Agents of SHIELD- Season Finale

May grabs the Berserker staff and get herself, Coulson, Tripp and Skye away from Centipede soldiers. Elsewhere, Garrett is in good health, but Ian Quinn is not amused that they have no more “miracle drug”

FitzSimmons are at the bottom of the ocean. “I broke my arm in the same 2 places I did in second grade.” Simmons has been out cold. Fitz has done the math, no one is looking for them, they’re sinking and low on supplies. There is no way out. …According to Fitz, but there is a way out, it involves glass and ethanol and a defibrillator. Gemma figures it out. The Fitz tries to give her the only remaining air and confesses his love to her. She drags him to the water’s surface where they are saved by Nick Fury! (Turns out the antenna that Fitz had rigged alerted Fury who was looking for Coulson. So while Fitz was being irrational and pessimistic and assuming that he was the only one who could save them, Gemma did have an idea of her own and someone was looking for them. The exchange goes, Gemma: “They told us you were dead.” Fury: “Good I want that to get around.”

Skye and May break in to Cybertek some they can lead Coulson to Garrett, find Mike Peterson’s son and lure Ward out. They do of course and the ensuing fight scenes are amazing. Melinda chased Ward around with a table saw and a nail gun, they tossed each other through plaster walls. She wins.

Skye finds Mike’s son and hacks into Deathlok’s eyeball direction giver thingy (I don’t know what to call it). And Deathlok turns on Garrett knowing that his son is now safe. Garrett who had just been showing off his new strength while fighting Coulson and Fury (which was a wealth of badassery and wonderfully delivered Sam Jackson lines, “Don’t call me sir, I’m dressed like I live under a bridge.”) gets easily handled by Deathlok. (Sort of, Garrett’s down then gets back up- who left him near the tech?! when Coulson comes around the corner with a blaster. It was freaking hilarious)

Then they all tell Ward off. Then they reconnect with Simmons, Fitz is in critical condition and he “might never be the same”. Fury asks Phil to rebuild SHIELD, right after Phil confronts him about TAHITI, “This was in case of emergency break glass sort of thing” “Yeah, like the death of an Avenger.” “That was the death of an Avenger.” And Phil’s face lights up. It’s cute. Patton Oswald comes back (though as Billy Koeing instead of Eric)

Deathlok becomes a hero on the redemption train. 

And then Raina goes to see Skye’s… father, I’m assuming, could be mother. Something with blood dripping from it’s hand.

I like Raina, she went from random woman with a gimmicky wardrobe to a true believer with an insatiable curiosity about evolution… she thinks Skye is the next step. And next season the team (now with Tripplett) is set to seek out and batter Hydra. Cool. Ward could still bust out and be a villain, I don’t think anyone will actually forgive him. I hope. They’d better not.

So everything rounds itself out but we’re still ready to roll for more, Season 2: this fall!

With Ward out and Fitz possibly disabled, Coulsons team is now 1 white woman, 1 woman, 1 mixed race woman and 1 black man. And possibly a differently abled Fitz. Never mind regularly appearing side characters who are PoC and decidedly not evil. Well that’s inclusive. Hearts and flowers for Marvel. 

The finale certainly lived up to anything I could have expected. High hopes for next season.

Agents of SHIELD -Episode 21

We’re treated to a flash back 15 years in the past of when Ward met Garret. Ward was in juvie after busting out of military school to burn down his father’s house. They’re playing up this traumatic childhood angle. They kind of already jumped the shark with that with Skye’s background.

The remaining Agents of SHIELD… well, Agents of Nothing, are regrouping. Skye reveals that she implanted tracking software into the hard drive that Ward took from her (which also has the info on the alien DNA that Garrett desperately wants). But there’s another step. A flash drive to activate it needs to be inserted into one of their computers. 

Coulson shows how it’s all connected

Triplett shows up with some antique gadgets. Spy gear borrowed from his Grandpa. The rest geek out, Fitz lights the drapes on fire and May worries about their capability to function as a team. Fitz is wondering what drove Ward to betray them, he hypothesizes that Ward has a killswitch in his eye, or something. Skye says that “he’s evil” that’s it. Which seems odd. She began as a double agent after all, she knows life is more complicated. People have all sorts of reasons. Even if they aren’t good ones.

15 years ago: “Speak up son, I’m not a mind reader” Garrett left Ward in the woods to forage for himself. So this is going to be a “he taught me how to be a man” story.

Coulson and May working together undercover is awesome. They get in to Cybertech and they find that Garrett was the first Deathlok. They throw the whole filing cabinet out a window and they escape. And then have pizza.

