Last night’s SHIELD brought the episode we’d been anticipating, as Jamie Alexander crosses over onto the small screen to feature prominently and make all of us fanboys go “aw yeah!” Finally, right?
So:
1. Let’s Talk About How Awesome Jamie Alexander Is
Because, seriously, Jamie Alexander is awesome.
Over the weekend I rewatched Thor: The Dark World. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed that movie. It’s a pretty big film overall, and a lot of fun and epic things happen. But in the midst of it all, you have this great character with Sif that gets just horribly underutilized. Oh, sure, there are a whole bunch of characters that just have minor roles and all of them could’ve played bigger parts, but Sif in particular.
So with this episode, we actually get to see Sif doing something, and you know what? It reminded me a lot of Sif in the comics — and that’s a good thing. The latest “Journey into Mystery” run by Kathryn Immonen was a short but sweet run, but her take on Sif was really something wonderful. She was strong and fierce, but soft and thoughtful and caring. Sif was a warrior, a true warrior, and a multi-dimensional one at that.
And while the episode wasn’t perfect, I’m really glad Jamie Alexander got time to breathe more life into the character and kick a little ass while doing so. If they made a Sif spin-off film, or even a TV show about Sif traveling the Nine Realms and kicking all kinds of butt, I’d watch the heck out of it. Jamie Alexander absolutely commanded every time she walked on screen, and seeing everyone struggle to keep up with her was pretty fun.
2. About Last Week
So, last week brought up the big mystery of the GH, or as I’m taking to calling it, the Giant Humanoid. There are theories about what it is, but I think this episode pretty much firmly declares it as an alien; the idea of it being a Frost Giant is brought up, and even though dialogue between Sif and Coulson seems to imply that aliens on Earth is impossible, it’s still probably not the Frost Giants.
But if you listen to all the alien species names that Sif rattles off, she does mention both Kree and Centaurians, which are two types of aliens that will be prominently featured in Guardians of the Galaxy. So while I’d still assume it was a Kree, I think it’s perhaps fair to assume that one of these two types of aliens is the one that was inside that tube.
3. The Problem with Ward
Generally speaking, I think Agent Ward is an OK character. Decent at the very least, for certain; out of everyone on the cast, he is certainly not someone who bugs me a lot..
However — and I know this is very much the purpose of last night’s episode — but gee, that guy is dumb. Like, hella dumb. If he hadn’t been swayed by Lorelai then there would be no purpose to the episode, but honestly lets just consider the elements of the story, right? Sif shows up, literally explains how Lorelai takes possession of men, which assumedly then gets entered into the overall mission briefing, and Ward still falls for it.
There’s moments of the show that push along the plot, and there’s just making a character idiotic. This is definitely the latter.
4. Agents of B.U.F.F.Y.
Right. So, we’re all in agreement then, surely — that is the kind of show we’ve been waiting for SHIELD to be. And it’s the most Buffy-esque episode yet, particularly in its use of the Villain of the Week scenario. I mean, for everyone complaining that the book never felt like a Whedon show, well, this certainly felt like a Whedon episode.
I know getting a big star like Jamie Alexander to appear on the show every week is probably asking for a bit much, but the use of an actual Marvel villain to give the team something to do that involves them utilizing their various skills as a unit to overcome the foe is what we should be seeing every week. SHIELD should be something that expands upon what the Marvel Cinematic Universe has, and this is the first and only episode to really do so in a way that feels like it matters. Sure, they’ve tried this in the past (the Dark World tie-in, various Avengers fallout), but who knew that all it took was just bringing in a character for more than five minutes, right?
Continued belowMore, please!
And now, lets talk about that stinger.
5. What a Twist!
So. We have a traitor in our midst then, eh?
It’s an interesting little twist. It’s also perhaps an obvious one, and we had certainly discussed last week that a popular genre trope for shows like this is for a character we trust to betray both the team and us. What the final actions here result in is something we’ll have to wait and see (certainly this is an instance of a character simply just placing their loyalties with their government over their friends because that’s the mission), but it’s a pretty big breach of trust. I’d be curious to see what this will result in.
