Agents of SHIELD, Season 2, Episode 10: What They Become
Well, after a strong start in season two which devolved into a sluggish, messily-paced series of episodes, Agents of SHIELD has finally found redemption once more in a powerful, powerful mid-season finale. It took me a bit of a research into the whole Inhumans lore, a section of the Marvel comics universe I'm dimly aware of but never really cared enough to read. While I'm nowhere that well-versed in Marvel lore as I am with DC comics, I can definitely appreciate them slowly exploring all these obscure groups and developing the overreaching lore with the movies. I'm not really certain just how closely it will tie with the movies, but I'm happy to watch it nonetheless. Bit late to the party, but here's my review of it.
And it's an awesome episode! It's kind of like Gotham where the buildup could've been done better, but it certainly culminates well. Some of the other less interesting B-plots are thankfully put on hold, and we finally get a confrontation between a lot of the big players running around. The whole City/Obelisk thing that we've been building up from the beginning of the season ends up getting explored, and even if we don't get all that much (this is still Agents of SHIELD) this time what we get is pretty satisfactory and indeed pretty awesome.
A lot of the plot simply revolves around Skye finally meeting her father at last, and even if last episode's rather clunky way of facilitating this still doesn't sit well with me, it is a pretty emotional meeting that's been delayed and stretched out for quite a while, and I do like how Skye's Father, here finally given the name of Cal (after comic character Calvin Zabo, it appears, which I'll talk about later in the end) and the meeting between the two is pretty well-scripted. Awkwardness all around, and Cal exudes both absolute devotion to his daughter as well as showcases just how much of a fanatic to the whole vaguely-defined transformation thing he is. He's also made his hellbent revenge against Whitehall pretty clear, and I do like how, while he's not outright abusive towards Skye, he's still hard enough to somewhat kindly tell her to follow his designs. I do like how Cal is ashamed of what he has become, but he doesn't deny that he's done bad things and killed people. And he does look utterly broken when he speaks of his wife being torn apart -- and from that rather effective scene before, I can agree with his sentiment.
And then we get the other confrontation, which is Cal facing off against Whitehall. Whitehall himself proves to be a pretty masterful chess player... it's just a shame that other than that one flashback episode we don't really learn much about Whitehall to really care about him as a character. And indeed when you think about it, he's a pretty generic super-genius mad scientist slash mastermind. We get a bit of Whitehall outmaneuvering Cal and managing to outsmart both him and Ward, immobilizing Cal with this electrical chip, already knowing about Cal's connection to Skye, and then proceeding to almost go through with his threat of dissecting Skye before he is distracted.
Whitehall gets to face off against Cal, but before he can do anything Coulson... shoots Whitehall dead. Cal is a doctor and he is hellbent on keeping Whitehall alive to torture him, and he does confirm Whitehall's death, but I really don't see this being that permanent. After all, while it's a shot through the chest, Whitehall's body is still intact and who knows what kind of crazy enhancement that Skye's Mother's blood might have given him? It's still a nice twist, though, and helps to take Whitehall out of the picture for now.
Cal and Coulson, meanwhile, clash, and I do like how Cal gets more and more animalistic in his movements and his behaviour as he just freaking snaps from seeing his revenge denied of him. We get a truly brutal fight between the two, and while Coulson does manage to get a few cool martial arts moves in, Cal overpowers Coulson and Skye has to come in and threaten to shoot Cal... who calms down. After all Skye did call him 'dad'. Driven off by Skye, Cal is relatively calm and goes all 'you'll understand in time' and stuff like that, and tells Skye that her real birth name is 'Daisy'. And Skye... well, after keeping her cool while dealing with Ward and Cal, she kind of flips out over Coulson and kind of just... well, runs off to recover the Diviner to make up for it. Can't say impulsiveness doesn't run in the family.
While all this is going, May, Bobbi and Hunter are leading an assault against the other Hydra members, which gets them mostly out of the way. Ward gets blindsided and shot by Skye, which is hilarious and cathartic at the same time, though I'll talk all about Ward later on. Agent 33 is... kind of just there, and is also something I'll talk about later. Fitz, Simmons and Triplett are placing charges around the city, figuring out that Hazmat suits can protect them from being Mackified, but things get complicated when Raina, Skye and Coulson go down into the city in a three-way chase, so Triplett runs in to dismantle the bombs.
