A Hen in the Wolf House: A Deadly Wedding and a HYDRA Mole Hunt

The last two episodes of SHIELD have slid a little bit from the opening pair, a little too formulaic, a little heavy in the foreshadowing, and trying a little too hard. So the question going into A Hen in the Wolf House was whether this one would buck the downward trend or give the season the boost back up to how the first two worked. There’s been news that another classic Marvel character is joining the team, which had my hopes up. Still, the continuing bad punmanship in the episode titles has me wondering, because “a hen in the wolf house” is about as subtle as a brick, and you don’t need to be a genius to work out which of our agents is the hen.

It’s Simmons, obviously. Ever since she turned up working in a HYDRA lab back in Making Friends and Influencing People I’ve been waiting for the moment her cover blows, and this is the episode where the walls really start closing in. She’s doing dead drops for Coulson, smiling politely at Whitehall and working next to a lab partner who gets a bit too excited about the idea of killing millions of people, and you can see on her face that every day in there costs her something. Which is a lot to carry for a character who spent most of season one being the nice, slightly nervous one in the lab coat.

The other thread that’s been building is Coulson and the carvings. He’s been etching strange symbols into things since he came back, and after the stolen painting business last week it’s clear the same alien writing is turning up everywhere he looks, and he still hasn’t told the team what’s going on with him. I like that the show is letting that sit and fester rather than explaining it straight away, though it does mean there’s a lot of Coulson being cagey with people who deserve better from him. And it’s Skye who’s about to run out of patience with that.

A wedding and a very bad week for Raina

A Hen in the Wolf House starts off strong with a wedding reception that goes horribly, horribly wrong. I’ve been to very few that ended this badly, honest. Ironically it goes disappointingly for HYDRA as well, as their reverse-engineering of what the Obelisk does only killed eight of the guests. Only eight! So disappointing, Whitehall will likely have to call a meeting. Back at SHIELD the dead turn out to be a naval anti-HYDRA team, and Skye notices that Coulson has been etching something suspicious on his desk, the same kind of symbols that were hidden in the painting in Face My Enemy, and starts to question him, but he shuts her down, and May warns him that keeping her in the dark won’t end well.

To be fair, Skye isn’t the whiny kid he hired on a whim anymore, is she? And yes, that’s a very, very good thing for us watching the show. But still, as has been said, death follows her around. Then we shift to Skye’s dad, who’s doing back alley surgery on a thug for a pal of his when Raina turns up and pleads to borrow the Obelisk back to save herself from Whitehall. He freaks out over the fact that she still hasn’t made good on her promise to bring him Skye, almost strangles her, refuses to hand the Obelisk over and sends her back to Whitehall to beg for mercy. It’s a powerful, if brutal, scene to watch, and he’s a long way from the usual Marvel scientist, since he seems to genuinely enjoy the mayhem he causes.

Back at HYDRA we’re treated to a reference to Bessie the Hellcow (a potential ex-wife of Hunter’s? she’d literally qualify as a demonic hellbeast), before Simmons and her lab partner are called up to a meeting with Whitehall, who talks glowingly about his plans for the Obelisk. He asks Simmons for her thoughts on the problem and is pleased with what she tells him, and her creepy lab partner is gleefully happy at the idea that they could kill millions. Yeah, I think Simmons might be thinking about putting in her two weeks notice. And Raina, now highly motivated to save her skin, spots Simmons making a dead drop for SHIELD and arranges an appointment with Coulson, which is about the worst news Simmons could get.

The mole hunt and a two minute countdown

Conversations between Hunter and Skye are the best. We get one this time that takes in the painting, aliens, Coulson, Hunter’s ex (again) and a suggestion to keep digging, and that leads to another session with Ward, funnily enough. She doesn’t believe Raina knows how to find her father, but he does disturb her when she realises Coulson might be going the way of Garrett. So Skye confronts Coulson, and Coulson comes clean, including admitting he’s been monitoring her and that the idea she might be an alien seemed worth checking, to which Skye replies “Well, epic fail!” which made me laugh out loud.

