. Loved the Coulson/May moment, and the fact that he used his shield again. Also, the way they turned around the missiles on the ship and Deak’s quip was very nice. Also liked Daisy’s fine control to free herself, and May’s fight with the aliens. Talbot’s moment with his wife and kid was very, very creepy. I hope finale is good, and not the series finale.
@195 – Fiddler: That was very nice.
I guess the Agents will save the world on Friday, since the official Facebook page for the show has just announced that they will return for Season 6!
While it wasn’t mentioned in the official press releases, the renewal is reportedly for a 13 week season, which suggests the show will share a time slot, or be a mid-season replacement, a la Peggy Carter.
I’m really happy to hear it’s getting renewed. I’m looking forward to seeing how S.H.I.E.L.D. adapts to and deals with the outcome of Infinity War. With only a 13 episode season, however, I’m curious about when it’ll air and it’s timing in relation to the movies. I had hoped that it would stick around long enough to be involved in the events of next year’s Avengers as well. I guess we’ll see.
Woohooo, renewal!!!
They just announced the shortened season 6 will air during the Summer – so more than 12 months will pass before we get new episodes again.
I don’t really know what to expect for the finale, because the show has been all over the place. The fact that they are hyping so much that no one survives makes me think that no major cast members die–not even Deke. Not really. Coulson’s death has been dragged out and foreshadowed for so long that I would be mildly surprised if they actually went through with it.
The closest thing I can see to this bird landing with some dignity is if they talk Talbot down, and/or he surrenders. The talk about Mack being able to forgive people laid a seed of possibly being able to pull off reconciliation–though, there’s no one left to forgive the murders of Ruby and Hale.
#208 If they are waiting to air the next season until next summer, it will air after the next Avengers movie, which makes continuity issues much easier. Unlike previous Avengers movies, where you have time passing between movies, I suspect that the next one will pick up the action right after Infinity Wars ended. If that is the case, it would be very difficult to tell a story during the period between movies.
@210: It’s hard to tell until Captain Marvel. But it’s so clear there will be a reboot or something similar, so the movies are not going to look into the actual consequences of Infinity War. Anything Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. would do about making sense of the new world would be pointless, so it probably won’t happen. Starting the new season in summer is the best solution here (especially with a shorter season).
Heck of a finale. Alan, will you be doing a completely new post to wrap up Season 5, or will you continue to comment on this one?
Everyone, please hold your comments. A new post will appear on Monday that discusses the finale, and we will have plenty to talk about on that thread!
JUST KILL DAISY AND BE DONE WITH IT. I hate her… a lot of fans started disliking her when she got her powers and started using them to push over ppl who were simply scared in season 3… find a way to keep colson on and make him director the show should have always been revolving around him not this freaking mary sue character that seems to ruin everything. at one point it felt like the show was gonna be renamed agents of skye or agents of daisy.. its all about her and its starting to piss some ppl off.