Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. show runners Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen recently gave an interview to The Hollywood Reporter that leads off with a warning that people watching the show shouldn’t expect a Marvel movie every week. The warning seems a bit misguided. We’re not disappointed in the lack of superpowered characters or derring do—Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has provided that in abundance, really—it’s more that the show hasn’t demonstrated that it has a grip on how to fully explore the characters and world that it has inherited.
This week’s episode “The End of the Beginning” is a solid response to that. It’s not a Marvel movie (although one character does leave to go be in a Marvel movie) but the episode utilizes the world that the show has hurriedly built this season in nicely varied and exciting ways. The show is finally beginning to cohere.
[Warning: There are spoilers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier in the comments!]
The episode opens with everyone in full Not Fucking Around mode. S.H.I.E.L.D. is coming after Centipede and the Clairvoyant and it’s not going to stop until Bill Paxton is smirking over its smoking corpse. It begins with Paxton’s Agent Garrett and B.J. Britt’s Agent Triplett admiring Britt’s perfect cheekbones on the Clairvoyant’s trail and checking in to a S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse, only to find Mike Peterson there and further along in the process of becoming Deathlok.
The agents are no match for him until the electricity guns come out, at which point Peterson scampers out through the roof. (There’s a door, dude, geez. Were bad manners part of the whole cyborg upgrade?) The Clairvoyant can obviously tell where the agents are going, so they do three smart things. 1.) Retreat. 2.) Regroup with our beloved B-team agents and bring in experienced agents such as Coulson, Agent Victoria Hand, Agent Sitwell, and Agent Blake. 3.) Formulate a plan that will put multiple agents and multiple trails out there, in case the Clairvoyant can actually detect their plans with psychic abilities that S.H.I.E.L.D. still doesn’t actually believe in.
And they continue to do smart things throughout the episode! Oh it’s nice to be able to type that sentence.
Even though S.H.I.E.L.D. still calls bullshit on psychic abilities, they double-check their database of people who once had shown the possibility of such powers, just in case they missed anything or demonstrated bias during their previous debunking. (Again! Smart!) Coulson sets it up so that only one person is correlating data on these maybe-psychics: Skye.
But Skye can’t order S.H.I.E.L.D. agents around, so she is hastily made a legitimate agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., with a medal and everything!
Ward is so proud that he gets confused. Why are feelings? Is Skye daughter? Leaving nest! It’s not dwelled on for too long, but we’ll learn that this is a key moment for Ward, even as vacant as he seems. The gregarious Agent Garrett on the other hand immediately takes credit for Skye, pointing out that he was Ward’s commanding officer first so he’s kind of like Skye’s grandfather, you know? In any case, Ward definitely has feelings now. Maybe too many feelings. When Agent Triplett later shoehorns that the Clairvoyant is responsible for his previous partner’s death, Ward points out that their mission is to capture, not kill. But then he hesitates. Skye would be dead because of the Clairvoyant, too, if whatever happened in “T.A.H.I.T.I.” hadn’t been enough to save her.
Skye sends the senior and junior agents to different locations in duos. Hand sends Sitwell to go be in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and stays in the S.H.I.E.L.D. Hub to coordinate, Coulson teams with Garrett, Ward with Triplett, and May with a leering Agent Blake. All three teams head to the locations that Skye orders, but only May and Blake hit paydirt, even though that paydirt is a nursing home where a supposedly catatonic “psychic” by the name of Thomas Nash is housed. Nash isn’t there, the records were falsified, probably by the Clairvoyant in an effort to cover his tracks.
Deathlok IS there, though, and he’s got itty bitty rockets now! Pew pew splode go the rockets, which miss Blake and May even though Deathlok has a targeting system in his eyeball. (This is what you get when you don’t use Starktech.) I forget how May gets taken out, because it’s Blake who, even though he’s a bit of a creeper, shows us how the best S.H.I.E.L.D. agents can turn events towards their favor. He distracts Deathlok with chest shots that he knows won’t affect the cyborg, then switches his ammo with a tracer shot, tricking Deathlok (and us) into thinking it was just another bullet, even though we see the ammo switch. When Deathlok moves in for the kill, Blake makes an immediate appeal to Mike Peterson’s humanity, knowing that this is his only shot at surviving this encounter, and reminds Peterson that S.H.I.E.L.D. can help him get reunited with his son. Deathlok takes Blake out, but he doesn’t kill him. It’s possibly the only wiggle room the Clairvoyant-controlled Deathlok can exercise.
