This week’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. melded the right amount of superheroes, as well as the right amount of paranoia and all sorts of things spy-related. The Secret Warriors assembled, kicked much Hydra ass, and end up saving the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D team. However, Hive revealed that he has an inside man on the Secret Warriors who will work for him.
The episode began with the Secret Warriors going into the Hydra base all commando style. This was a rather impressive display of each of them using their powers effectively. Joey’s powers are metal manipulation, so he’s very handy when it comes to melting bullets as they are being fired at them. Yo-Yo using her “Flash” like speed-then-come-back powers was very effective beating up many guards at one. One person’s who’s powers are continuing to evolve are Lincolns. We thought he simply could shoot electricity from his hands. Turns out she also has complete control over the electricity after it leaves his hands, and we see him forming “electric lassos” while he is fighting Hydra agents. As they are also fighting Hydra Inhumans, Joes kills Hydra Inhuman Lucio by stabbing him, which is clear is a first for him and he’s not comfortable with killing. The group does a good job not only saving Coulson and the team but then capturing Malick as they all escape the Hydra base on their ship. As Hive was watching their escape he gleefully watched with the knowledge that he has turned one of the Inhuman agents to working for him….. But who is it?
The bulk of the episode remained at the S.H.I.E.L.D. base location and began with an interrogation of Malick. As Coulson was speaking with him, Malick was a defeated man. Waving watched his daughter die by the hands of Hive, he no longer is on Team Hydra. With ease, he begins to tell some details about Hive. The most important intelligence he tells them is that Hive has the ability to infect other Inhumans to do his will. Perhaps that’s why he is considered their God because he has the ability to make all of them bend to his will. This fills Coulson with worry. Is Malick lying, or is he telling the truth? If he’s telling the truth, who is the one under Hive’s control?
This starts the entire base to be filled with a frenzy of paranoia. Everyone begins to look at the Inhumans with worrisome eyes. At first, they try and keep the Secret Warriors in the dark with what they know, but they eventually find out, and they strike back. Almost keeping with the trend of the upcoming Captain America: Civil War theme, friends at odds with each other. When the power is turned out and Malick is killed by “someone” that fuels the paranoia even further. Even the Inhumans are not trusting each other as everyone is trying to figure out who the bad guy is. Each of the Secret Warriors is painted in a dark way that would make the audience think they were the one turned. Fitz and Simmons did some dissecting of Lucio’s brain where they then determined that Hive is, in, fact, using his parasite-like abilities and infecting Inhumans’ brains, even to the point where Lucio’s dead body still had a normal body temperature.
Although Daisy was leading the Inhumans to escape the base, she really was setting a trap for them to be caught by Coulson and the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Once they were cornered, all evidence pointed to Lincoln and he was placed into custody. However that was just an elaborate setup to reveal the true culprit, and it was none other than fan-favorite character Daisy. A brief flashback displayed Hive’s power infecting her, and then we see just how cunning she was in setting up her boyfriend to take the fall so she can escape with the Kree device (from last week) and some Terrigen crystals to make more Inhumans in service to Hive. As Daisy makes her escape, she essentially locks everyone in the base with no way out and then uses her quake powers to cause an avalanche trapping the team in.
This was a great twist ending. The show has gotten better and better each episode this season. Just when you think they are running out of steam on the Inhumans storyline (by the time the Inhumans movie come out in 2019, we’ll be tired of it!), the show finds a way to further impress us and make it more exciting. Having Daisy be Hive’s agent betraying S.H.I.E.L.D. is just as bad as having Ward be a Hydra agent and betray the team back in season one. It’s even more heartbreaking because she has been one of the team since the very first episode. She was essentially the audience’s avatar because we were first introduced to the show through her eyes. He turning is all the worse for the team because it looked like it could have been any of the other ones. In the relationship department, it first seemed like Mack and Yo-Yo would be getting together. After all, he not only gave her, her codename but he also learned Spanish so that the two of them could flirt even more. However because of all the paranoia and him treating her as “the enemy” this episode, it looks like that relationship is a nonstarter. However, we got our favorite couple back together. Fitz and Simmons finally (again) decided to let their feeling for each other not be contained and kissed each other. Too bad they are about to get covered in concrete by Daisy’s quake. Turns out that Malick’s death did occur the same way his vision did, so future-death-predicting Inhuman Charles Hinton from two episodes ago is still predicting everyone’s death accurately. That doesn’t bode well for whoever will die in that spaceship in Daisy’s vision. With Charles‘s visions coming true and Daisy now working for Hive, it looks like that future may be coming true. We’ll have to wait until next week to see how that works out.