Garrett collapses. His organs are failing around the biomechanics. 

Coulson tells Skye that she did the right thing not letting Deathlok kill Ward. Skye still thinks that May has “no feelings” but she opens up that she’s furious, she’s just saving it to take Ward down.

But Fitz still thinks Ward is the victim, and is looking for a reason why. It makes sense for his character. Young, naive, few close friends, good natured: he doesn’t understand why ANYONE would choose to be dishonest when they have a great job and great friends. But seriously… Ward was such an asshole to him. You all hate Ward now, but I’ve hated Ward since he threw Fitz’s sandwich. Since he rubbed it in Fitz’s face that he saved Gemma when Fitz couldn’t. Showoff. Weak and self aggrandizing.

15 years ago: Garrett goes back to the mountains 6 months later with tacos and finds a more capable Ward. Then he shoots all Ward’s stuff. Dude’s a dick.

Gemma and Fitz find Garrett and Ward, Coulson tells them DNE. Gemma wants to throw down. Ward finds them.

10 Years Ago: Garrett and Ward are still in the damn woods. Garrett tells Ward about how SHIELD wasn’t loyal to him when he was blown up by an IED in Sarajevo. How Garrett became HYDRA.

On the plane Fitz pulls out the “buzzer” and electrifies the plane. Garrett collapses. “Ward. Let him die.” Dying Garrett orders Ward to kill Fitz and Gemma, and then we flash to the “final test” of younger Ward in the woods being told to shoot Buddy, the dog who has lived with him in the woods for 5 years. Garrett leads him to believe that compassion is a weakness (the opposite of what Coulson related to Skye earlier “Compassion is harder”). It shows Fitz and Gemma in between Ward not being able to shoot the dog. He shoots into the air and the dog takes off.  But then we see the dog through a scope and it’s implied that Garrett shot Buddy anyway.

“It’s not a weakness, is it.” 

Gemma and Fitz are thrown into the ocean. Coulson, May, Trip and Skye are surrounded by centipede supersoldiers and Ian Quinn pedals his tech to the US gov. Garrett gets juiced up by Flowers and he’ll live to see the finale (Samuel L Jackson will be there)

Somewhere in there Deathlok reminded us that he’s still good dad Mike Peterson under the shiny weaponry, Raina (Flowers) reveals she’s involved out of curiosity. That she can’t resist “special people” (can’t say mutants) and that she feels connected to Skye. She also found out that Skye’s parents were “Monsters” (can’t say mutants)

Agents of SHIELD- episode 18

Brett Dalton goes to see the Girl In The Flower Dress in prison (and brings her a flower dress, from the Clairvoyant) she didn’t know he was a double agent. Garrett is officially the Clairvoyant, but he is not clairvoyant. A con artist, but an artist all the same. Ward looks more handsome beat to shit. Raina AKA Flowers is not amused to find that she’s been mislead. 

Our (former?) SHIELD team still thinks that Fury is dead. Skye sets to work scrubbing their identities while Fitz and Triplett fix the bus. Triplett says that Garrett had him fooled, but Coulson doesn’t trust him. Simmons whose life he saved goes to bat for him and says he’s on the level. Coulson is leery, but lets him aboard the plane with Gemma in charge of him. Fitz is so sad to see Gemma stick up for Trip who easily shows him up at everything from fixing the plane to classic lit. I have no tears for Fitz. I am so glad that brainy chick Simmons is getting a love triangle I give no fucks.

Skye calls Ward to see what’s taking him but she thinks that nothing is amiss while Garrett has Raina trying to crack the hard drive and Ward just got done explaining how he was able to fool everyone. He used Agent May but he really fell for Skye. Now… what?! now that he’s the bad guy and it’s revealed that everything was a lie what could he really have in common with Skye? People need things that they can appreciate about each other to fall for each other. Not just that they like looking at each other. That’s not enough. He conned Coulson with his attitude, Fitz and Simmons were easy, blah blah woof woof. And Agent Garrett says, “Even Romanoff couldn’t have pulled that off.” SHUT UP. 

There’s actually another insult to Natasha later in the ep when Patton Oswalt tells the team that fury is dead, but privately says that Fury is alive but was limiting this knowledge to Coulson, Maria Hill, Cap “And a couple of others” yeah, Natasha and Falcon are “a couple of others” Admittedly, Coulson didn’t know about Falcon, but he sure as shit knows Black Widow. “A couple of others” GO HOME.

