Season TWO! THE SECOND OF THE SEASONS. We’re to a new season. Wow. Who’d’ve thunk I woulda made it here? Not me. Just goes to show me that if I ignore all deadlines, I can achieve anything.
Oh right, I’m here for the show. Agents of SHIELD season 2. But what is SHIELD now? Hydra has taken over. They’re all still in hiding. How be good guys when people think you bad guys?
There is quite a bit of newness in this episode so there is quite a bit for me to ramble about. And so I will ramble. What are you going to do about it, reader? Exist? I dare you. That would show me.
I played around with the format of the recap, and it took a lot more effort. But I think the end result is more satisfying, if still a little rough.
Shiny New Toys
Let’s get introduced.
There’s a German Hydra man with cute little round glasses in 1945 Austria. AGENT PEGGY CARTER and a couple Howling Commandos take him into custody. His subordinate in Austria addresses him as Herr Reinhardt.
We see Reinhardt with the obelisk in 1945. It looks like a big silver geometric bowtie for a Transformer. The Red Skull thought the obelisk may hold “the answer to death itself” (what does that even mean?). It has already left some petrified-looking bodies in its wake. AGENT PEGGY CARTER packs it away in a crate and says “that, we must never touch”, but she doesn’t pack it with a sign that says “must never touch” which is an oversight that leads to the fall of Xena Warrior Princess. In the present, Phil will recognize from Fury’s toolbox that this is the very first 0-8-4. Though, Fury only knew that it killed people. So… we don’t know anything about mister obelisk. Side note: Dum Dum Dugan briefly opens a crate that has a BLUE BODY inside of it… like the one from the TAHITI tank that Coulson saw in S1E14.
Three new babies! Isabelle Hartley, Lance Hunter, and Nobody Idaho are mercenaries hired by SHIELD Director Phil Coulson. Hartley is played by Lucy Lawless and is perfect flawless no notes. Hunter is cockney and loves money. Idaho chews with his mouth open. Phil is familiar with Hartley, but clearly doesn’t trust the three together because he has them shadowed by real agents on their mission.
The mercenary mission goes south when a third party shows up and murders the second party. The third party is one super powered mystery man. His power is the ability to take on the properties of any material he touches. From the crime scene, Skye collected pieces of lead that bounced off from the bullet hits. When Fitz studies the metal, it transforms back into flesh! That is how we get his DNA and find out he is Carl Creel. He was marked off the SHIELD “powered people” index years ago when John Garrett faked his death and recruited him to Hydra. The baddies now pay him with cool rocks to touch.
A fourth new baby! There is a beautiful stranger introduced under the hood of a car in the cargo hold of the Bus. Trip calls him Mack(This short sequence with Trip talking casually to Mack always strikes me. It’s refreshing to see two black men interacting with each other on a network show, but the fact that it stands out is not great. I love it, though. Also they are the two hottest people on the show justsaying). He is already on the team. Don’t know where he came from. Hel-lo Agent Mack
At the end of the previous season, we landed the Bus in a secret base called The Playground where we met Billy Koenig. So the Playground is not technically new but we get our first real look at it here. It’s like a big…. y’know… building. There is a lot of exposed brick and I’m so into that. There is a legit window in Director Coulson’s office so they’re not underground. And yes, Billy Koenig is hanging around acting as Coulson’s assistant. Thank goodness. I can’t have enough Patton Oswalt.
Familiar Faces
Coulson has been aloof. He is often away focusing on recruitment because he must be able to get a read on people face-to-face to try to find loyal agents (yeah this all went over my head on previous watch(es). I’m glad there is this moment here to tell us he’s looking for others). When he is here at the Playground, he stays in his office to study the holographic info contained in Fury’s super secret SHIELD toolbox and to practice his new carving hobby. I love that he doesn’t object when May says she’s “in charge” of him. He realizes that he needs someone to watch out for him. This is some pleasant character development.
Skye has clearly been training as she now moves and dresses like a legit agent. She’s dropping down on ropes and shooting guns properly and whatnot (It never struck me before now just how big of a shift this is. In season 1, we saw her start to train and make very gradual progress, but she’s made great strides since then. And she’s got a bitchin new agenty field outfit like May. I like her new bangs). She has been tasked with interrogating their hostage because she is the only person he will talk to.
GRANT WARD is held hostage in the basement. He’s got a cool jail cell with an invisible force field wall. He’s been having a rough time blah blah. He promises to tell Skye the truth from now on. He gives up some vital Hydra intel which helps Koenig find hundreds of Hydra communication pings all over the map. And yes yes… Ward looks really good with the beard and the wild eyes and the rolled-up sleeves. I have now acknowledged it.