Skye and Raina find themselves in some kind of a central chamber, and we get some ominous words and explanations from Raina about the true nature of the Diviner: it grants powers and whatnot to the selected ones, and namedrops the Kree again. And as the chamber closes, Triplett finds himself trapped inside with Raina and Skye, while Coulson has to deal with Zombie Mack outside.
And then the Diviner kind of splits open to reveal a crystalline interior, and it kind of covers Raina and Skye in some kind of gooplike chrysalis. Triplett kind of panics and kicks the Diviner, and gets to be turned into stone and disintegrates for his trouble... and it's kind of moot since Skye breaks out of her chrysalis state literally seconds after Triplett apparently dies, and unleashes a big boom thing, showing that she's been transformed into a metahuman... or an Inhuman, if you will. Meanwhile, Triplett's body crumbles, Raina's been transformed into something less human-looking, and people outside are all running around.
And then there is this absolutely horrifying Eyeless Man at the end who reports to his comrades about another Diviner being activated.
So, what is it all about? Well, to someone who's unfamiliar with the Inhumans such as I, it's made pretty clear that the Diviner sort of unlocks powers (with what is apparently called the Terrigen Mist in the comics)... but only in those that have alien blood in them, which I initially thought was by interbreeding, but it seems that the alien blood is passed down. And what was initially a simple 'oh Skye is half-alien' and some vaguely-defined powers on the part of Skye's parents finally gets revealed to be mutations unique to each of them. Skye's Mother apparently has immortality, and Skye's Father... well, we know he's got a hair-trigger temper and he hates being referred to as a monster, and we know he can completely obliterate everything in his path.
The showmakers and the show itself have kind of confirmed that Cal is based on comic-book character Calvin Zabo, otherwise known as the supervillain Mr. Hyde, able to undergo a Hulk-style transformation into a monster, which would explain why he keeps talking big about being able to annihilate all of the Hydra forces but never really gets around to doing it... it's because he haven't transformed yet! And it's a good reason to why he didn't transform in front of Skye... he very well could ostracize her forever if she sees him rampage in his monster form.
And Skye... well, the show doesn't really make it explicit that the earthquakes happening are coming from her or simply because the Diviner activates some stuff, and I didn't get that the earthquakes are supposed to be from her initially. I honestly thought she was going to have some healing powers that'll allow her to heal Triplett, but I guess not. And after looking up her comic-book counterpart, I am pretty surprised that... I actually know who Quake, or Daisy Johnson, is! I read Secret War! It's really surprising, since most of the time when Agents of SHIELD references some guy I'll look it up and nod, and say, 'huh, interesting.' But for Skye, it's different. I admit that I didn't connect the dots while watching the episode, but that moment when I realized who she was meant to be was a big 'OHHHHH' moment. And I do like how comic-Daisy's surrogate father relationship with Nick Fury has been handed over to Phil Coulson here.
Granted, all those time when Cal was talking about Skye's real name I thought it was going to be some crazy alien name like, oh, Kal-El or something (not helped by Cal's name sounding a whole lot like Kal), not something as mundane as Daisy, so that completely caught me off guard.
Also I guess Skye will have earthquake powers, which is like the least likely thing I'd peg her to have... I thought she will have some crazy Vorlon-type vaguely-defined-psychic-powers thing going on, but earthquakes it is. Absolutely interested in seeing how she will deal with her powers, how she will deal with all this change, her father and everything. A lot of people give Skye flak for being a bit of a Mary Sue, and I can't say that those accusations aren't baseless, but Skye has proven time and again to be pretty interesting and that rather offsets the Sue qualities.