Oh yeah, and they meet Patton Oswalt after Coulson’s badge lights up with coordinates that Coulson believes to be from Fury, May tries to take his weapon because he’s being irrational, and they fly until the jet is out of fuel (unbeknownst to the team) to the middle of Canada (somewhere. Hollywood acts like Canada is all snowy wilderness) and upon finding nothing Coulson has a total breakdown. But then tada, secret SHIELD facility. So Coulson’s impulsiveness is validated while the rift between Coulson and May gets greater.

Garrett and Ward let some soon to be villains out of “the Fridge” but Raina can’t crack the hard drive, so Ward has to go back and meet up with Skye. Which no one has any reason to be suspicious about apparently, even though they knew Ward was at the Fridge and said facility was compromised. He shows up beat up and Skye rushes to his side. 

It looks as if next episode she will find out the truth about him. 

BJ Britt as Agent Triplett got some great lines and Raina got more morally ambiguous, I think eventually she’ll be on the same side as Coulson and crew. So that’s undoing a lot of the race fail that was earlier eps. 

This one was good. Not as good as the last two, but I’ll take it. At the very end Ian Quinn comes out of the fridge and gets the case full of gravitonium. That’s from wayy back. Graviton. Time for more villains. But Deathlok was notably absent this episode!

 

Agents of SHIELD- episode 16

The most intense episode YET. Last week, Maurissa Tancharoen addressed fans’ unrealistic expectations for Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, saying “People were expecting to see a Marvel movie every week.” And, as pointed out on the Mary Sue, that may be valid.. and may be dismissive and insulting but either way, this week fans got a Marvel movie. Surprise twists were a minute by minute occurrence.

Deathlok busts in to Bill Paxton/Agent Garrett and BJ Britt/Agent Triplett’s dwelling.. then, once being met with more firepower than he was ready for: busts out, through the ceiling. Coulson calls a gaggle of senior SHIELD agents together. Including Agent Hand and Agent Blake. They think that the Clairvoyant is a former SHIELD Agent who was dismissed. All hands on deck.. even (Brian Michael Bendis created character) Hand. Meanwhile, FitzSimmons are trying to figure what healed Skye so fast. (Bill Paxton also makes inquiries more subtly later.) They make Skye’s an agent, a Level 1 agent as Hand points out. Ward sneaks coy looks at her while everyone says their congratulations.

Skye designs how they are going to find the agents that made the shortlist of who could be the Clairvoyant without giving away enough info to any one agent that they could use to tip off the Clairvoyant.

Agent Blake gets choked by Deathlok as May arrives. Blake fired 6 shots into him. 5 bullets and one tracker. Blake ends up in critical condition. Paxton keeps calling Agent Hand “Vic” and she gets pissed, she blames Coulson for not sharing how dangerous Deathlok was and getting them into an unknown situation. Hand is a control freak and this was very in character. But the rest of them get back to tracking Deathlok in hopes of finding the Clairvoyant. Except Gemma and Triplett who head for the Hub (where Gemma plans to covertly analyze Skye’s blood sample in their cushier lab and with Triplett! *squee* I actually dig Fitz, I think he takes a lot of unnecessary crap from Ward -who is about to get LESS boring- and I like the quirky underdog academic thing. But I would ship Trimmons. Maybe I just want the brainy chick to get a love triangle…)

Anyway, they bust out their big guns and their shiny toys and find Deathlok. Fitz gets and X-Ray and the tech is all under his skin like Cyborg on Smallville. Which I’m sure made nerds on the internet and their cries of “He doesn’t look like Deathlok! You didn’t read the comics! What are they doing!” cease for ten frigging seconds. I love so much nerd shit, but some of y’alls give me a headache above my right eye. They chase him around, the action is awesome, Deathlok jumps down 6 flights of stairs to escape Melinda May, and Deathlok leads Coulson and Garrett to the Clairvoyant. Or at least.. a disabled man in a wheelchair who is unable to speak in a room full of computers who is taunting Coulson, saying he watched him watch Skye bleed in his arms knowing it was his fault. But Skye has something he wants.. and she’ll die for it.

And Ward shoots him.

Goody frigging two-shoes shoots a disabled man in cold blood. And Coulson doesn’t think he was the Clairvoyant. He didn’t talk, the computers spoke for him. Skye finds that the Clairvoyant has only known things that were in the agents’ files. Stuff from psych evals. Like, he didn’t know that Coulson died because Fury never allowed that in the file.

