Agents of SHIELD S05E18 Review: Sudden Death

Agents of SHIELD, Season 5, Episode 18: All Roads Lead...

Well, that's unexpected! This episode marks the end of the Hale Hydra arc of this fifth season, seamlessly moving into what appears to be a SHIELD-vs-the-Confederacy, with the Confederacy being the seeming final villain of this season. And considering the Confederacy is indirectly the 'bigger bad' to both Hale's Hydra and Kasius, it's kind of appropriate. But this episode itself is honestly a pretty great episode on its own.

A good chunk of the arguments done between Mack and other characters throughout his time as a member of the cast is the classic superhero "thou shalt not kill" argument, and this time around it's very interesting that the one who finally kills Ruby Hale ends up being Elena Rodriguez, inarguably the character that's closest to Mack. It's not a good death, either, not a honourable battle between warriors, or being forced to kill someone who's clearly deranged. Ruby was clearly confused and in the process of surrendering, and is also a young woman and clearly fucked-up in the head thanks to the Gravitonium. Elena ends up zipping in on her own volition, slitting Ruby's throat, and it happens so quickly and so ruthlessly, undoing all the goodwill that Hale and Coulson have built up for each other over the past couple of episodes. It's a sudden, explosive end to the Ruby arc, and it's very interesting to see how our characters deal with Elena's murder of Ruby. Like Fitz, she views it as doing the necessary thing to save the world, and is not at all apologetic. It's a well-done take where Elena's actions are deliberately ambiguous. Ruby is a loose cannon and probably had to be put down at some point, but at the same time she's clearly distressed and in pain that the method of execution was pretty disturbing.

But let's talk about the episode from the beginning. A good chunk of this episode focuses on Ruby and Werner forcing Fitz-Simmons to build the Gravitonium Device in order to transform Ruby into the Destroyer of Worlds and truly embrace her destiny. There's a neat sense of dread as Fitz-Simmons knows that if they enable Ruby (and therefore possibly cause the cracked-Earth timeline) they might survive since their survival is guaranteed there.  Whereas if one of them died, it sort of guarantees that the timeline might not pass, maybe... and they know that they're not willing to sacrifice the other to make it work.

Ultimately, they put Ruby into the machine, and she absorbed around 8% of the Gravitonium before screaming to be let out as the voices start to seep into her head. As SHIELD and Hale arrive, Ruby, now empowered with Gravitonium, is enough to battle her former idol Quake... but at the same time is screaming for the voices to stop, and the sudden, gruesome squishing of Werner's head like a beer can when she reached out to him... that was pretty fucked-up. It's probably as much a mercy killing as anything that Elena did to her.

Speaking of tragedy and fucked-up people, poor, poor Glenn Talbot ends up being the distraction that kept the main SHIELD team at bay from rescuing Fitz-Simmons in the first half of the episode. Poor Talbot is just so jittery and confused about anything, wanting to "finish the mission" but at the same time also questioning why said mission involves kidnapping a little girl from his mother. It's a good thing he didn't actually murder Polly in cold blood, and that Coulson is able to appeal to the inner father and soldier within Talbot to get him to stand down. Hell, I half-expected Talbot to pull that trigger and end his misery. It'd actually be a pretty sad-yet-somewhat-awesome end to the character. But it seems Talbot is still in this game, at least for a while. 

Other than that, we've got Coulson and Hale managing to find some middle ground until, of course, Yo-Yo kills Ruby. There's a fun bit of May dodging around Coulson's attempt at trying to talk about the I love you deal, and a fun series of action scene with May and Quake charging through the Hydra base with the Inhuman containment unit. Ultimately, it's a pretty great episode with a lot of fun shocking turns. We've cleared our plate of several antagonists with Ruby and Werner dead, and Hale seems to be in such despair that she's willing to turn Earth over to the Confederacy now that she has nothing else to lose.