May kicks ass as usual.
Trip is fixated on the strangeness of Billy Koenig looking exactly like Eric Koenig. Cute fun meta joke A+. He also gets to go under cover as a general briefly and girl, you know he looks good. Trip gets my favorite line of the episode.
Coulson: Could you give us a moment?
Trip: Watch this.
*Trip walks away*
Brilliant. I will remember that.
Simmons is literally not on the team or in the episode.
And let’s see who else is in this show uh hm am I forgetting anyone? I think we’re good – wait – oh right.
Leopold Fucking Fitz. Jesus Christ. As far as his part in the plot goes, sure let’s run through it. He has brain damage as a result of almost drowning during the finale. He was supposed to develop some cloaking technology for the Bus, and he failed. Also, he is seeing and talking to Simmons even though she left the team a while ago (she’s imaginary). Look, the showrunners knew what they were doing. They took this floppy naïve nerd and kept him as floppy and naïve as possible while the rest of the characters were hardening up in the face of betrayal. And then they hardened him all at once and smashed him to pieces. Like a broken mirror, he has beautiful new facets as a result of his damage, but he’ll never be the same. It’s mighty effective. And fuck he’s captivating. His face is less expressive now that he makes extra effort to communicate. Interestingly, he’s not averse to being affectionate with this imaginary Simmons – much more than he was last season. I suppose in his current reality, she responded well to his confession in the sea (also, he’s noticeably hotter here. What is that? Is it the lighting in the playground? Is it the blue shirt? The facial scruff? Eh its probably just the trauma).
The Action
The team protects Brigadier General Glenn Talbot from Creel. Then they take Talbot prisoner to secretly get his fingerprints and trick him into giving up his call sign (I mean he didn’t like them before but he’ll be rightly pissed off now). Carl Creel was briefly captured, but he got out by turning into an invisible material which confused the guards enough to open the gate (I literally just read a Fantastic Four comic from 1962 in which Sue Storm pulls off the same move. It was always a cheesy escape, but I also enjoy it more than I did before I started getting into the comics. Uh oh I’m relating to the comic bros, help).
Coulson orders the team – May, Skye, Trip, Hartley, Hunter, and Idaho – into Talbot’s base to get the obelisk and “something else.” Hartley, Hunter, and Mack are expressing concern over how unnecessarily dangerous this mission is. Coulson tells them this is a make-or-break moment and if they don’t succeed, they will likely go under for good (I suppose they do everything they can here to make me buy into the danger of this mission, but I wasn’t buying it. I’d watched too much TV and was sure this was just another ‘of course they’ll make it, but how’ scenario. Welp… they really shocked me on this one). Hartley comes around to Coulson’s explanation and Hunter respects her enough to follow.
They use Talbots info to get into the base. Coulson uses a voice modulator to sound like Talbot and make a very fun phone call that aids the subterfuge. Hartley finds the artifact. She is attacked by Creel. Hartley grabs the artifact (because Peggy Carter didn’t leave a sign with it) and her arm starts turning to like…stone? She is not digging it. Creel runs away. The team tells Coulson that Hartley needs medical attention, but he orders them to continue with the mission instead. Hunter is pissed and drags Hartley out to Idaho who drives off with them. Our three agents stay to have a shootout. Skye and Trip escape on a stolen quin jet – which has cloaking capabilities – while May drives off on a stolen motorcycle (Eh I’m not sure how I feel about this. Coulson was willing to let Hartley die in order to get an invisible jet? Why was he so certain this would be their ONLY chance to get cloaking? Sure Fitz failed, but why does the technology exist nowhere else other than this one jet? Perhaps that explanation went over my head as well. Bottom line is, Peggy Carter should have put a goddarned “mustn’t touch” post-it note on that damn obelisk).
So…. Uh yeah the rest isn’t cheery. Hunter cuts Hartley’s arm off with a freakin knife because Hartley feels the obelisk killing her and she “doesn’t want to die.” Yikes. Creel attacks the car. The car flips. Hartley and Idaho look…. not alive at all. Creel turns his hand into rubber before taking the obelisk from HARTLEY’S SEVERED HAND. And uh. The end. Fuck.
Final Stinger
A suave-sounding British Hydra agent is giving a report of Creel’s success to … a man with cute little round glasses! The Brit calls him Dr. Whitehall, but he turns around and he is definitely Reinhardt from the opening scene! But he has an American accent now.