Yawn. stretch. Oh don’t mind me just waking up at 6 am in my pristine apartment so I can run on my treadmill in front of my bay windows and then pick out one of the pressed outfits hanging in my closet. Okay no I could never, but Jemma Simmons remains the paragon of productivity while I sit on an old futon hunched over this laptop 15 months late. Let’s cozy in while Simmons shows us how to get a day going.
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footnotes[1] spoiler are spoilers for future episodes
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Return of a Good One
Wait Jemma Simmons is back?! That’s the real alive Jemma Simmons. You can tell because she got her hair cut. Imaginary people don’t get haircuts. So here’s what’s up. Jemma is on a secret assignment for S.H.I.E.L.D.. NO ONE knows about it except Coulson and May. That is why all the other agents were all ‘boo Jemma’ last ep. She is undercover at Hydra! Hydra!! Jemma! Undercover?! At HYDRA?! Yeah I know.
This is first revealed to us through a fun little fake-out. After Jemma gets home from a day at her new Hydra office, Coulson is waiting for her. It momentarily plays out like he has discovered her betrayal… but he really just ends up riffing on her fridge contents. Then Dad makes steak and potatoes! Over plot potatoes, Jemma updates him on whatever she couldn’t cover in their fast-food-related dead drops. Apparently she hasn’t learned much because they aren’t giving her enough to do. Coulson tasks her with making friends at Hydra to help her get information. She compares this to what Ward did but Coulson convinces her it’s different.
She doesn’t get much of a chance to make friends before she is whisked up to the big brass where Sunil Bakshi questions her loyalty. She had recently discovered that the subject of her experiments was one Donnie Gill(Remember Donnie? He was that nerd from S1E12 “Seeds”. The nerd who kinda killed his friend and then smirked off with new ice powers). Bakshi suspects that she didn’t share her knowledge of Donnie on purpose and gives her the ol interrogator special. She handles this remarkably well. The Jemma from “The Hub” – who shot an agent when her lies got too wacky to handle – is gone gone. She got betrayed and nearly killed and now she’s Serious. Though, she is barely lying here. She’s learning how to make truths work so that she doesn’t falter over the lies.
Right so her answers to Bakshi check out, but this British man loves testing loyalties so she gets sent on a dangerous mission after Donnie Gill!
Take a Chill Gill
Donnie Gill has been hiding out in Morocco. He’s on the run from Hydra and everybody. He seems chill for a single second and then he horrifically murders a guy. Yes the man sold him out, but y’all. This boy… froze this man…. Froze him into an ice statue right… then knocked it over … so that the frozen BODY broke into dozens of pieces. Pieces of body. This boy cannot be redeemed. That’s it for Donnie Gill. He a villain. Gillain
He goes somewhere and freezes a boat in place. I gotta tell you I don’t know why he needed to freeze that boat in place. He keeps saying he wants to be left alone and then he puts a bigo icy calling card in the ocean
Fam
Skye is shooting guns now. Guess she found the safety. She has a chat with Hunter about the fact that she has never killed anyone. Yet.
Coulson has come back from a trip alone. He was seeking more shield agents but he aint found none.
He debriefs the shield team on Donnie Gillain without revealing his source. Fitz is great in this scene as usual. He can’t get words out but Mack is there to be hot and brotherly and translate for him. Trip doesn’t really get to do anything except ask a couple exposition questions, but it’s good to see him
Skye is interrogating Ward again. Just a reminder – rolled up sleeves, beard, piercing eyes – he looks Good. Skye mentions that the world loves and respects Ward’s family. The only time we had heard about his family before now was when we learned that Ward burned his house down knowing his brother was inside. So what’s up there?
Ward makes a salient point about Hydra being more successful than Shield.
“That’s why Hydra will win. Because when a Shield agent is weighing right and wrong, hydra has already taken the shot”. Baddies don’t waste time! They’re going after Donnie Gill so we will too.
Secret Basement Man
But we’re not all going after Gill. Fitz is left behind because he’s broken and Mack is left with him so it’s not as obvious. It is interesting that this big muscly man is added to the show and he hasn’t been put into any action so far. He just hangs around fixing cars. Right now he is trying to be a good big brother and play xbox with Fitz, but Fitz is too curious about all the secrets!
