Agents of SHIELD, Season 3, Episode 15: Spacetime
And finally, after a couple of character-heavy episodes, we go ahead with the Hive subplot. It's... still a pretty strong episode, but definitely flawed. I do like the episode quite a bit, though! Even if it's a bit of a common sci-fi plot, and somewhat done earlier in the series with Raina's own vision powers, the premise of the episode is still decent. Basically, our heroes run to yet another Inhuman, Charles Hinton the Hobo, who has the sucky powers to imprint visions of someone's death into other people with a single touch. Charles Hinton is a fun enough one-shot character (who dies in the episode), displaying the manic madness that precognition no doubt causes him. The fact that he keeps seeing people die without being able to prevent it definitely can't be healthy for him too.
We get an interesting and fun little explanation of dimensional correlation from Fitz, and how looking forward through time is just seeing something set in stone and you can't change it, and while it's something that most self-respecting geeks would've known about already it's still an interesting debate with people like Skye refusing to believe in fate, Coulson being cautious about it and Lincoln spouting a whole long speech about how Inhumans are balanced and blah blah blah.
It's a strong episode nonetheless, with everything proceeding sensibly, and while it's obvious that the hobo's visions will come true, everything went along just as the visions shown. The episode does spend a bit too much time with Skye rehearsing what she saw in her vision in that room, and while it's fun to see May pull her punches and being exasperated with Simmmons' bad acting, it still kinda kills the momentum of the plot. Still, it's a minor complaint for such a strong episode. Plus, Skye has been kinda pushed to the side a fair bit ever since season two ended, and she's been given increasing roles throughout the previous few episodes, so it's great for her!
Also, even Coulson forgot that Skye's supposed to be Daisy now. Hey, can't fault me if the people living in the same universe with her sometimes forget it!
Hive kidnaps the Hobo, and grants Gideon Malick actual, physical power in the form of an exo-suit that allows him to stand toe-to-toe against Skye. We get a great moment of 'power corrupts absolutely' as we see Malick crush the head of that one corporate boss, and reveling in the pure power that the exosuit grants him. Malick has been a functional but ultimately boring villain, and this more than allows him to grow as a character in his own right. I'm not sure if Hive still views him as disposable (he seems not to care either way if Malick survives that rooftop battle), and whether the exo-suit was meant to be an offhanded Uriah gambit to kill Malick, or if it truly is a gift and Malick's just too bloodthirsty. The vision of his own death that Charles showed Malick can't help his trust either.
Skye and Malick's battle is pretty great, and there definitely is a tension of Skye actually dying or at least captured by Hive. Lincoln got whacked in the head by Giyera and a flying chunk of metal (though Hive doesn't allow Giyera to kill Lincoln, surprisingly), while Coulson and Fitz-Simmons are far away. It's a great, tense moment, and the episode definitely delivers in that front.
Also, Hive's gruesome powers as he slowly eats away the entire board of directors is, well, quite horrifying. The show has settled in to display superpowers as everyday happenings, no doubt helped by the bigger budget, and it's fun to see this be applied in combat too as Skye, Giyera and Lincoln lob their respective superpowers here and there.
We get a rather random subplot as Lash, or rather, Andrew, surrenders himself to SHIELD. It's a strange move, but Andrew apparently can't control his transformation to Lash anymore. Despite them trying out the Inhuman vaccine on Andrew, he ends up fully transforming into Lash. We get an emotional moment from May, and it's great that the show allows the two to have a bit of a emotional goodbye. It's still tragic what happens to Andrew in the end, of course, but at least they got to say goodbye. I think it's odd that they unleashed Lash in the mid-season episodes only for him to do nothing and end up surrendering to SHIELD, but hey.
Oh, and SHIELD knows that "Grant Ward" is back. Even if it's not technically Grant Ward. Well, plot progression! Overall the episode was a bit uneven, but it played on an interesting concept and more than delivered on that. Again, yet another in a streak of really good Agents of SHIELD episodes.
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