S.H.I.E.L.D, The Emancipation - May 10

The tide has turned. Daisy Johnson is Hive-free.

(As Talbot has pointed out – who comes up with these names?)

Once again, the AoS cast has delivered wonderfully – the acting was superb (from all people), the music numbers, the plot twists – everything came together in ‘saving agent Daisy’ from Hive. For further dramatic irony, it was Lash who did it – Lash/Dr. Garnier who was something of a villain himself in the first part of S3. Yet it is not surprising, for this is the AoS stock in trade – plot twists: the only real question was how S.H.I.E.L.D., including Lincoln, would trick Hive – and Daisy; nothing more.

…Yes, it is a sore point that everyone gets a redemptive moment, even Lash/Andrew, except for Grant, but this is over, and frankly, one has no idea if Whedon and co. have a new idea/villain for Brett to carry out in S4 – hopefully, however, once S3 s done, he is done, and gone from the show – he had enough character assassination for one show. Moreover, for fans of ‘SkyeWard’, you can watch such shows as ‘Blindspot’ and ‘Quantico’ – they are more realistic versions of AoS, done better.

And once you put plot twists – and highly professional, amazing, dramatic acting – behind, what are you left with? A solid, almost stolid, episode about loyalty and the like – the writers are doing their best to put the mess of S2 behind: the integration and ejection of Blood/Hunter and Palicki/Morse has did AoS more harm than good in the long run, and now…

And now, if Mack is the one to die as ‘the fallen agent’, and Hive will be finally defeated once and for all, the AoS main cast will be down to just 6 people once, which makes the initial inflation to ten kind of bizarre and pointless, but-

However, ‘The Emancipation’ was still better than ‘Laws of Nature’, where AoS went overboard not just with clichés, but also with references to MCU, making it a very annoying episode to observe. Here, the entire issue of the Avengers’ civil war is barely scratched (yet?) with just a few references for the sake of conversation (and to give Talbot a reason to be present?) and the matter of registration: nowadays Coulson is quite against registration, so it’ll…put him against Stark and Hill? In the same camp as Rogers (and Fury?). As Civil War has shown, you do not have to be Hydra to be evil – MCU’s baron Zemo has done an admirable job of doing just that, so if agent Felix is to survive, he can be the next big bad of AoS – in S4.

Put otherwise, ‘The Emancipation’ was an episode that was more dramatic than surprising, very enjoyable to watch and a good enough prequel to the big finale of S3 that is coming next week. Who knows how surprising it will be?