Agents of SHIELD S05E20 Review: Mad Titan Cometh

Agents of SHIELD, Season 5, Episode 20: The One Who Will Save Us All

Well, that's the tie-in to Infinity War, and unlike how the first season spoiled the huge plot twist of Captain America: Winter Soldier, this episode manages to incorporate the background elements of Infinity War without spoiling anything, and arguably manages to be a better, unobtrusive tie-in compared to the Age of Ultron one which just felt superfluous. Basically, this entire episode sort of tips Talbot down the side of evil. Or, more appropriately, well-intentioned insanity. It's a bit of a shame that it's clear that we're just setting up Talbot to be really crazy to be the final boss for the fifth season, although at least the show does the legwork in making Talbot's transformation from the broken-down man to an anti-hero to a flat-out maniac. Throughout the first act of this episode, Talbot shows off his power and works alongside Coulson, praising his ally and making it clear to the invading aliens that this Gravitonium-manipulating man is the head honcho of Earth and aliens are no longer welcome. 

While Agents of SHIELD has never shied away from killing (Mack's protests notwithstanding), Talbot's casual murder of a random Remorath goon via implosion is pretty horrific... which is then followed by his demands that the Remoraths kneel, and then locking Coulson out of the loop as Talbot talks to the Confederacy. He kills one of the five aliens (it's surprising he doesn't kill everyone, really) and then gets quickly taken in by Taryan, Kasius's dad. We also get the revelation that the 'threat' coming to Earth that the Confederacy initially promised to shield Earth from is the Mad Titan Thanos, and, of course, no one's dumb enough to raise a finger to fight Thanos. Drunk on power, Talbot decides he should go team up with the Avengers and use his gravity powers to fight Thanos... but not before draining all the Gravitonium on Earth. It's a bit hard to believe that a man as paranoid as Talbot would quickly buy something that aliens like Qovas and Taryan tell him, but I guess the lust for more power and Gravitonium supercedes that? 

While I'm definitely sad that the previously somewhat complex character of Talbot gets reduced to a crazy ranting maniac, I do like that at least the character's descend into madness feels gradual. It's a neat little tense moment as we're not quite sure just when Talbot will fully snap. I'm not quite sure just why Qovas and the Remorath goons are so quick to bend the knee and not just book it back to space when Talbot goes down to Earth to hunt down the Gravitonium, though. I really thought that could've been handled better. Oh, and Talbot shows off a facet of power that the Gravitonium has only showed off with Ian Quinn in that one flashback, because he has people-absorbing powers in addition to people-cubing powers. Talbot absorbs that one green-skinned alien in the Confederacy, and is immune to SHIELD's biggest-hitting weapon, Quake's earthquake powers. Even with Coulson and Hale's promises to work together with Talbot, Talbot ends up going supervillain mode, forcing Coulson to kneel, and then delivering some cold, cold vengeance upon Hale by squishing her into a cube. And as Talbot goes off to grandstand and absorb more Gravitonium, Coulson, Daisy and May are taken prisoner. It's a pretty fun and glorious arc, I must say, and I do like just how Evil!Talbot takes the negative traits Talbot already has and amplifies them. 

The Earth-bound SHIELD team (May and Daisy go board the Remorath ship around the second half of the episode) also have their share of drama. There's a pretty brutal battle between Elena and Daisy over their methods. There's the still-lingering anger at each other over the whole Ruby murder thing, but Elena raises up the arguments that Daisy went off on her own personal crusade to bring Coulson back (and digging up Jiaying's body) and blames the Remorath attack on the base on her absence. While she does have merit, I am inclined to lean a bit more on Daisy's side on this particular argument. There's some anger regarding Daisy's role as a leader only focusing on bringing Coulson back, and some anger about not heeding Elena's warnings... but the fight was pretty well-scripted and brutal, and May ends up swooping in to get the two to stand down. It's an interesting conflict -- neither Daisy nor Elena are really in the wrong, not like the Daisy/Fitz debate. 

Mack and Fitz have a bit of a moment, and I'm not quite sure just why Mack has suddenly transformed into this very religious person all of a sudden. But his arguments are a nice contrast to Fitz's own. Mack talks about how the world should be black and white. There should be a way that they can find that doesn't involve killing Talbot, because they're SHIELD and they find a way... while Fitz tells Mack to grow up from his fantasy world because sometimes you do have to make the hard call. I'm jaded enough to lean more towards Fitz's mindset than Mack's, because of the whole "needs of the many/needs of the few" mentality, and arguably Fitz taking it upon himself to do the 'hard choices' was what caused him to relapse into The Doctor in the first place.

Oh, and there's a Deke/Daisy scene. It's... it's, again, something I don't care about. Jeff Ward's perhaps at his most charming in this episode, being genuinely likable for maybe the first time since Deke showed up and went through his whole fun "man out of time" shtick. I still don't particularly care about Deke, although I laughed pretty loudly at the whole "someone covered my bed in lemons as a prank" deal. Eh. I've never big on caring too much about 'shipping' characters, but this is pretty much one-sided all season, yeah?

But all the drama among the SHIELD personnel has to wait, because we're building up to a straight-up supervillain showdown! Talbot has superpowers, a bad guy goal and even a very swanky super suit. Most of the lesser villains are dead at this point, with only Talbot and Qovas remaining, and we have two episodes to go to prevent Glen Talbot from quite literally breaking the world in his hubris. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Thanos gets explicitly stated by name as the alien force that is coming to claim Earth, as seen in Avengers: Infinity War, and not even the Confederacy dares to stand up against the Mad Titan. In addition to that, some random news reports show the destruction caused by the battle between the Avengers against the Black Order in New York city, establishing the entirety of the fifth season's climax as taking place during the first act of Infinity War. 
• Glenn Talbot's new spacesuit costume is based on the comic book version of Graviton, of course. 
• Talbot also calls himself "Earth's Mightiest Hero", which is the tagline often associated with the Avengers. 
• While the Remoraths are a race original to the show, the other three non-Kree races of the Confederacy -- the Astrans, the Rajaks and the Kallusians -- are all minor alien races that have appeared in the comics before. 
• Lincoln Campbell gets a mention from Daisy!