(They should have had his left eye glow red! They do it earlier in the episode but it would have been so cool in this scene.)
Blake isn’t lying, though. Simmons has been sent to The Hub to prepare for Deathlok’s capture, so that S.H.I.E.L.D. can help Peterson and hopefully reverse what Centipede has done to him. Simmons is jazzed times ten. She now has access to labs that will be able to fully analyze what the Blue Kree Juice did to Skye, even though she is under strict orders from Coulson to Keep Skye’s Blood On The Bus.
Fitz jerry-rigs an encrypted line to Simmons as the Hub so he can help her with her work there…which is when he discovers that there’s already an unknown encrypted line in use on the Bus…by May.
After Blake’s run-in with Deathlok, the agents regroup and track Deathlok to a new location, going in force this time and sending disposable tech ahead to scout the area. (Again again! Smart! Why didn’t they do that in “T.A.H.I.T.I.”?) Peterson puts up a fight, but it’s all a pretense to lead them to a specific chamber housing…the Clairvoyant.
It’s Nash, not catatonic but unable to speak or move on his own. A computer set-up allows him to monitor events around the world and communicate with Centipede agents. Nash starts going Full Hannibal (never go Full anything, excerpt Full Not Fucking Around, because that is awesome), taunting Coulson and the assembled agents about how bad they are at their jobs, and how events are progressing satisfactorily despite the agents’ efforts. Coulson and Garrett are pissed, but Coulson keeps his head together. They’re going to dismantle all the equipment and take Nash in, so shut up Nash.
Then Nash starts detailing what Centipede is going to do to Skye, and Ward Ruins Everything Again.
The Clairvoyant is shot through heart, mid-sentence, thoroughly dead.
Coulson understands, but he is NOT HAPPY with Ward for blowing the mission and it’s pretty likely that this is not only the end of Ward’s career in S.H.I.E.L.D., but probably also the end of Ward’s ability to not be mixing hooch in a prison toilet. Coulson and Ward are so busy yelling at each other about Feelings that they don’t notice that Fitz is Benny Hill-ing around the plane, trying not to get shot by May.
Skye notices, though, because goddammit if she’s an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. now then she’s gonna be the best damn agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. there ever were, and runs to tell Coulson that May is about to kill Fitz and also P.S. to stop yelling about their protective feelings towards her.
No one in this episode is ever fucking around and that includes May, who went to make another one of her clandestine “reports” through her encryption line, found it severed, and is now stalking Fitz through the plane with a gun. It gets tense because, well, these are close quarters, but mostly because Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has done such a good job building May up as a bad-ass that it wasn’t a question in my mind as to if she was going to shoot Fitz, just when.
It’s a tense chase, made all the more tense when May actually fires two headshots the second she thinks she’s cornered him. Shit.
Luckily for Fitz, Coulson is there and full of fury at her betrayal, gun pointed at May from the high ground and Skye flanking May at 90 degrees. (Smaaaart!) May slowly stands down, claiming that this isn’t what it looks like, and she can’t explain but they’ll have to trust her. Look, she’s shooting tranqs, not real bullets.
Coulson is not having it. The bullets in his gun ARE real and he will straight up end May if she doesn’t drop her weapon and surrender. Wisely, she sees reason.
Suddenly, the plane changes course and heads back towards the Hub, seemingly of its own accord. Coulson knows exactly what’s going on. Thomas Nash was a puppet, unable to speak for himself. The real voice behind the Clairvoyant is someone else. Someone able to track S.H.I.E.L.D.’s comings and goings from inside S.H.I.E.L.D. itself. Someone who has access to every file except the one Nick Fury himself kept locked away: the same file that details how Coulson was brought back to life.