Mirroring all this, a certain Bobbi Morse turns up with Bakshi as part of a HYDRA mole-hunting unit, and she ratchets the tension right up by singling out Simmons. Simmons manages to frame her creepy lab partner instead, and we feel no sympathy for him at all. Nope, none at all. Meanwhile Coulson meets Raina for dinner, with Skye, Hunter and May hiding in the restaurant kitchen listening in, and he doesn’t bend in the slightest when Raina threatens to give Simmons up to HYDRA.

The two minute countdown is effectively suspenseful, especially when May has to physically hold Skye back after Raina mentions her dad. Raina literally begs Coulson to stop the countdown and he stands firm, while back at HYDRA Bobbi keeps terrorising Simmons and really seems to be enjoying herself. Then Raina’s evidence goes up on every HYDRA monitor and Simmons is running for her life with Bakshi and a handful of armed guards behind her. Okay, stop for a moment and think about this, because Coulson just gambled one of his own people on the idea that Raina would blink first. Right, back to the recap.

Enter Mockingbird

Simmons is about to be captured when she’s saved by Bobbi, who by coincidence (okay, not really) is also a SHIELD mole inside HYDRA, and we get a perfect demo of why she’s a relatively big name Marvel hero, Mockingbird, with the batons out and HYDRA guards on the floor. She gets Simmons up to the roof and the two of them escape with the help of Trip and SHIELD’s cloaked Quinjet. Bobbi has also handily grabbed Simmons’s hard drive after their bathroom conversation, so this is a solid win for SHIELD. It’s the first proper look at her in a fight and it’s exactly the kind of comic accurate moment I was hoping for when the casting news broke.

Skye’s dad and a map on the wall

Back at the restaurant a now very worried Raina begs for Coulson’s protection, but he tags her with a tracking device instead and demands she tells him where to find Skye’s dad and leads him to Whitehall. Then Coulson and May realise Skye has disappeared. Where is she? Already at her dad’s abandoned hideout, where she finds, with Coulson and the others close behind, the bodies of the two men her father viciously murdered. And watching on a hidden camera, her dad, who clearly doesn’t mind the killing one bit, realises to his own horror that the daughter he’s spent decades trying to get back to now knows he’s a monster.

Skye promises Coulson she’ll do whatever it takes to stop him, as long as Coulson stops hiding things from her, and he finally shows her the carving on his wall. He doesn’t have any idea what it is, and Skye tells him she thinks it’s a map, which is the sort of little cliffhanger I’m happy to be left with. Back at the Playground Simmons gushes over Bobbi, and then Coulson announces that she’s joining the team. Simmons goes to see Fitz, and it’s a strained, awkward reunion, he’s still plenty angry at her for leaving him and she looks guilty enough to know she deserves it.

Mack is pleased that Bobbi has joined the team, and Hunter is a lot less pleased. Why? Remember that she-devil ex-wife he’s been going on about? Yeah, he used to be married to Mockingbird. And worse, she admits she was the one who told Coulson he was worth vouching for, which is a lovely way to land the joke after weeks of Hunter moaning about her. Lastly Skye’s dad shows up at Whitehall’s office, murders a couple of guards and then agrees to ally himself with the HYDRA leader, even offering to teach him how to survive the Obelisk, which he says is called the Diviner in its creators’ native tongue. Why? All to help them kill Coulson (oh, and) “everyone else”.

Back to premiere form

This episode is back to the season premiere form. For the first time in a couple of episodes the action and music weren’t at odds with each other, the situations didn’t feel forced and the suspense was palpable, and the restaurant countdown alone had more tension in it than the last two weeks put together. The tone flowed effortlessly too, with great transitions from comedy to drama to action and back again, so you get Hunter’s ex-wife jokes and Skye’s dad strangling Raina in the same hour and neither feels out of place. Plus, as Mockingbird, Adrianne Palicki was perfect, and her chemistry with the gang already feels natural. Awesome.

So, Bobbi turning out to be SHIELD all along, and Hunter’s ex-wife on top of that, did you see either of those coming, or did the news about Mockingbird joining give it away for you? Tell me in the comments.