It’s been quite a while since we got a chance to talk about AGENTS OF SHIELD, hasn’t it? Roughly 12 weeks, I believe. Now it’s finally time to find out what’s been going on over at the good ol’ SHIELD headquarters.
But before we talk about the now, we have to talk about the future. Three months into the future, apparently. It also conveniently happens to be when the season finale will be airing. It’s worth noting as well that CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR will be released very close to the Season 3 finale. Coincidence? Maybe.
But the scene itself is super short. It’s in space. There’s boiled blood, a cross on a necklace, and a SHIELD shoulder patch. Then the ship explodes. So is someone going to die? Doubtful. SHIELD doesn’t exactly have many expendable characters and those that are, are such easy choices that it would defeat the purpose of there being a mystery.
It seems appropriate that we’re immediately introduced to the woman wearing the necklace that we come to know as Yo-Yo. Her being the owner of the necklace really feels like a red herring, so I imagine that she’ll give the necklace to someone or it will get taken. My hope is that it isn’t Mac either.
Speaking of which, since when is Mac a man of faith? That’s never been part of his character until this episode. I wonder if it he was just saying all that stuff in order to get Yo-Yo on his side. I hope so, because this is a random and somewhat forced addition to his character.
Moving on to the rest of the cast, we got a look at the Secret Warriors in action… kind of. Sam and Daisy had some pretty cool action scenes alongside Yo-Yo, but it was sad to see the party broken up by the end. It felt like budgetary concerns got in the way of cool storytelling. I imagine we won’t see the whole gang back together as the Secret Warriors until the end of the season.
That said, I’ll mention really quick that the Inhuman they fought against, the medusa eyes guy, was pretty awesome. Definitely a unique kind of power that we haven’t seen before. Considering he was nabbed by Hydra at the end though, I wonder if we’ll see him again or if he’ll be fed.
In the meantime, Coulson went on the warpath to get to Malick. This included and interesting scene where they put the Baron’s son under the memory machine he was tortured with in the first season. It led to Coulson finding a blank room with a telephone and threatening Malick. So all in all, not a lot of progress. Frankly I had kind of hoped that we’d be done with that plotline, but I realize that wouldn’t make sense considering where we’d ended in the midseason.
Speaking of which, the being known as Hive (formerly Grant Ward) was busy regaining strength in a bedroom in a very Nazi looking facility. Not a whole lot of movement on that storyline either. In fact we learned almost nothing about him and what he wants. Hopefully that will pick up a bit of steam next week because I’m kind of tired of seeing Brett Dalton’s face. He’s not Ward anymore, thankfully, but it feels weird that after all this time he’s still a presence on the show.
Anyways, a lot of this episode was laying groundwork for the remainder of the season. So it’s hard to feel frustrated with lack of movement when we don’t even know where we’re going. My only hope is that the show doesn’t take the predictable route with its flash forward and that after this season we’re finally done with Hydra as a villain. We took a wonderful break in the second half of season two and I would really enjoy something more like that.
Written by Peter Freeman, TV & Animation Writer -- Click to read Peter's posts.
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