Someone like Victoria Hand.
And now that Coulson and his team know, it’s time to end them.
Tidbits:
- Deathlok, your costume is the worst. Hopefully this is just the current phase of his slow transformation into the monster we know and love and read like one issue of back in the 1990s.
- This is the first of seven episodes that will run every week leading up to the finale. ABC has been promoting it under the sub-title “Uprising,” and while the title is silly, I’m looking forward to the gauntlet the team is about to go through.
- The next episode is titled “Turn, Turn, Turn,” a phrase that Garrett used to describe his relationship with Ward and subsequently Ward’s relationship with Skye. It sounds like we’ll be getting some big developments from Garrett in the next episode.
- Speaking of, I totally thought Garrett was going to turn out to be the Clairvoyant. He’s played by a big name actor in a recurring but not indefinite guest spot, and he charmed his way into Coulson and company’s trust so quickly. I mean, I wanted the Clairvoyant to be Loki in a stunner guest appearance, but logically I knew it was going to be someone more S.H.I.E.L.D.-related.
- Still, Ward would not have shot Nash unless goaded by Triplett, so Garrett may still be working an angle for the Clairvoyant/Hand.
- So, who was May reporting to? Was it Hand? Could she not tell Coulson because she didn’t yet know Hand is the Clairvoyant and thus still thought it was super extra secret? Or was she reporting to Fury himself? Except why would she need to tell Fury that “he knows”? Fury already knows that Coulson knows. Aw, it was probably Hand at the other end of the line and May was just getting played.
- Coulson’s team really fell to pieces in this episode. May was being played by Hand and almost killed Fitz. Ward was goaded into fucking up an important mission. Simmons stole Skye’s blood and has now unknowingly delivered what Hand wants directly to The Hub. Only Skye and Fitz keep it together, and Fitz only does so accidentally, considering that he discovered May while disobeying orders himself.
- I loved the contrast between the older agents and Coulson’s team. The show really underscored the gap in expertise between them without undercutting our agents’ own usefulness.
- There are also HUGE developments occuring this week in Captain America: The Winter Soldier that are definitely going to inform this storyline! We’ll have a review of that movie here for you on Friday morning.
- So is Hand indicative of The Hand from the X-Men comics? Does the show get to play with them?
- Department H! OMG please have Alpha Flight somehow show up next season.
- And Speedball. We want Speedball.
Chris Lough writes about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. here and about Cosmos here and about other things elsewhere. And on Twitter.
Don’t be so sure that Agent Hand is the Clairvoyant.
Under his/her influence possibly?
Perhaps Robert Redford is the Clairvoyant.
Perhaps the Clairvoyant is really M.O.D.O.K., working with Robert Redfordskull.
“YOU DO NOT FIT IN ZE SHOTGUN POSITION!!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqx2wFsaVO4
Ward’s actions and story are puzzling, but I think there’s more going on here yet. He says that he lost his temper, but he doesn’t act like someone who lost his temper. Killing Nash seemed very methodical. Too methodical.
I am hoping that Ward has somehow been controlled or played. More, I hope that Nash really is the clairvoyant, and that having Ward kill him was part of his plan. After all, we know that 1) Technology to rebuild people who are ‘dead’ exists, and that 2) Finding this out has been a primary concern of the Clairvoyant’s. Hand seems like a fakeout to me. She might be a traitor, but I doubt that she is the Clairvoyant. After all, the Clairvoyant has already controlled a SHIELD agent with cybernetic implants before. It would make sense that a high-level agent might be compromised.
Basically I’m hoping that Nash has staged his own death and is using what he has learned about Coulson to turn himself into MODOK.
My TiVO showed the episode title as “The End of the Beginning.” Your article calls it that, but the title at the top of the page currently does not. Either title makes a kind of sense, so I don’t know which is correct.
It’s a rather brilliant marketing strategy on Marvel’s account:
1) Tie the TV show directly to the upcoming movie.
