Agents of SHIELD, Season 6, Episode 11: From the Ashes
At the time of writing the reviews for what I called the mid-season finale (the "Collision Course" two-parter) as well as the previous episode ("Leap"), I was under the illusion that season 6 had some ways to go. I thought it had like, at least six or seven episodes to go, but instead... we're basically in the endgame, which honestly meant that the awkward, clunky and very rushed exposition in Leap is perhaps the clearest we're going to really get about the true nature about Izel and Pachakutiq's species and whatever the hell's going on with them. And it's a shame -- the fact that we're basically juggling back and forth with the cast going "no, Sarge is evil, never trust him even though he has the same face" to the frankly shoehorned "he has a little Coulson in him, why can't you see???" back-and-forth is honestly pretty frustrating and tiring. To be fair, Clark Gregg's acting is great enough that I could see either solution being true, but season six has sort of... gone off the rails, yeah? After having a pretty interesting setup, I'm just really not feeling the whole narrative about Izel and Sarge's race of bizarre energy beings from another dimension.
And for the most part, episode 11 is basically trying to re-affirm to the audience and cast members not named Daisy the true nature of Sarge. The part of Sarge that originates from Phil Coulson (whatever the fuck that is, considering how confusing Sarge's creation is) is fighting over dominance with his true nature of the alien riding the body, Pachakutiq, and... I'm kinda confused that we basically go from "what used to be Pachakutiq's gotten amnesia and Sarge is the result" to basically a pretty tired split-personality-disorder thing going on. Daisy basically kills Sarge to get his "true self" to come out, kind of confirming the fact that there are two beings within Sarge, and this being has weird dusty powers. A couple of great scenes with the CGI effect showing Sarge's body breaking down into dust and reforming, and some great acting for both Clark Gregg and Chloe Bennett (particularly the "Skye" scene), but writing wise? Not so much. I enjoy the emotional confusion within Daisy as she basically resolves to do what May couldn't, and be an objective member that's going to do the hard thing they need to do, but gets blindsided by the fact that there's some bit of Coulson left in Sarge... but the buildup and execution is frankly lacking, and it's a shame because the actors really do give their all in this episode.
We also get a couple of neat scenes for Benson, even if the logistics of who knows what's going on with Izel's true nature is a bit confusing. Benson seems to be completely unaware that Izel jumps around possessing people, and there might be a information lockdown going on between episode 10 and 11, but all other scenes basically show the SHIELD agents talking about Izel as if they know exactly what's going on. Benson's been kind of a character that was introduced and then left to be the exposition machine to replace Fitz and Simmons for the earth crew, and finally we get some payoff via Izel summoning a monolith-created copy of his dead husband and the massive amount of guilt Benson has in the nature of his husband's death... and like the Daisy/Sarge scene above, while actor Barry Shabaka Henry does a frankly phenomenal job at really selling his character's story, the lack of buildup to the scenes makes it a pretty powerful standalone scene that doesn't really hold to water in what's basically a buildup to the climax. Benson gets his great emotional moment, then gets summarily written out of the story when Mack and Elena tricks Izel and ejects the holding cell to save Benson.
Izel then holds Mack and Elena captive in some temple somewhere, and then uses the Creation Monolith as a do-whatever plot device and have Mack and Elena imagine their worst fear, which summons Flint, their rock-controlling inhuman buddy from season 5's alternate timeline. Which... okay, yeah, why not? Meanwhile, Mack and Elena's relationship gets quickly patched up without much drama, Deke gets to hang out with FitzSimmons in a scene that was pretty well done but ran on for a bit too long, while we get a B-plot of random Chromicron (I'm never ever going to spell that name right) politics going on. Atarah's dead, and Malachi and his band of hunters have a new target or something, which just feels like "hey, by the way, things are happening in the background" before they come for a huge plot twist either next episode or the following one.
Ultimately, I did enjoy a lot of the great acting moments in this episode, but as part of a season, it really doesn't deliver the plot particularly well, honestly. Izel's main plan is not something we haven't seen before, basically just another alien domination plan using a couple of plot devices, and the awkward exposition on the true nature of the evil alien race is still clunky between the previous episode and this one. It's part of Agents of SHIELD's biggest weakness that it shares in its earlier seasons -- the buildup to the mystery behind its villains is great, but the explanations tend to be rushed and sometimes just kinda there, y'know? Thankfully, the show's definitely carried by the weight of its competent actors, and not the writing.
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