Agents of SHIELD S03E04 Review: The Mystery of Lash's Identity

Agents of SHIELD, Season 3, Episode 4: Devils You Know

A far more focused episode compared to the previous one, mostly by bringing the Lash plot back to the forefront. The threat of Lash (who is finally named in the show), as well as SHIELD and ACTU working together through clenched teeth to try and hunt him down, is illustrated pretty well here. Having Lash make appearances both in the cold open and the climax of this episode is done pretty well, and this episode builds up that there is more to Lash than meets the eye… namely, as Skye herself notes here, Lash seems to be able to transform into a human form. Now it might feel a bit too trite considering we already had shapeshifters like Hulk, Abomination and Mr. Hyde running around in the MCU, but hey, it sort of works.

The biggest contender here, according to Skye and Mack’s little discussion, is someone from the ACTU… and it’s even punctuated rather sinisterly with Rosalind Price showing up right as they are discussing it, which makes me think that, well, it’s an utterly too-obvious red herring so it actually makes me think that Price is not going to be Lash. And most of the main SHIELD cast is honestly out of the question as well, being eliminated one way or another because we saw them doing stuff during times when Lash attacks. If Lash had appeared after Simmons’ return from Planet Hellhole, maaaaybe some crazy alien shit happened to Simmons in that planet, turning her into Lash? But alas, Lash made his first appearance way before Fitz got Simmons back from that planet, so that particular theory is naught but dust.

So, uh, that really leaves someone from Ward’s faction (unlikely) or… Andrew Garner, who had an unexpected surge of screentime in this season, and is pretty intent on working with Inhumans and Skye’s basically turned Andrew into something like a substitute father figure now that Coulson is too busy being a boss, so that leads to her kind of telling Andrew… a fair amount of things. And add that to him being uncharacteristically angry about being left out of the loop that SHIELD is allied with Alisha – whereas before he’s just “hey I’m the therapist, let me do my job”. The fact that we don’t see the face of the corpse in that burning building that you’re supposed to assume is Andrew… yeah. Even if Andrew isn’t Lash (something most viewers probably already know since I’m doing these reviews a fair bit late), at the very least, I highly doubt he died in that explosion caused by Von Strucker Jr. Also, Lash spares Skye’s life even though she’s an Inhuman, and we’ve seen that Andrew at the very least likes Skye a fair bit.

The mystery of Lash’s identity aside, let’s talk about this episode.

We’ve got Skye and Mack not trusting ACTU, of course, which runs throughout the episode. And Price isn’t happy that they aren’t getting the full picture. And Coulson is just like the teacher of a group of third grade kids trying to get everyone to play ball while they are off pouting by themselves. It’s not overdone, thankfully, and Skye at least has a reason to be really angry (“they’re my people!”) whereas ACTU’s just trying to do their job and all things considered, other than being more aggressive than they should be – a fault that lies on that jackass Banks more than anything – the ACTU doesn’t seem to be cutting Inhumans up the way that Hydra had been. Am honestly growing fond of Coulson and Price’s constant quip-filled bickerings. The laser finger joke (and I wouldn’t put it past Coulson to actually have Fitz install one) was pretty funny.

I’m also a big fan of the cold open, with the return of Alisha, the replicating redhead that was one of Jiaying’s lieutenants during the second season’s climax. She’s apparently thrown her lot in with SHIELD, if only to help rescue the other Inhumans before Lash could get them, and Alisha talking to the Inhuman couple who had integrated themselves into human society is a pretty well-done scene, right up until Lash shows up and murders all present. Alisha’s main body survives, of course, but apparently goes into shock. It’s pretty brutal, and the threat of Lash is done pretty scarily.

The bulk of the episode had ACTU and SHIELD go in and arrest someone working with Lash, the hacker Dwight Frye… who has the suckiest Inhuman ability of bursting into rashes whenever an Inhuman is nearby. There are some more conflict points between the ACTU’s more pragmatic “capture/shoot first, ask questions later” compared to Skye’s “Inhumans are a big happy family” logic. And Dwight Frye spins this long story about how Lash doesn’t want to do what he does, about how Lash is a necessity against the Inhuman ‘disease’. Again, it’s a nice parallel to the X-Men series that some of the Inhumans don’t want the powers. And considering someone like Skye gets a pretty freaking awesome power like creating shock waves (even if she had to learn a fair bit to control it) whereas poor Dwight Frye gets the power of sprouting hives whenever he’s around one of his kind… you can’t really blame the poor dude.

