Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Review – “Yes Men”

It’s the episode I think everyone has been waiting for–because it makes Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. feel like a show about superheros…and isn’t that what we were expecting in the first place?

Not So Quick Summary: We pick up with Lorelei and the puppy-dog newlywed who have found a biker gang. She ditches the newlywed for Rooster, the leader of the gang, and sets up shop in the bar. Because siding with bikers inevitably leads to world domination…or something.

Skye is recovering nicely, but there’s no time for that because Fitz is getting readings similar to what Jane Foster and Dr. Erik Selvig saw in New Mexico. Which means Asgardians. We get the arrival of The Lady Sif, of Asgard. (Side-note, and Thor: The Dark World SPOILERS: Does Sif know that Thor is back on Midgard? Or is he free to come and go from Asgard as he pleases so he may not be on Earth at this point in time?)

It’s a little jarring when Sif is aboard the Bus and Coulson walks into the room. “What sort of dark sorcery is this?!” she says on his appearance. Because to the rest of the universe, Coulson has been dead since 2012–heck, Thor saw him get stabbed in the heart. Sif had encounters with Coulson in the first Thor movie, so their scenes together have much more gravitas. Coulson tells her not to inform Thor of his revival; he would like to do that in person. So when will Coulson be back in the movies?

They track Lorelei down to the bar, and that’s when Lorelai gets a hold of Ward. It turns into a huge focus on Ward and May’s relationship, which I never really found myself caring about because they’re both professional enough to not let it affect them. The Coulson Crew follows them to Vegas and finds their hotel room, but the pair is missing.

We get Lorelei and Ward sneaking back onto the Bus and taking control of everything. One of the funnier moments of the episode was when Coulson finds Fitz, who is hilariously under Lorelei’s spell. Coulson fakes it. The stupid look on Fitz’s face had me laughing. Also, the other funny part was when Coulson asked Sif for cover outside the bar and she proceeded to kick a trailer in the way to literally cover them. Awesome. I love the literalness of Asgardians.

Ward starts flying the plane and ejects Sif from her room. Someone makes a comment to Coulson that she’s been ejected. “Are you kidding?! She’s Asgardian, she’s still out there! Let her in!” And of course she’s still hanging onto the outside of the Bus.

Once she gets back inside, it’s a showdown in her room between her and Lorelei. It was great choreography and naturally Sif gets to be a badass. There’s a moment of Lorelei goading Sif about Thor’s heart not belonging to her, but much like the passing comment in Thor: The Dark World, not much is made of it.

Lorelei is defeated and returned to Asgard in chains, very similarly to Loki at the end of The Avengers. And yes, I was having too much fun drawing the parallels.

Let’s not forget about the fight scene between May and Ward, which was pretty sweet. I love that even after Ward says he’s back to himself, no longer under Lorelei’s control, May still punches him. He deserves it.

Best One-Liner: “How was Tahiti?” “It sucked.”

Badass Moment of the Week: “Where’s Lady Sif?” FitzSimmons asks. BAM! She appears from above the doorway in a dramatic Asgardian fashion and it’s awesome.

So Sif drops the bomb and says that Odin has requested Lorelei to be part of an elite Asgardian army, no longer rotting away in a cell, unable to talk. Now if you’ve seen Thor: The Dark World, (SPOILERS) then you know that Odin is currently Loki. I’ve got to think that whatever plan the MCU has up its sleeve, this will actually be a really sweet tie-in for Thor 3. “Odin is Loki!” I sang out loud after Sif said this, and yes I know that I probably have some serious issues.

In one of their down-moments of privacy between Coulson and Lady Sif, we get to see Coulson mining for information. What alien races are blue? Interdites, Levians, Pharagots, Kree (!!!), Sarks, Centaurians, but the only race that has visited earth would be the Frost Giants a thousand years ago. That makes the alien in the exploded bunker a lot fishier.

And we get a huge plot twist in the last thirty seconds after Coulson and Skye start their undercover plans to find out what’s really going on with GH-325. The camera pans to a hidden microphone in the room and we see May calling an encrypted phone on an encrypted line, telling someone (Fury? Garrett? Hill?) that Coulson knows. So May’s the mole in the ranks, trying to keep Coulson’s nose out of what happened to him.

Now that’s plot development!

We don’t get a new episode of S.H.I.E.L.D. next week, but we do get a cool featurette about the Marvel Universe that will include sneak peeks at Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. Don’t get your hopes up for that last one–filming just started, so it will probably be promotional-type things and not actual footage.