2) Any show-watchers who planned to watch the movie “eventually” will be pushed to watch it opening weekend, so that they’re caught up for next week’s episode.
3) Total ticket sales may not be affected, but its possible Marvel has managed to nudge up its opening weekend box-office take…if only slightly.
Hand is not the Clairvoyant, because as the attack on Fury shows, the Clairvoyant is ALSO the big bad of Winter Soldier, and she’s not behind that.
Armin Zola is a bad guy in Winter Soldier. And I think he’s the Clairvoyant. And considering how well Marvel is economizing characters, since he’s a big brainy guy in a robot suit, maybe he could also be MODOK.
I think what’s more likely, in re Hand, is that there is a split in SHIELD coming in Winter Soldier from what we’ve seen, and she’s on the side against Fury.
But yeah, using the words “take out” when you have nite nite guns(ICER is a STOOPID word and I won’t use and you can’t make me) can have many different meanings.
They have finally stepped up their game, which I knew they would as the figured out how to mesh. There have been some major flubs, but they are definitely hitting the back 8 episodes in full throttle now.
The ammo switch was amazing, but right now my top candidates for the SHIELD leak are anyone who has survived the face off with Deathlok, which are Garrett, Tripp and Blake.
Did Blake use the tracking rounds to get the team where the Clairvoyant wanted them?
Did Garrett and Tripp stage the attack on the safe house to get SHIELD on the case again? Did Tripp play Ward into killing the stooge? Is Garrett just fucking with everyone?(The answer is yes, whether he’s good or bad, BTW)
These people surviving might just be the vestiges of Peterson trying to still be a hero, or it could be more nefarious.
And yes, that entire scene with May was tense as hell. I was 99% certain she’s not a traitor, but I was still very worried.
Gragh, it’s the “End of the Beginning” I even double-checked that at the start of the review, too. Corrected!
Colin, I think that’s just Brett Dalton portraying Ward too stiffly. They cut back to him four times during the Clairvoyant confrontation to show Ward’s emotional conflict building up to his killshot.
I agree that the Clairvoyant is probably still a false name. My theory right now is that Hand is probably a lieutenant for Hydra. Two more shall take her place!
And yeah, why are they after Kree Juice, I wonder? Who are they trying to bring back?
I really hope that’s not all that it is, and that if it is, that Ward is out. While it doesn’t seem like SHIELD is above assassination, that still seemed too absurdly cold-blooded to let fly. I’m still upset that Cap was tossing Loki’s henchmen off the Helicarrier and that Iron Man used a nuke–modern comic book interpretations don’t have to be bloodthirsty. Killing is for bad guys.
I checked the Wikipedia entry for Winter Soldier (I’ll still see the movie), and it’s surprising how many TV-movie tie-ins there seem to be. Certainly I would expect the movie to make people want to watch the show including back episodes, and vice versa. A very smart strategy for Whedon and Marvel.
Oh, and RIP Sitwell, we hardly knew you.
That whole “you’ve never taken a bullet” scene was too pat.
@8, Considering that Tony refers to Tasha and Clint as a “couple of master assassins” I don’t think that’ll disqualify Ward. If anything, he’ll get promoted.
We don’t really know anything about Hawkeye’s background, but the implication in the Avengers is that the Black Widow at least is an ex-assassin.
I suppose there is some conflict here, because I tended to think that Wolverine wasn’t stabbing enough ninjas in The Wolverine. But it’s sort of integral to the tragedy of Wolverine that he is the best he is at what he does, and he hates that what he does is stab metric craptons of ninjas. Also Wolverine’s not hanging out with Captain America.
ONe .. I love how Fury has been set up as a J Edgar Hoover type of leader in sheild. There is this possibility of only two people have access to those files Fury and Hill. The only obvious file anyone knows about is that Coulson is alive. Who knows what else Furry and Hill have. I would bet that Coulson’s TAHITI is one of the calmer ones, and much like Hoovers secret files, everyone wants them.
So while i agree Hand is doubtful to be the clairvoyant, But she is high enough on the ladder to take Furry’s position. So she might be making a power play to take over Sheild on her own, or at the behest of someone else.
