Good things don’t last forever. This week’s episode of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD starts off on a high note, with the formation of the Secret Avengers after most of the team, apart from Daisy (Chloe Bennet) and Lincoln (Luke Mitchell), were kidnapped by Giyera (Mark Dacascos) during last week’s episode Paradise Lost. But, alas, it all soons come crashing down. The episode was directed by Elodie Keene, who has also directed episodes of Glee and The Fosters, and was written by Daniel J. Doyle who has also worked on other SHIELD episodes.
This episode had its great moments and its “uhmm, what?” moments and the latter was surprisingly the rescue scene that takes up the first 10 minutes of the episode. On their way to rescue the rest of the team, Daisy and Lincoln pick up Joey (Juan Pablo Raba) and Elena AKA “Yo-Yo” (Natalia Cordova-Buckley) before conducting their assault on the secret Hydra base, putting down bad guys using their powers and ultimately walking onto the Zephyr and rescuing the team who had all holed up in a safe room. Much to my surprise however, the Inhuman Lucio (Gabriel Salvador) is killed by Joey and Lincoln kidnaps Malick (Powers Boothe), which was more of a surprise since I thought he would instantly kill him. The let down about this whole mini rescue arc is that it’s so short, the Secret Avengers are brought in for a 10 minute segment and while they do stick around for the rest of the episode, it’s more as their unique characters rather than as a team. The reason the team collapses so soon is due to Hive and his menacing powers.
During interrogation, Coulson (Clark Gregg) finds out from Malick that Hive (Brett Dalton) can “sway” Inhumans to his side by sending some of his creepy crawlies into them, and so the witch hunting begins. Coulson gathers the team minus any Inhumans and May, who suffered injuries at the end of the last episode confining her to a bed, to inform them that one of the Secret Avengers may have been turned by Hive.
Most of the episode is dedicated to finding out which Inhuman has turned and boy is it a ride. First off all the episode’s writers throw us a bone when Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) find out that Lucio’s body still has metabolic reactions happening in it due to Hive’s parasites making me think that he was going to be reanimated and that none of the Secret Avengers are actually at fault. Then we realize that Joey has gone missing (though we see him and Lincoln in a camera feed, before he goes missing again), next it’s another camera feed that Mack (Henry Simmons) is diligently using to keep an eye on the Inhumans where we see Yo-Yo teleporting from and back to a point in a room with the last teleport getting her a gun.
Tensions reach their height when a power surge kills the electricity to the base and Fitz & Simmons come across a dead Malick. Mack and May are sent to get teams to round up the Inhumans who, predictably do their best to avoid capture and subsequent incarceration. It’s here that the first doubts about Daisy’s allegiance come up as her team accuse her of wanting Mallick dead. The Secret Avengers then decide to escape the facility with Daisy leading them to a secret exit which infact leads them to a holding cell. Faith restored in Daisy once again. Also in the cell is Coulson who after ordering the rest of the team to toss the lockers of the Inhumans reveal that it was Lincoln who got turned and didn’t want to leave initially because he wanted the Kree-ball-technology they got last episode. Yo-yo tries restraining Lincoln but is blasted back by him as he also incapacitates Coulson and nearly escapes before Daisy puts him down.
While at this point everyone knows that Lincoln is infected, the rest of the Inhumans are placed on quarantine as Coulson gives Daisy a pep talk on being a leader and the fact that none of the Inhumans, even if they are all not infected, can come into contact with Hive. We see Yo-Yo and Mack, who had been flirtatious throughout the episode have their relationship devolve into nothing due to Mack not trusting her. The same is for Joey, who having killed Lucio earlier in the episode did not trust putting himself out in the field, express his desire to leave SHIELD after this incident.
However, one of the silverlinings of this episode is that we finally see Fitz and Simmons get intimate, something that’s 3 seasons too late in my opinion. The build up to is cute and funny at the same time, encapsulating the best parts of both Fitz and Simmons to give us a relationship that doesn’t feel forced or unnatural.
But things can’t just end on that note as Daisy breaks out of her cell and into Lincoln’s, asking him to escape with her and to leave SHIELD behind. As soon as she implied that I knew that it was in fact Daisy who had been turned and not Lincoln. When the latter refuses to leave SHIELD behind (something I did not expect) Daisy leaves him, steals the Kree-ball-technology, some terragen crystals and wrecks the base as she escapes. It’s a powerful scene spread between different takes as we see different members of the team reacting to the tremors running through the base. Two flashbacks are also shown with the first one showing how Hive infected Daisy during the rescue mission and the second one showing Daisy killing Malick, who foresaw his death. The departure of Powers Boothe from the show is one I regret happening; his character brought so much to the show and was so layered and complex. Furthermore seeing him actively fight against Hive is something I’d have loved to see.
Seeing Daisy betray the team opens up the show to more possibilities but also it seems like a rehash of season one, where Grant Ward was the one who betrayed the team.
The after credits scene shows Hive and Giyera liquidating most of Malick’s wealth and begin their search for Daisy.
