SHIELD flies to San Juan, Hydra goes to Vancouver, and oh god, everything is awful now, please, help, everyone’s going to die! It’s always sunny in the Marvel Universe.
Read on as we dig into last night’s episode, and as always spoilers do come up.
1. Finally.
After dancing around it for a full season’s worth of episodes, Agents of SHIELD has finally come out and said the three little words we’ve been waiting to hear: “I love you” “they’re called Kree.”
Look: a lot of websites are probably going to run articles now with “we told you so” headlines. It’s the nature of clickbaiting. And really, most people probably figured the Kree connection out by now on their own, whether through help from others or from their own basic knowledge of the Marvel Universe. That’s not what’s important.
What’s important is this: next week, by all likely chances, we’re going to get the birth of new Inhumans on Agents of SHIELD, and hot damn what a prospect! With the Inhumans film not out for another three years (November 2nd, 2018), the hype train is rollin’ fast on this one for next week’s midseason finale.
2. Turning it Up to 11
I’ve gotta say, I’ve been high on SHIELD this entire season but it has never been this good. After stumbling around in their first season, SHIELD is now fun and funny and frantic and action-packed and intriguing and intricate and all kinds of adjectives. There’s so much I like about the show now: I like the inter-office dynamics, I like the 13 Koenigs, I like how every unlikable character became likable, I like how Ward is basically the shark from Jaws now, I like Bobbi kicking ass, I like that Agent 33 is still wearing May’s face so now we have Evil May, I like Fitz/Simmons finally talking it out, I like that la Garita del Diablo is actually a real thing and not something the show made up — I could literally just fully recap every event of this episode and then stamp it with a “yup, I liked that!”
Which is great. Tuesday night TV has improved tenfold now that SHIELD has figured itself out as a show, and I can’t wait to see what’s next. Even if they basically just recreated their penultimate episode from last season for last night’s episode; I’m OK with that.
That said…
3. Abandon All Hope
I’ve gotta say, I’ve been high on SHIELD this entire season but it has never been this dark. Like, holy crap — I know they promised that things would dovetail downwards and spell doom for everyone, but they really meant it. Things are really dire, whether it’s from Whitehall coming down on SHIELD hard, Ward being unpredictable, the “Dante’s Inferno” reference or the multiple characters paraphrasing Han Solo’s “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Everyone knows that shit is going to go down… and then shit goes down.
Oh, and then there’s what’s up with Mac. I’m not one to tell a show how to run its story (OK, we know that’s a lie), but seriously, SHIELD, how dare you. I guess it says something that the show has managed to make me care about its secondary characters and that I actually feel quite nervous we might lose one of the cast, but hey, you don’t get into the spy game and expect not to have to shoot your new friend and mentor in the face, right, Fitz? Ugh.
Tensions are running high, my friends. I’ve capped off every section so far with this sentiment, but next week is going to be pretty intense.
4. Give Me Your Answer, Do
Last night’s episode opened with a premonition via Skye’s dream. With “Daisy Bell” playing in the background (which I’ve seen some confusion over, which boggles my mind — as if everyone’s favorite movie isn’t 2001, right?), Skye dreams of an empty SHIELD station and a baby being dropped off by Coulson and May. It’s not too hard to break through the show’s oh-so-potent symbolism and see that Skye is afraid of abandonment and dreaming of the night she became an 0-8-4, but the real question is why?
The obvious answer is probably because things are ramping up so much, and that Skye is finally going to meet her father in the next episode. Skye has been given a massive character overhaul this season, and we finally have a real opportunity to care about her; that we learned more about her father via Raina and got that really nice/sad moment of May swearing to protect her (“I’m her SO”) and then failing to do that really lets Skye grow, so kudos to Chloe Bennet on knocking this season out of the park so far.
Continued belowBut one thing that’s sort of interesting is how this episode asks a lot of questions that aren’t answered here, which makes the use of “Daisy Bell” a sharp touch; there are serious questions of what side Ward is on, what was down in that hole that Mac came in contact with, and what is Hydra going to do now that they know where the city is and how to enter it, as well as more humorous ones like how many Koenigs there are.
After a season full of mystery, it’s nice to see that the show has been able to deliver a great deal of answers while still leaving things up in the air — it gives us a slow burn and makes the wait between episodes that much more palpable.
(Honestly, after the praise this season has been getting I imagine that a lot of people who originally abandoned the show are going to binge watch to catch-up, and damn them for that.)
5. Bobbi Morse, Triple Threat
One last thing to be cognizant of before next week’s episode is that tiny moment when Mac asked Bobbi if she was bringing in Lance on “that other thing.” We now know that her and Mac are up to something together (which makes her brutal forced take down of Mac at the end of the episode a bit more palpable emotionally), but who could our beloved Mockingbird possibly be a triple agent for? Is she a bad gal, working for something like AIM or Roxxon? Or is she just a double-good gal, working for SWORD or Nick Fury or something? Or is she possibly working for someone — or something else?
All theories are welcome, though I imagine we’ll get some kind of answer next week.
Next week, on Agents of SHIELD: Attilan A-Go-Go!