Oh, and May was taken out because the ceiling landed on her. So she techincally walked away fro Deathlok, but I’m giving her a pass, because this whole thing with her has been one giant fake out.
This is the problem with TOO MUCH WHEDON, is you start to see this stuff. Is Gannicus going to sell out his brothers? Does the old guy eat people?
I can’t say too much, because I already saw a sneak preview of Winter Soldier at the base where I work (that is the way to see a Cap movie, by the way, surrounded by cheering troops in a theater where they play the Star Spangled Banner before the show). And as so much of what happened this week in the TV show will mesh with the movie, it is hard to discuss one without the other. So I will be back to discuss this more after the weekend. A few comments before I go:
That wasn’t a medal Skye got, that is her badge and credentials. The SHIELD badge is not gold and shield shaped, like a cop badge, it is circular and silver, like their logo.
And speaking of circular, why did Deathlok leave an almost perfectly circular hole in the roof? Did he bring a ‘portable hole’ with him from the Acme Corporation’s Wile E. Coyote collection?
I was disgusted by Ward shooting the ‘Clairvoyant’ in cold blood. I guess my values were shaped by all the ‘Hayes Code” approved movies I saw when I was young, when the heros didn’t even kill villians, instead the bad guys usually fell victim to their own dastardly schemes in the end. Ward’s actions felt a lot like the way the team gunned down the two guards in the medical storage facility to get the formula to save Skye–amoral at best. Unless the writers are trying to show how SHIELD has strayed too far from the right path, I think they really need to rethink the ‘rules of engagement’ that the folks on the show use, or I will be much less sympathetic of them in the future. At this point, I would not mind seeing Ward go full evil, and turn out to be on the wrong side. That would make more sense than a trained agent committing an act of passion, and what cannot be justified as anything but murder.
I’ll be back to talk more in a few days.
I couldn’t see how Ward would be acting like that unless he was influenced. I think Garrett did it. “Don’t go too hard on the kid.” He’s creepy watching them in almost every interaction. Then again, so is Hand.
I will note that, in the fairly recent past, Ward has had one divine artifact and one deity messing with his mind. It would not be surprising if this has had an important effect on him.
Cumulative impact of first encountering the Berserker Staff and then being used – in several senses of the word – by Lorelei and his reaction to Skye’s elevation from consultant to agent?
@15 AlanBrown….. omg…….you are right….(just saw Winter Soldier)
They will have to repost this thread and the speculation because boom. Everything and I mean Everything changes on Agents of Sheild as a result.
No use spoiling it for anyone till monday.
Ack. The massive downside to getting Marvel (films) earlier here in the UK is that we’re so behind on Marvel (TV) that we were never going to go into it with any kind of perspective. And I don’t even know how to integrate any of what I’ve seen so far with what the hell just happened in Cap2.
Except that I now want Nick Fury’s car, obviously.
The comics used to deal with stories in different books that obviously didn’t line up in publication order with captions saying e.g. “The events of this story take place before Captain America #298.” The UK broadcasts could probably use some of those right about now….
Good episode. There was action. The team wasn’t stupid and the characters advanced.
One very small quibble. It’s kind of hard to have a “hardline” in a flying plane. Kind of need a direct connection.
Re: May – I assume that the Clairvoyant’s got something on her, or on someone she cares about.
I read somewhere that Coulson’s cellist is going to be in the end run of the season, so my mind went directly to that as a possibility. Clairvoyant has the cellist, May knows, and is being forced to keep tabs on Coulson in order to keep the cellist safe. May has been shown to care a great deal for Coulson, so to me it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
Anyway, we don’t know anything, really, about May’s personal life, so there could be someone we don’t know about that she’s protecting. This could be where we finally get some background on her.
If I were Hydra, I’d want Kree juice to resurrent the Red Skull. I have not seen The Winter Soldier; I’m just saying…
Winter Soldier spoilers ahead:
After seeing the movie, anyone else think that Zola is the Clairvoyant; someone on the inside of SHIELD that has access to all their files? And just because his original servers were destroyed, anyone think Zola might still be lurking out there? And could Zola help corrupt Stark’s computer files, and help Ultron get his start?