In a less interesting vein, Raina is also apparently an Inhuman and has been mutated into... something. We only see part of her face, but it's got quills and a catlike eye, so she's been changed physically. She's been going on and on about the whole destiny thing, and it's been a bit annoying, but at least she's being consistent in her airheaded craziness. I'm not a big fan of Raina, at least not recently after she's became an inconsistently raving fanatic, but this is intriguing. Will she accept her changes? Or will it hideously deform her and she'll be full of self-loathing or whatever?
After looking it up, there is a Marvel comics Raina and she doesn't look entirely human, but I didn't really dig in too deep since I want to be surprised and learn about their stories from this show. I do think it's pretty interesting how they're adapting these comic book characters but introducing them as brand-new ones... only to reveal that they are, in fact, based on comic book characters. It's an interesting method.
Also, at the end, it seems that the Inhuman society or whatever has been established, because one of them is definitely aware of Skye and Raina activating a Diviner. This dude is a creepy motherfucker without any eyes. Just flat skin over where the eyes should be. And, well, I did not expect that and being shocked like that at 2 AM in the morning is not a pleasant experience. Apparently people far more well-versed with the Marvel comics are speculating that this is the MCU version of Reader of the Inhumans. I guess I'll nod for the moment?
Overall I'm rather excited to see where this will go, how the whole Inhuman plot will affect the overall storyline and how they'll integrate this to the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not much to say other than the fact that this has piqued my interest very much, and after having it drop down after the last few episodes, that's saying something. I like these developments, they surprised me, and I'm extremely curious to see where we'll go. I guess that about wraps out the recap-review for the Inhumans, so let's move on to the more mortal members of the cast.
Let's go with Grant Ward first. We all know he's doing everything he does recently not just because of a sense of loyalty to Hydra, SHIELD, Coulson or Cal, but rather out of love to Skye... as Raina points out. Ward gets a pretty damning line of dialogue about his past fanaticism to John Garrett, and I suppose all that time in prison and all his talks with Skye have kind of started to bring him around. We get a nice little conversation between Ward and 33, and I do like how he bares his figurative fangs against Whitehall when he threatens Skye.
Of course, Skye is still sane and I love how he puts a pair of bullets in Ward literally the moment she gets herself free of her restraints. As much as Ward may be the least evil of the villains currently in play, he is also a mass psychotic murderer, and I do like how that all isn't just forgotten for the sake of shipping. Also let's not forget that he's a pretty creepy stalker towards Skye. Well-intentioned, perhaps, but creepy nonetheless... generally you don't go out with someone who kidnaps you at gunpoint. You go, Skye.
I do like Ward. He's an effective, interesting villain. He's definitely not going to die anytime soon, and he confirms his survival at the end of the episode, but I'm interested to see where he'll go from here, or if he's still going to be head-over-heels smitten with Skye. For all his brave talk about not following anyone anymore, he's kind of really latching on to Skye, isn't he?
Agent 33... looks like we're not going to explore who she was before Whitehall converts her, and a lot of her scenes really just comprises of her proclaiming her loyalty to Whitehall and looking absolutely confused when Whitehall apparently dies. 33 has apparently thrown her lot in with Ward, who she sees as a kindred spirit, so I'm interested to see where this goes, though thankfully it took just the right amount of time to be sweet and interesting without being too bloated.
And Whitehall... I'm pretty sure he's not going to stay down. For the moment, though, it looks like he's out of the picture. It's not a 100% certainty, but I don't think his death is really going to be permanent.
Coulson gets a fair amount of screentime being a director and whatnot, and while a lot of screentime is devoted to Skye and the others, as the nominal main character Coulson does get to chase after the girl. Make no mistake, though, for this episode belongs to Skye. Coulson gets some great screentime talking to Skye and being a comforting father figure, and his brutal faceoff with Cal is pretty awesome as well. And, really, balls to Coulson for just running into that city to save Skye. Don't really think there's much he does other than showing up a lot, but Coulson's always fun.
