And so it happened that “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” have come
back. No offense to “Agent Carter”, but her show just was not on par with this
one.
Where are we standing with “Agents”? When we last saw them,
Skye/Daisy and Raina had activated the Obelisk/Diviner, which transformed them,
but with different effects. Raina was transformed...into a chupacabra, (no,
seriously!), while Skye remained the same externally, yet gained the
power to manifest vibrations, powerful enough to shatter glass (and that is
just a start!). Her biological faster, Dr. Johnson (a super-villain in
his own right), is enthusiastic about this (despite the fact that he is
probably bipolar), and plans to involve his former cohorts at the Index to get
his daughter to come to him.
Now, let us leave Skye for the moment (she spent this
episode recuperating in the quarantine, so she needs her rest), and turn to
Raina. She was not a really sympathetic character, but rather one of the
opponents of Coulson and S.H.I.E.L.D. Yet, as some of the earlier (last year’s
episodes) had revealed, while Skye had her friends and extended family to
support her, Raina had no one; if Garrett had survived the end of S1, things
might’ve been different, but he hadn’t so, Raina ended up on her own by the
mid-S2 finale, with nothing but her faith in the Diviner to keep her going, and
that backfired on her in a big way. Until this episode, Raina may have been
ugly on the inside, but she was beautiful on the outside, and now she is ugly
(or, at best, exotic) on the outside...and on the inside?
Raina is in quite a fix, but she has been given the
opportunity to start a new life – literally. It will be up to her now to decide
whether she can be beautiful on the inside, or not. Of course, she can also
die, but now that her fellow Inhuman (forget spoilers, let us call them what
they are) has saved her (from the lesser agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), literally
swept her off her feet and called her beautiful, she is likely to hang around
for another episode or two yet, before she makes her choice or has it made for
her, or something.
If the Inhumans are on their way in (Jemma Simmons has
already used the word in yesterday’s episode), then Hydra is on its way out –
Ward and 33 (Kara Lynn) didn’t even appear in “Aftershocks”, and other Hydra bigwigs
were either killed by S.H.I.E.L.D. or by their own, due to an elaborate
plot/provocation staged by S.H.I.E.L.D....in a manner similar to how people
died in the beginning of S2 due to the Diviner, so some residue of late
Whitehall’s involvement with the alien artefacts has seeped down Hydra’s
echelons...to their sorrow. Hydra, probably, is not finished per se, but its
danger to S.H.I.E.L.D. and the rest of the world has become much lesser...
probably. Given the fact how much S.H.I.E.L.D. scriptwriters and producers like
twists, Grant Ward might arrive in a nick of time, for example, and revive
Hydra at someone else’s expense.
And how did S.H.I.E.L.D. get the better of Hydra in this
instance? By teamwork, cooperation and mutual trust. Their team bonds have
enabled them to flawlessly fool Bakshi, (though let us not forget that they had
him only thanks to Ward), as well as the rest of Hydra. As always, whenever
S.H.I.E.L.D. team works together, they are invincible, and as always, they are
suffering from internal problems. Nowadays, it Bobbi Morse the Mockingbird and
Mack. They may be in some sort of a support group, but Mack has also determined
that Coulson has “Fury’s toolbox”, and whatever plans he and Bobbi have up
their sleeves, they probably are not benign...
And we also got new fractions (or factions) in the main
team. It is Simmons’ turn to befriend Mack over their mutual and new distrust
of alien artefacts and technology. Interestingly, in S1 Simmons was all for
using alien technology (and anything else) in order to make Earth a better
place. Now, she has apparently undergone a 180 degrees turn and wants to
destroy it all - including Raina. Skye, has also become someone alien, is less
than enthusiastic about this, and has Fitz’s support for some reason. (You
would think that Leo would support Mack and Jemma in their new anti-alien
enterprise, but no. The ship FitzSimmons has sprung a leak that is more serious
than what it looks like at a first glance.)
Let us sum up. Hydra is out. (Except for Ward and 33/Kara
Lynn). The Inhumans are in. And S.H.I.E.L.D. is beginning to be split between
Mack & Simmons, Fitz & Skye, and Coulson & everyone else. Plus,
Mack, and Bobbi, (and maybe Lance Hunter) seem to be following their own agenda
– which may belong to another group (i.e. Hydra, AIM), but it may foreshadow, instead,
an internal split in S.H.I.E.L.D. rather than an external invasion: Coulson can
be toppled and kicked out of power from the inside as well – we’ll just have to
wait and see.
Until the next time!
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