So Coulson confronts Ward “I don’t want your apologies, I don’t want your excuses, did someone order you to kill the Clairvoyant?!” (And I wouldn’t have considered that, but Agent Triplett talked about killing the Clairvoyant for his ax to grind earlier in the ep, I thought maybe he implanted the idea)

The next twist is seconds later as Fitz attempts to contact Simmons and finds that May has a secret line (the one she’s been using to give someone updates about Coulson) he gets spooked when May comes in and he tells Skye, who tells him to cut it. He does AND MAY FOLLOWS HIM WITH A GUN. But Skye finds Coulson and they pursue May (who I think COULD have shot both of them). The gun is just an icer, but Coulson says he’ll shoot her and does the “Who do you work for?!” bit again. He yells at her about the Clairvoyant and she is baffled. But she can’t talk about it here. Then the plane gets hijacked.

By Hand.

And with episode I am glad that I was liking this show while others were hating. Skye got stuff to do. Coulson got appropriately paranoid, FitzSimmons didn’t follow orders like good little lab geeks, there was a kick ass villain, a billion genuine anxiety producing plot twists and they rectified the biggest social justice fail on the show. With a competent black agent (who might possibly be a love interest *fingerscrossed*). Because up until this point, black people have been villains and victims. That shit is not inclusion, think about it if you haven’t. If you really need that explained to you, leave a comment I will help you. Because you might need it.

BJ Britt is kind of awesome. I need more of him. J. August Richards is doing a fucking awesome job. The Clairvoyant said he cut Deathlok’s feed so I’m wondering where that will lead in upcoming episodes. Is he still going to be pissed at SHIELD and supes for getting him into this? Will he see his son? Will he Go after the Clairvoyant and team back up with Coulson? Possibilities.

Greatest episode ever.

Agents of SHIELD- episode 14

Skye is still hanging by a thread. The team gets a negative report about the likeliness of her coming out of this intact. Everyone gets sad, May storms off- to beat the crap out of Ian Quinn -billionaire who shot Skye, lackey to the Clairvoyant- she does, Coulson calls her off and then he says he has a plan. SHIELD saved him and he was long dead, Skye is still alive. The doctors who traeted him can help her!

Only another SHIELD team shows up to collect Ian Quinn and stop them for this horribly unsanctioned mission. The agents are Agent Garrett (Bill Paxton) and Agent Triplett (BJ Britt). Bill Paxton was a cranky older agent with a vendetta against Quinn who repeatedly referred to Skye as “the girl” despite the fact that she is an adult woman. BJ Britt is fine as hell and his character got a crush on Simmons.

I will ship Trimmons. No lie. Come back soon Triplett.

Anyway, in the journey to find the facility and the doctors, Simmons finds out one compound that might save Skye: gh375. And May gets suspicious about all the unanswered questions in Coulson’s file. But they get to the facility and the security door asks them “How was the drive from Istanbul?” And no one knows so they blast their way in. Coulson gets freaked when he sees the robot thing that poked his brain. Yeah. And he finds what they need for Skye. He sends Garrett off with it, but he needs to see behind the door marked: T.A.H.I.T.I. and behind that door Coulson finds… And Coulson yelled “Don’t give that to Skye!” But Simmons already had. And Skye convulsed, but then she started breathing and her heart beat normally again.

Later, May goes to ask Coulson what he found. And he says it was nothing. Says it was all in his head and he just got freaked out. But the audience is treated to the world’s most absurd flashback… And I can’t really explain it to you…. dude, I don’t even know… someone said a Chitauri cadaver. It looked like a mummy of Dr. Manhattan… I don’t even know. The live tweet exploded with WTFs. Even Marvel didn’t know WHAT.

In the after scenes we see a cocky Asgardian woman enchanting a man away from his wife in the middle of Death Valley. I was thinking it would be Amora banished to Earth by Thor, but it’s Lorelei-

an ally and confidante to Loki. Lady Sif will be coming after the saucy vixen.

This was a great episode back, but it seemed to throw relationships up in the air. May and Ward barely spoke, May showed concern and tenderness for Coulson, Simmons got all doe eyed at Triplett… le sigh… tragedy always tests romance. I’m sure not sure what T.A.H.I.T.I. stands for or WHAT they injected into Skye. I just can’t even… Glad to have the team back though. I hope BJ Britt has A LOT MORE SCREEN TIME. That is all.

8 more episodes this season! Damn, there’s still time to get more fans on board and keep this show going strong!  Do you think Agents of SHIELD has hit it’s stride?

Edited to add @AllanAnthro threw down that the alien might be Kree. There are blue Kree and Pink Kree. it Skye is part alien (thus her 084 status) she might be part pink Kree and thats why the injection helped her, because the transfusion was suitable for her body? Maybe.