Agents of SHIELD S03E11 Review: The War Continues

Agents of SHIELD, Season 3, Episode 11: Bouncing Back

I said I'm catching up on reviewing all the superhero shows this month*, and by golly I'm doing it! I've been neglecting Agents of SHIELD for the past two months, though, and it's about time I start catching up on that.

*except for Gotham

Agents of SHIELD has been on uneven footing with how season two ended, and being compared with its far more excellent Netflix siblings can't be good for its reputation. The fact that this episode apparently started with a 'hey, this catastrophic event will happen in the future!' a la Arrow also doesn't fill me with confidence. Oh, golly, a spaceship exploding above Earth with someone apparently dead in it (apparently Elena, the Inhuman introduced this episode). I honestly am never a fan of these kind of in media res scenes, because it saps a good chunk of tension since, well, it's going to be inevitable that said scene will happen.

But the rest of this episode was quite brilliant! It builds up with Gideon Malick's band of Hydra coming into terms with its new leadership in the mysterious alien Inhuman inhabiting Grant Ward's body. Meanwhile, SHIELD has to deal with a couple new Inhumans, namely Elena Rodriguez, otherwise known as Yo-Yo or Slingshot in the comics. She's got a cool variation on the superspeed power, in that she slingshots between where she wants to go and her current position in the duration of a heartbeat. Yo-Yo is an obscure enough character that I have no idea who she is, and it's curious to see if she's going to be just a generic villain-of-the-week (albeit a sympathetic one) or if she's going to be a prospective ally. We get a pretty standard miscommunication plot as SHIELD hunts Elena down for stealing weapons from the police. Apparently Elena and her cousin are a member of freedom fighters (Elena being somewhat duped by her cousin), who are fighting the semi-dictator regime led by a different Inhuman, officer Lucio, who has Medusa-Eyes power. Lucio is suitably creepy with minimal dialogue, and it's a great action scene as it took Skye, Joey and Elena's combined efforts to bring him down. 

In other words, Joey is an understated awesome part of the show. He might be more civilian than agent, but holy shit, he melts Lucio's glasses to his face!

And while this is all quite interesting, the bit where Gideon Malick and his flunky Giyera is trying to assess what Not-Ward is capable of doing, and what his true agenda is, ends up being the more interesting part of the show. Not-Ward almost appears to kill Giyera, but it seems more akin to a display of his powers that wins out Giyera's loyalty. Hydra also manages to capture officer Lucio and bring him before Not-Ward for some nefarious purpose. It's odd that SHIELD doesn't go to shoot down that Hydra vessel, but I guess they're less concerned about Lucio than they are about Elena. It's a victory for both SHIELD and Hydra, with SHIELD gaining a new Inhuman ally and another potential candidate for Skye's (it's going to be difficult to refer to her as Daisy) growing Secret Warriors team, while Hydra themselves are gathering Inhumans for nefarious purposes.

Not-Ward (or Maveth, or It, or Hydra, or whatever you want to call him because his name doesn't get revealed for a couple more episodes) is a nicely different villain from Grant Ward, and the makeup team does a pretty great job portraying his emancipated state.

There's a bit of a subplot with Werner Von Strucker, having been brain-dead since we last saw him, being put into the Tahiti machine to see what's going on in his head. Lincoln gets to do stuff to stimulate his brain, which is gruesome and awesome at the same time. 

We get a welcome minor role from President Ellis (reprised by the same actor from Iron Man 3) who establishes that Gideon Malick is still technically untouchable thanks to his many connections and lack of evidence, but Coulson isn't taking it laying down and he calls Malick to lay the cards down that he's not fucking around. SHIELD is finally authorized under the government again, albeit using the ATCU as their public front. We brought back Talbot (who, in a soberingly sad scene, is on bad terms with his family) and he's apparently going to be the head of ATCU. It's going to be fun to see him interact with Coulson, if nothing else.

It's a bit clunky, but we showed some other pretty nice scenes. Fitz and Simmons' reconciliation is delightfully underplayed yet suitably dramatic and heartwarming enough, not hyped up to be an episode-long drama like some lesser show would. Coulson talking about his guilt in coldly executing Ward is well done as well. Mack had some great scenes with Elena that's sure to get all the shipping wheels going on. Skye and Lincoln are definitely being an official ship, and... it makes sense, I guess? I don't particularly care either way. 

Agents of SHIELD sometimes tries to juggle too many plot threads at once, but sometimes, like this episode, they do so really well. And honestly, being in a position where I've watched but not yet reviewed like the next ten episodes, I can safely say that this is the beginning of a string of great, excellent quality for Agents of SHIELD.