Triplett... man, poor Triplett. He's sort of sidelined in the show, and while a lot of people think it's because the actor is shooting for Age of Ultron, it seems like he's dead now. And it's a pretty stupid and senseless way to die. Him getting trapped in the chamber is played more for laughs than anything, and him kicking the Diviner and accidentally getting a shard stuck in his chest... it's a bit of a shitty and stupid way to die considering he did jack shit to save Skye, even if he doesn't know that. And it's really a pity that Triplett has to die considering he hasn't managed to do all that much throughout all his appearances. It's like they're doing a fake out with Mack and Triplett, with Mack apparently not dying and it being replaced in the last minute with Triplett. The fact that the two candidates for death are black men are, well, kind of suspect. But I know I am a lot more shocked and sad about Triplett's senseless sacrifice and disintegration into dust, as compared to resident wallpaper Mack whose death gets a resounding 'm'eh' from me.
I just hope there's an actual reason, story-wise, for Triplett's death. To make Skye angst, or to give her something to work towards while learning to hone her Kree/Inhuman powers. I just don't like random sudden deaths for the sake of sudden deaths.
Mack survives, apparently, as the last montage of scenes of people running from the quake shows Coulson apparently recovering Mack. He spends most of the episode being a black-eyed zombie that only lets Raina and Skye pass and then lays the smackdown on Coulson when he tries to get to them. I really don't care about Mack, really, so I can't say that I'm pleased or displeased about his survival. Fitz and Simmons compares it to the Cordyceps fungus (or Ophiocordyceps, as the specific genus that they discuss) that can control ants, which is a pretty sufficient and geeky-simple explanation to how the city is making use of Mack.
As a side-note, Cordyceps is a really interesting organism. It's one of the many weird wonders of nature that I learned from Pokemon, with the otherwise-innocent pokemon Parasect being based on a fungus taking over a bug's mind.
We get a bit of Hunter and Bobbi, but not too much that it takes up huge chunks of the episode as they used to do. It's paced well. Hunter realizes Bobbi is keeping something from him, and tells Bobbi he knows she's pocketing a thumb drive, but doesn't make a big fuss about it in this episode. They spend most of the time just doing espionage spy stuff and snarking around, which is welcome. I do like how it's sidelined, because it's really not the time to talk about the stuff Bobbi is keeping from Hunter when all these interesting Diviner stuff is going down. Slightly curious to know about what Bobbi is hiding, exactly, though I won't mind if they put it off until things have died down from the aftermath of this episode and maybe devote an episode to it.
Poor May doesn't get to do much other than the 'obviously they will escape the Hydra missiles' bit in the beginning, because really, that is supposed to be a cliffhanger? I mean, technically the actress Ming Na Wen is getting a lot of screentime playing two characters (May and 33) but May, as a character, relatively suffers. She gets some dialogue with Coulson talking about deaths and Skye and whatnot, but otherwise she fills the same role as Hunter and Bobbi, cleaning out the faceless Hydra mooks.
The Koenigs get a nice little mind-screw joke with Triplett, and apparently Coulson tells them to go to base and activate Protocol Theta, whatever the heck that is. Sounds pretty cavalry-like, though. They kind of get shooed out of the main plot shortly after the episode starts.
Lastly, Fitz and Simmons... it's not that I don't care about them, I really do. They used to jointly be my favourites among the cast, but lately they've been taking so much time up with their convoluted drama story and Simmons in particular have been the subject of a seemingly-pointless plot twist that spanned quite a while. But here they are pretty inoffensive. After the silly detente of the couple previous episodes, apparently they're starting to open up and work together again, even if there are some awkward moments between them. I thought that Fitz suggesting they split up (both Simmons and Triplett immediately shoot it down as a bad idea) is going to lead to something horrible befalling them, but I guess it's just showing that Fitz isn't completely handicapped by his injuries. Again, like Bobbi and Hunter, I'm interested in them and they deserve an episode or two. Yes, absolutely, explore their emotions and whatnot, but don't make it bloat up episodes that are leading up to something big and bog them down.
Still, that's enough ranting from me because I thought this episode was pretty good overall. Pacing was a lot better, there's a lot of stuff happening, and I hope this steers the plot into better stuff. It's pretty impactful. And really, all three of the superhero TV shows (Flash, Arrow and SHIELD) have had really powerful mid-season finales and it's been a blast talking about them.
No comments:
Post a Comment