Agents of SHIELD S05E21 Review: The Needs of the Few

Agents of SHIELD, Season 5, Episode 21: The Force of Gravity

Well, when all the ominous talks about having to choose to save Coulson or to save the world, I was expecting something more metaphorical... but it's apparently a literal (albeit slightly convoluted) choice. At the end of this episode, the fact that the Centipede serum is unique, and that they have the last of the Serum, means that they can only use it for one of two things -- create the cure for Coulson to prolong his life, or to use it as a way to inject the poisonous Odium into Glenn Talbot's system. And the SHIELD team has seen the future and they know that if they end up doing the wrong thing, the Earth gets cracked in half. The pacing throughout this season hasn't always been good, but the season did build up to this moment and it's a pretty great moment as it's got not just the force of a season behind it, but five.

The rest of the episode plays out like a great penultimate episode. We've got Daisy fighting against Taryan in a battle of the mind, where Taryan gloats that trapping Daisy in her own mind to be 'broken' as his Inhuman pet... only for Daisy to use the literal strength of will to break the device holding her comatose. Exit Taryan and the rest of the silly Kasius family, they've overstayed their welcome. Meanwhile, May, Coulson, Deke and Davis (oh, Davis) try to survive on board the Remorath ship while Talbot steals the Quinjet to return to Earth. Agent Kim (a.k.a. the one that's not Piper or Davis) dies, though. This leads to some pretty cool scenes, like the long-awaited kiss between Coulson and May -- which happens behind Coulson's arm-shield and gets witnessed by Daisy who reacts very appropriately with a "seriously, guys, now?" expression. May and Qovas also get to have a huge martial arts fight while Deke screams unfunny-funny jokes about symbols in the background. They end up managing to hack Qovas's ship and get him to essentially blow his own ship up, taking Qovas out of the equation as well.

Meanwhile, Glenn Talbot continues to be horrifying, going down to search for more Gravitonium. He meets up with Carl Creel in a hospital, and Creel is nothing but grateful and loyal to see Talbot back... but begins to notice how strange Talbot is acting. Credit where credit's due for the writers, they at least allowed Adrian Pasdar to actually act and look conflicted yet resolute as he tells Creel how this is "needed" and the pain will only last a while, before tricking Creel into turning into Gravitonium and 'eating' him. Poor Creel. But while I'm pretty sad at Carl Creel's death,with him being a very fun supporting character all season long, the big emotional punch comes when Talbot arrives at his family house.

And at first, everything's fine. He shows off his superhero powers to his kid, who's confused but glad to see his dad alive. But his wife ends up saying the wrong things, and coupled with her earlier betrayal when forced by Hale, it got Talbot to really lose his temper. The show stops short from having Talbot actually kill his wife in front of his son, thank god, but god damn if it isn't a tense scene. Mack, Yo-Yo and a bunch of soldiers show up, but bullets, cars and even Yo-Yo's super speed can't work against Talbot's Graviton powers. Honestly, the only thing saving SHIELD from being cubed is the fact that Talbot is still trying to maintain the facade of being a hero in front of his son George, who keeps asking him why he's fighting the good guys. It's pretty heartbreaking, but it's clear that whatever humanity within Talbot has been pretty perverted by his lust for power and the madness that Hale's brainwashing and the Gravitonium had turned him into. Talbot then continues to go with his plan to obtain more Gravitonium, with his justifications of it being for the good of mankind or for the sake of him being a protector of Earth wearing more and more thin with each sentence that comes out of his mouth, culminating in this episode with him kidnapping Robin Hinton.

The rest of team SHIELD is just getting us to the point in the climax, though. After dealing with Qovas, Coulson basically just falls over ill. Coulson gets to angst about how he's responsible, partially, for Talbot's madness. Fitz and Simmons end up working to come up with the plan to deal with both Coulson and Graviton, but they can only choose one. Although Fitz notes that they could break the loop by actually saving Coulson instead of "trying to", which... okay? Overall, though, it's a pretty great penultimate episode, and definitely builds up for a pretty explosive final episode. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The aftermath of the New York battle in Avengers: Infinity War play in the news reports Mack is watching. For obvious reasons, no superheroes or supervillains are actually seen. 
• Coulson's robot arm holo-shield thing finally returns after being absent for basically the entire season.