Its hard to believe that after last weeks episode, they will be able to keep the momentum going in Agents of Shield … but they’ve succeeded admirably! While there are a few “wobbles” along the way, the mid-season finale ended with an appropriate cliffhanger and is an episode that will definitely keep me coming back to find out what happens next … not to mention the number of things that it actually did reveal – Daisy Johnson & The Inhumans plus enough death and destruction to even keep the Hulk happy!
As a really quick recap from the last episode, Ward has captured Skye and Raina and is taking them to Whitehall. Whitehall has told Agent 33 to shoot down the Bus & Mack has been killed/transformed by the underground city.
Episode Recap
OK, lets start with the Quinjets attacking the Bus shall we? May knows that despite Wards promise, HYDRA will not let them survive so as soon as Ward takes Raina and Skye off, she runs to the cockpit to get the Bus out of harms way. Diving to the cloud deck (by the way, funny scene with the twins (triplets??) here) May and Tripp manage to evade the HYDRA forces by ejecting some camouflage debris which their missiles impact with.
[note: this is one of the wobbles I mentioned earlier … why was Tripp screaming as he pressed some buttons to engage the cloak? seems a bit over the top? also, why would HYDRA not search harder for the team – lets be honest 4 smoke clouds floating in the sky, hardly amount to much debris for a plane the size of the Bus?!]
City
At the city, Tripp and Fitz/Simmons are emplacing mechanical detonators to destroy the city. Once again Howling Commando tech (big promotion in this for the upcoming Agent Carter series of course!) saves the day, as this old school tech won’t be impacted by any electromagnetic interactions that the city might be throwing off. The team is obviously somewhat concerned with whats happened to Mack and speculate that he might not be dead, but instead he might have been converted by the city – something like a zombie ant – and the city is now controlling him!
Skye
Ward has taken Skye to her dad & what can you say? While Kyle MacLachlan has only had a handful of appearances on the show, he’s easily a standout performer and one that emotes the roles to a greater degree than almost anyone else. He is as crazy as they come, but at the same time he can make you empathize with him and his pain … of course a minute later you are scared spitless when he reverts back into a homicidal maniac!
Skye and her dad talk and while he admits to being a monster, he tries to explain and justify it but while doing so, he starts to lose control and scares Skye. He explains that while he is here in the HYDRA base, he’s not actually working for HYDRA but is using them to find Skye and now that they have, he can kill Whitehall (not sure if you remember, but last weeks episode, we saw Whitehall torture and kill an immortal women – turns out this was Skye’s mother and Cal knows that Whitehall had her killed). Skye’s dad says he’s sorry and goes out to kill Whitehall.
But
…
Whitehall knows that Cal is Skye’s dad and questions Ward on why he brought her also when his mission to the Bus was to capture Raina. Realizing that Skye too can touch the Diviner, Whitehall tells Skye that he will enjoy finding out how she is able to do what she does & knocks out Skye’s dad. He also tells Ward that he will enjoy making him “comply”.
When Skye’s dad wakes up, he finds that Whitehall has implanted a transmitter on him that knocks him down but before Whitehall can continue threatening Skye, Coulson and May appear and start to attack the HYDRA forces. Skye’s dad manages to get the transmitter off his neck and kills the guard holding Ward and Skye captive, before he once again leaves to kill Whitehall. Unfortunately before he is able to get his hands on Whitehall … Coulson appears and shoots him dead!
OK – officially at the 1/2 way point now … like I said lots already happened but no where near the real earth shattering stuff still to come!
[note: is Whitehall really dead? Considering he was the “big bad” of the season, he seemed to go awful quick? Potential here for a clone or LMD or something like that?? Would be curious to see if he’s really out of the picture]
On to the 2nd 1/2
OK now that Coulson has killed the big bad, Skye’s dad has a major freak out on Coulson and starts to pound on him … hard. Meanwhile, Ward has managed to escape his bonds and frees Skye. As he’s scouting the lay of the land … Skye … shoots him!!
Bloody hell, that one actually really did take me by surprise. I wasn’t expecting that at all and sad to say … I’m glad she did it. It actually shows that she’s living up to her words and while I’m curious to see what happens in the future, this was well done.
While Ward is bleeding in the hallway, Skye rush’s to Coulson’s defense and manages to get her dad away from him. Skye’s dad says he’s sorry and leaves and tells her that she will come to him in the future after telling Skye her real name is Daisy.
[note: this is the first real confirmation that Skye is actually Daisy Johnson the Inhuman known as Quake and her father is the supervillian Mister Hyde]
Syye says she will go to find the obelisk, but it turns out that Raina has managed to carry it into the tunnels where she meets Mack, who’s obviously not dead. Telling him to take her to “the place” she heads out into the darkness. Skye quickly realizing what Raina has done, goes into the city looking for followed fairly shortly thereafter by Coulson.
When May tells Trip, Fitz and Simmons that Skye and Coulson are now in city, Tripp quickly goes back in and disarms all of the bombs he’d just finished arming and follows Skye into the chamber where she has managed to track down and confront Raina.
When Raina places the Diviner on the obelisk, it opens up and is all crystalline inside (looks a lot like Superman’s fortress of solitude to be honest!). Activating, the Diviner encases both Skye and Raina in some sort of chrysalis, but Tripp looks unharmed. Unfortunately when the crystal shards on the Diviner shatter Tripp is hit by one and is immediately turned to stone.
Tripp is dead. … I’m not sure how I feel about this to be honest. He’s not one of the main characters and I’m still not really invested in him, but he’s been around for a while and I really thought that Mack had bought it, but with the bait-and-switch they’ve pulled, it looks like Mack is going to be here for at least a little while longer. The way he died though … kind of lame to be honest … would have been better if he’d gone in the episode where they were searching for the lost city. This one, he was just following Skye around and was kind of incidental.
Skye however breaks out of her chrysalis and sees Tripp crumbling to dust in front of her. She seems … powerful. Everything is shaking and Skye looks like a hero come to Earth. Raina however … while we know she was encased, we don’t really know what has happened to her – there was a small flash of something that looked like porcupine quills but I could have been mistaken. I guess we’ll need to wait till March to find out more!
…
or will we?
Like all good cliffhangers, we can’t be left with just one … it seems that after all this time, there is another Obelisk & there’s someone new … A Man with no eyes … he seems to know all about the Obelisks though as he picks up the phone and tells someone else that there is now “another”.
Closing
It looks like instead of Agents of SHIELD being an also ran and addendum to the movies, its now taking the lead with the introduction of the Inhumans. While no-one specifically mentions them by name Marvel Comics long ago introduced the concept of the blue crystals brought to the Earth by the Kree that transformed Neanderthal man into something more by encasing them in cocoons.
This means that SHIELD is finally doing what I wanted them to do in the first place (I’ll take full credit for this by the way) & is helping to drive the Marvel Universe forward instead of just reacting to things. Not only are they now leading the way, they have also with this episode opened up the possibility of a whole host of super powered beings being introduced and hopefully appearing in future episodes of SHIELD.