Aw Imaginary Simmons is still here! She tries to keep Fitz from searching for Skye’s secret asset. He does it anyway. Ho-ly. This part though.
Alright he goes into the dungeon basement prison and the cell wall is blocked off. He unblocks it and finds Ward! Grant Ward. The man who threw him and his lady love into the ocean. Fitz does a right lil freakout. I’m not gonna shy away from expressing how amazing my fav is in these scenes, but Brett is also killing it as Ward. Those eyes. He’s got friendly little evil eyes that look almost sincere – not over-the-top villainous. He’s talking softly while Fitz is stuttering and rambling. I love this Ward. He gets to try to be charming and endearing like he was in the middle of season 1, but now all of his sharp edges are in the open. The mix is perfect.
“I wanted to save you – give you a chance to escape like you always do – like you did.”
Fitz can’t express his pain in words so he turns down the oxygen in Ward’s cell to show him what it was like for him. Damn that’s excellent. And over Ward’s gasps he shouts “ because of what you did to me, I’m damaged.” damn. Okay but plot.
When Ward tries to ask for Skye, he finds out that Shield is going after Donnie. So now he gives Fitz some important plot information offscreen. Fitz flings himself around the corner – he’s good at that – and interrupts Mack’s xboxing so we can tell Coulson the plot news onscreen.
Hydra brainwashed Donnie. Donnie took the sandbox for Hydra, but the programming didn’t hold and he ran away from them. Now they gotta go after him to retrigger his programming like they did with Creel last ep.
We’re on a Boat
Donnie keeps fuggin freezing people to death. This is for the TENSION so that we worry for hydra simmons. And it is also to help us not be upset when he … dies… soon.
We see our shields shoot hydras to death! They are NOT using icers here because we have to be scared for Jemma’s life.
Bakshi is feeding Simmons the code words for the brainwashy programming but it gets cut short!
Hunter sees “hydra” talking to Gill and almost shoots Simmons with a deadly weapon. May notices what’s going on in the nick of time and shoots Hunter! Yay! She got him back. He was wearing a vest. He’s fine. Trip gets the Quote of the Ep:
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Hunter: “Agent May shot me”
Antoine Triplett: “Man, I wanted to be the one.”
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Simmons runs off. Bakshi intercepts Gill and successfully triggers his programming. Gill is ordered to freeze the boat to death. He starts to, but gets sniped by – agent Skye. Skye killed her first dude… and her pulse remained low. Cold. She then shoots near Bakshi to give Simmons the opportunity to push him out of the way – maintaining her cover. We steal goods hydra left on the not-frozen boat to take to our poor hideout. We see Donnie Gill’s body freezing underwater. And Skye mentions that his body was never found. Seems like a setup[2]welp naw.
Coulson is like “you almost killed Ward.” Fitz is like “i’m not a killer”[3]not yet, bitch! Dude your future is gonna get rocky, bro Coulson is like ‘duh I’m keeping things from you. We work for a super secret spy org. Get over it. But okay fine. Simmons is on an assignment for us. There!’
Oh There Was Also This Girl
There is a Shield agent being brainwashed by Whitehall the entire episode. She’s all ‘I’ll never work for hydra!’ and she is being clockwork oranged with a real uncomfy-looking eyelid peeling contraption. She’s strong and tries a lil bit of escape, but Whitehall is actually weirdly old and suuuper patient. At the end of the episode she looks happy and healthy and in complaince with her Hydra daddies.
Bakshi asks Whitehall to bring Simmons upstairs. Dun dun dun.
Logo
After-logo scene
Skye is talking to Ward. She wants to know if he was brainwashed. He’s like naw sorry i just suck all on my own. I swore i’d never lie to you. He’s telling her the truth now because he wants her to believe him when he says something important …………………………… here it is
“You’re father is alive. He’s looking for you. And someday if you’ll let me. I’ll take you to him.”
Now.. her pulse is up. Killing a kid she med a year ago didn’t do it but hearing about her dad did! Oooh this is serious.