And then while the seeming conflict near the end would be Skye and Mack forcing their way to see the ACTU facility for themselves, Lash shows up, completely fucks up the truck, kills off Dwight Frye with his hole-creating ability… before going away. But not before Skye sees him transform into a less monstrous form. It’s a well-done, surprising scene, and Lash’s exchange with Dwight seems to imply that Dwight, well, is relatively unreliable as far as information goes on Lash’s motivations.

Apparently there’s a character named Dwight Frye in the Marvel Comics, who goes by the codename Bazooka and is a member of the Black Powers group, which is, um, a superhero team made up of black people. Yeah. Race inclusion kind of went through weird phases in the comic. But comic!Bazooka had explosive powers and had nothing that resembles the Dwight Frye here, so I’m inclined to believe that the identical name is just coincidence, which is weird considering the level of obscure namedropping that MCU TV shows tend to do.

The Hydra plot, with Hunter going more and more obsessed with his vengeance against Ward, and pulling off an utterly moronic plan of just pretending to deliver guns to Hydra without any real backup plan against being discovered when Ward sees his face… it’s a miracle, honestly that Kabo hasn’t already ran Hunter’s face against a database or something. It comes off in a gunfight between both sides as May backs Hunter up. We get some references to their past encounter – namely Agent 33’s death, a sore spot for Ward – and Ward’s big plan for Werner Von Strucker seems to be to have him come close to Andrew Garner and, uh… it’s an unexpectedly petty plan. Kill the loved one of the one that caused the death of Ward’s loved one. It’s a nice little tense scene that gives May an emotional focus, juxtaposed really well against Ward’s sadism and Hunter’s vengeful obsession. And, well, Ward’s also visibly trying not to fall for the emotional bait when Hunter mentions Agent 33, a well-done scene by itself.

And despite Werner and Ward’s Hydra goons surrounding Andrew, Hunter, y’know, is obsessed with his own vengeance and takes the shot at Ward. Ward, obviously, doesn’t die and manages to get away (they didn’t even manage to kill Kabo!) and Andrew is apparently killed. Again, we don’t see the face of the corpse that got burnt up in the explosion. Werner also runs away with a scared look on his face, and notably the only person who runs out of the building when there were three or four Hydra goons in there. Is Andrew really Lash? Is Andrew secretly, oh, a ninja? Or something else?

I did like the little foreshadowing of Werner’s plan to set the shop Andrew is visiting on fire when Ward is just swinging around the fuel canisters in one of the earlier scenes. How he mocks SHIELD classified levels is also pretty funny.

The Simmons B-plot is far more fun this time around. Now that Simmons had worked through her PTSD (or, well, whatever specific psychological term that is applicable to her) by crying onto Fitz’s shoulder last episode, she’s up to something, most likely building up the portal. And from hiding her work from Fitz and being downright hostile towards Andrew’s therapeutic sessions, well… okay, we know she’s basically rebuilding the portal, but the reason why she wants to go back to Planet Hellhole is the big mystery here, though the end of this episode implies that next episode may reveal, well, a fair amount of revelations regarding her journey on the other side.

Bobbi, I think, is the weakest part of this season, mostly due to how little she’s utilized. For these past four episodes she has very scant scenes, and she’s just used to bounce dialogue off Fitz, and used as Hunter’s motivation. I mean, yes, she’s rehabilitating, but hopefully she gets to do something other than just hover around Fitz or Simmons and sprout dialogue about how bored she is in rehab.

Overall a pretty solid episode, with great Inhuman stuff and unexpectedly great showing from the Hunter/May/Ward side plot. The Lash mystery grows ever thicker and it seems like it’s going to escalate pretty soon. The SHIELD/ACTU clenched-teamwork thing might really need some work, and if it’s just going to be Skye complaining every episode while Coulson and Price exchange sarcastic quips, it’s going to get old real fast. But as for now? It’s pretty good.