SPOILERS FOR CAP2
@25, Yeah, I think Zola’s algorithm is the Clairvoyant, while the person contacting everyone and getting the phone calls, may be Zola’s databank.
Hydra makes sense at this point. Agent Coulson and Skye figured it out – everyone’s buttons were being pushed based on the SHIELD profiles. And if you watched, there was more than one person doing the button pushing. I would say, even, that the button-pushers’ buttons were pushed first. I don’t think any of them know that they are doing someone else’s bidding. Ward certainly didn’t know it when he shot Nash. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I would guess that Hand’s reasoning for turning around the Bus has something to do with whatever disaster just pulled a million agents into the conference room during Simmons’s call to Fitz. I think Hand believes Coulson and his team are at the root of the evil.
That said, I’ve got two favorites for willing participants in Hydra: Garrett and Sitwell. Garrett had a great dialogue with Skye. I can’t tell if he was telling her his motivation for being the bad guy, or delivering his eulogy before he goes to the movie and dies from a flaming gutshot. Sitwell, on the other hand, has spent literally years doing nothing but being the Shlemazzle, sitting in the background and having a security clearance that floats close to Coulson’s level. He’s “harmless” and nondescript, and he’s everywhere. He’d be a devastating turncoat.
I just had a dark thought in time for tonight’s episode, as we wait for what the team faces (especially with everything going on in THE WINTER SOLDIER): with all the questions of “where does Ward go from here?,” and all the things that have happened to him that will make moving on from shooting Nash so hard, is Grant Ward going to end up our Whedon-designate death as Hand’s team aims to take out the Bus and he stays behind to cover them (so completing a season-long “protecting the weak from bullies at the expense of himself” arc?)
(And a post-CA:TWS ***spoiler*** thought stemming from last week’s episode. Sitwell, you died as you lived: NOT taking two to the gut…)
Although I just read an interesting theory from a poster on a BleedingCool thread, which I’ve realized some compounding points on: in all the debate over who’s the mole/spy, why do we all forget about Simmons? She’s at the Triskelion, she brought the blood there against Coulson’s orders (after spending weeks wanting to call it in), she was uneasy about having backup from Tripplett (as if she didn’t want someone to know what she was up to?), and [color=#a9a9a9] she kept having strange calls back and forth to “Mom” earlier in the season about what they were up to — and now the non-Simmons characters are being hunted by Hand (who Simmons had to forced by Skye to work against the last time they were at the Triskelion as a team)…
(Admit it, Elizabeth Henstridge saying “Hail Hydra!” would be totes adorbes…)
It says something about the betterment of MAoS that there’re now enough balls in the air to think up crazy conspiracies about!
We’ve seen how she is with maintaining a cover story….
I think the only reason I don’t *quite* buy Simmons is because of Fitz. It’s possible, it’s just less likely. Admittedly, by now he’s got some situational blindness around her, but they are together all the time like peanut butter and chocolate. If Simmons was going to go Hydra, she’d slowly convince Fitz to go the same way. And no way is Fitz going to be a mole. The only reason Simmons would leave Fitz out is if she’s knowingly, but unwillingly, participating.
I honestly expect Garrett to be dead by the end of every episode he shows up in.
Because he’s played by Bill fricking “Game over, man!” Paxton. That’s like being a turkey in November.
Also…no love for the fact that Nash was played by Brad “Grima Wormtongue” Dourif? It almost seems like a waste to have such a well-known genre actor in a role where he couldn’t do anything but roll his eyes…
@32: I’m pretty sure it was Brad Dourif’s voice too, with some
electronic noise thrown in, which is why the idea that he was a total
patsy threw me completely: as far as I was concerned we were hearing him speak his own words! (but only because I was familiar with that
particular actor.)
Just watched the latest episode…
…well, _that_ certainly turns everything on its head. _Again_!
@34 It turned everything on its head three or four times over the course of one episode. How…Whedoneseque.