Agents of SHIELD S05E07 Review: Kree Cain and Abel

Agents of SHIELD, Season 5, Episode 7: Together or Not At All

This episode is pretty okay. There's not really that much to talk about in terms of characterization for our heroes -- other than a couple of neat Fitz/Simmons "we're reunited" moments and Mack's pep-talk to Flint, it seems to focus its characterization bucket on the Krees, or rather, mostly Kasius and Sinara. With the time-traveling SHIELD agents running around in the Lighthouse, Kasius is confronted by his older brother Faulnak. As Faulnak manipulates Kasius into having both of them send their personal best warriors to hunt down the SHIELD agents, clearly relishing the chance to assert his superiority, Kasius is confronted by his most loyal retainer (and possible love interest?) Sinara, who admonishes his weakness for wagging his tail before his brother despite how Kasius talks up a big game about surpassing his brother and father. It's an interesting bit as we finally learn a bit more about Kasius as a proper character as opposed to a preening alien overlord.

We also peel back the backstory as to why Kasius is disgraced -- he retreated from a battlefield during one war or other, while Kasius defends it as being put in an impossible situation, and the smartest thing to do is not to die for glory, but to retreat and recoup his losses, no matter how much that might stand against traditional Kree honour. A lot of tension and pissing contest is done between Kasius and Faulnak, and it's pretty interesting to see the two's struggles. Sinara herself, keeping most of her thoughts to herself, is chafing under a leader who doesn't seize an opportunity when he sees it, and very nearly turns tail to join Faulnak -- killing Faulnak's rifle-using hunter Maston'Dar just to prove her mettle. Fearing that he would lose Sinara, Kasius is finally shocked to action, stabbing his own brother and telling him that he will do whatever it takes to get on top, Kree honour be damned. It's an interesting angle, for sure, for our current villain, especially when Kasius's behaviour implies a lot that he is extremely dependent on Sinara as a pillar of support.

Meanwhile, the rest of the SHIELD team are just sort of finding themselves in various sub-plots. Mack tries to be a mentor to Flint and tries to get him to understand that it's not just a matter of using his Inhuman powers to fuck up the Kree, but Mack, Flint and Elena end up leaving to stay on the Lighthouse to basically form a resistance against the Kree oppressors. It's a bit of a sudden mission statement on the part of Mack and Elena, and a mighty reckless one, but I guess it gives them something independent to do instead of just being hangers-on to the main cast. Daisy and Coulson have to deal with meeting Deke (who I don't really care about) again, who swears up and down that he's on their side despite his past betrayal. After a fair amount of action scenes and a lot of fun jokes and one-liners, the SHIELD team end up stealing a ship to go to what's left of Earth.

Oh, and May and Enoch do battle against the Vrellnexian roaches on the surface of Earth, with what is I think the clearest that we've actually been shown the CG model of a Vrellnexian. We get May quickly realizing that Enoch was the man who sent them to the future, we get a little explanation about 'gravity storms', and Enoch brings May to an older Robin, leading the human resistance on Earth.

Overall, it's a pretty fun episode. Between the brotherly drama of the Kree brothers, the rest of the SHIELD team and their allies are neatly paced with a lot of fun jokes to break up what could otherwise be a dull episode. Good stuff.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner: 

• Gravitonium is an element featured all the way back in several episodes in season one, created by the scientist Dr. Franklin Hall (a.k.a. the villain Graviton in the comics).