Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Review – “What They Become”

Welcome to the winter finale of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.! I am back from my vacation in Disney World (where I did manage to watch last week’s episode!), dealing with a full-blown cold, and ready to dive head-first into this. Because a lot of cards were just put on the table, and I may or may not gloss over the summary portion of this.

Not-So-Short Summary: May has things under control where she has the plane dive for cloud cover, cloak itself, and deploy some sort of cargo that Hydra explodes and believes is the Bus.

Off in San Juan, everyone preps to ward off Hydra (pun intended!). FitzSimmons is finally FitzSimmons, trying to figure out what happened to Mack. They believe the city is using Mack to fend off danger. In the meantime, Bobbi is acting super suspicious and Hunter catches her, but trusts her anyway.

They discover that Hydra is already there, nearly on top of the chamber where Mack fell.

On the Skye/Ward side of things, he delivers on his promise and immediately takes Skye to her father. Have I mentioned how much I love Skye’s father? He reveals his name is Cal and his mix of nervousness and love is the perfect portrayal. Skye has none of it. He, too, has none of it from her and continues his diatribe. She tells him if he loves her (not exactly in those words), that he needs to get her out of here. He says she’s exactly where she needs to be.

When she goes off on him about working for Whitehall, he tells her he was just a means to an end, to finding Skye. He tells her that her mother was special, that it needs to be passed down to Skye, there’s a transformation–and Skye interrupts. It sounds very much like the Inhumans, which are pretty much all but guaranteed. More on that after the summary.

And it turns out Skye can touch the Diviner. She uses it to immediately kill several of the surrounding guards. But Whitehall gains the upper hand, knocks out Skye’s dad, takes Ward into his custody, and hauls Skye away.

Ward gets to face off against Agent 33. “There was a guy I used to be loyal to… then he went insane,” says Ward as Agent 33 explains that she’s not pro-Hydra, she’s just following Whitehall. Whitehall threatens to kill Skye in front of her father. He tells her that her mother’s special gift was that she didn’t age; Whitehall wants to discover what Skye’s special gift is. Before he can start his experimentation, Coulson and May cause a ruckus, sending Hydra in a flurry. Skye’s dad escapes from his paralysis thing (I imagine it is more advanced tech than what Obadiah Stone used on Tony Stark in Iron Man) to find Whitehall.

“I really want him to kill Whitehall,” my mom says midway through this episode. Unfortunately as they are about to face off, Coulson has the honor of shooting him and facing off against an enraged Cal, who gets away because Agent 33 comes to the rescue.

Ward breaks out of his bindings, unties Skye, and goes to check on the door…when Skye shoots Ward. Multiple times. I literally gasped at this and then started cheering (#badassSkye?). She interrupts her father wailing on Coulson and gives him the chance to walk away without any more bloodshed. He tells her that when she changes, he will be waiting for her. Then he calls her Daisy and leaves.

More on that after the recap…

Elsewhere, Skye is trying to get into the tunnels with the Diviner, but Raina has already beaten her to it… and found Mack, who leads her to the Temple. Coulson goes in after her, even though he’s a bloody pulp. As FitzSimmons and Trip surface (they were down in the tunnels in hazmat suits, placing bombs), they get the call from May, and Trip heads back down, exposed, to stop the bombs.

Raina finds the Temple and waits for Skye to show up. It floats over to the pedestal and traps Raina and Skye inside–and Trip, who came to get Skye. Coulson misses by seconds.

The Diviner opens, crystals form and grow, and a wave of air flies out of it and knocks them all back. Both Raina and Skye get turned to stone, but Trip stays fine until the crystals stab him in the stomach. The stones chip away from Skye and Raina and Skye brings the house down after watching Trip disintegrate before her eyes.

Before the credits roll, we get another Diviner-type object glowing with an older gentleman calling on the phone, asking someone, “Are you seeing this?” And he has no eyes.

Badass Moment of the Week: Skye shooting Ward. It was so unexpected and so badass and so in character that I apparently didn’t even finish this sentence initially. It was so unexpected yet perfectly in character that I found myself cheering way too hard for it. Don’t tell me I was the only one.

Best One-Liner: “But first, i get to kill the man who destroyed my life. Best day ever.”

Runner Up: “…You’re…welcome?” utters Coulson as Whitehall falls to the floor and Skye’s father starts to lose it.

This episode set up a lot for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We have an introduction to the Inhumans. We have the reveal that Skye’s father is Calvin Zabo, aka Mr. Hyde, the Marvel super villain. We have the reveal that Skye is Daisy Johnson, aka Quake. The Diviner is full of Terrigen crystals that will only appear when it is placed in the right spot. We get Skye’s Terrigenesis and a quick display of her earthquake powers. We get Ward shot multiple times by Skye, left for dead.

If I start on the Inhumans in this post, you’ll be here for quite some time, so look for a more in-depth post about it in this week’s brainstorming session, which I can guarantee will be absolutely crazy.

So at the end of this winter finale, who is dead and who is alive? I was surprised by Triplett’s death, mostly because (spoiler alert?) there were so many rumors of him being on the Avengers: Age of Ultron set. I still hold out hope that somehow, magically, he isn’t dead, but we won’t get an answer until March. And if this winter finale is this intense, how exactly will the episodes leading into Age of Ultron feel? I’m already excited.

Anyone have guesses as to who or what Raina has become? In the half-second glance we got at her cocoon breaking open, it looked like she had lizard skin. All I can think of is the Lizard, which is Spider-Man, which Marvel can’t touch (and which also makes no sense). And if anyone has any ideas about the gentleman at the end of the episode with no eyes, I am all ears.

Let’s talk about that scene of Skye and Cal meeting. His apology broke my heart. I will never stop singing the praises of Kyle MacLachlan. He plays that precarious line between heartbroken, heartsick father and absolutely crazy homicidal maniac so well. I even felt a little hurt that he wasn’t the one to kill Whitehall, but with all the buildup to it, I had a feeling we wouldn’t get that retribution. Their scenes together held so much gravitas, so much emotional baggage. I hope this isn’t the last we see of him.

I was also quite happy with the bit of FitzSimmons action we had in this episode. They aren’t back to what they once were (and I would be upset if they were because that isn’t realistic at all), but they are at least working together and not as super awkward as before. Anyone else feel bad for Fitz losing his best friend? Anyone want to guess if Mack will be back in some regard?

I am also intrigued by the Agent 33/Ward temporary alliance that seems to be going on right now. I assume that because of 33’s brainwashing, she is susceptible to so much else, because she really switched to following Ward a little too quickly for it to be believable. Where are they going and will Ward survive?

What is Bobbi keeping from everyone (except Mack)? Hunter knows she has some sort of side-mission going on, but doesn’t press her for answers because they are getting along. I don’t even have a good guess as to what she’s doing.

And you’ve got to love Marvel on Twitter:

With no new Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episodes for a while and Marvel’s Agent Carter not starting up until January, be prepped and ready for more exposition and brainstorm articles than you’ve ever read! With how much this show just laid out on the table, that shouldn’t be surprising. We have three months to figure out where we go from here.

No more Hail Hydra, people. From here on out, it’s all about the Inhumans, whether they call them by name or not.