Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD Recap – “The Dirty Half Dozen”

It’s the reunion we didn’t even know we wanted: Our original Agents of SHIELD team! They got the band back together! They’re on a mission from God! How many more Blues Brothers references can I make?!

Not-So-Short Summary: We begin with Raina’s “dreams” and Skye, Gordon, and Cal returning to Afterlife. Cal throws a public fit about Jiaying taking him away from their daughter (smooth move there, pal), but Skye’s more concerned with a missing Lincoln. Even when she corners her mom in private, she gets nowhere because Jiaying plays the “I know what Hydra is capable of” card and says it’s not worth the risk.

Skye then tries to convince Gordon to take her to Lincoln, who says no until Raina says Skye can save him; she saw it in her visions. And where he will take her is far away from Hydra… for now.

On the Fake!SHIELD front, Coulson and Gonzales have another showdown again. Gonzales wants to know what Coulson has, so he gives him his intel: Strucker/List have a base in the Arctic where they are experimenting on Specials. He doesn’t like it because the intel came from “that thing” Hydra created, aka Deathlok. That’s when Coulson offers to open Fury’s Toolbox, but only if Gonzales will trust him.

Of course, for this covert mission, Coulson already has his team picked out, just like Captain America! He presents his plan of infiltration to the heads once they see that Deathlok’s eye has been removed, and they put it to a vote. May is the deciding factor and calls for a word.

We knew this would happen. We knew May would be outrageously upset with Coulson over keeping her in the dark. But it’s not the lying about where he’s been–it’s the talking with Andrew behind her back. In a discussion I thought would get a lot more heated, Coulson confides that he used Andrew for counseling during his “I’m writing in an alien language and can’t control myself” phase. He offers a lengthy apology for her later, but right now, they really need to rescue Deathlok from Hydra.

That’s when the band gets back together! They all board the Bus and freak out when it starts to close on them, but it’s just Skye, back to help them with their mission.

When everyone is gathered in the Danger Room, Coulson hands off the reins to Ward, who starts going through Bakshi’s intel. But everyone is glaring daggers at him and it’s hilarious. You can see Fitz’s anger bubbling up just beneath the surface. No one trusts Ward in this situation, and even when he bares his soul, no one flinches. He sounds sincere. “My actions destroyed this. I’ll regret that forever,” he confesses, but do we believe him?

“I’m still happy I shot you,” Skye says after a moment’s pause where Fitz agrees with her and Simmons wishes Skye had shot for his face.

Coulson’s plan was to be shot out of the sky by Hydra and to let the quinjet fall and look like shrapnel to cover their approach. It works. They make it to the base and find Bakshi ready and willing for them. They break off into their teams with Skye, Ward, and Simmons (and Bakshi) heading in one direction, the rest in another. Ward remarks about it being just like old times, and that’s when Skye shows him how wrong he is. She shakes back some guards with her powers, find Deathlok, and Skye bolts to find Lincoln, away in surgery.

The ensuing fight scene with Skye had a huge grin on my face. Somebody’s taking notes from that fight scene in Daredevil. A one-shot tracking camera where she shoots multiple guards, flips around, and makes me wonder when the hell she got so good at this stuff. And after that badass scene, she gets to shake Lincoln’s heart back to life, which is almost as impressive.

Meanwhile, Simmons sneaks away to disintegrate Ward because she wants to make good on her promise of killing him…only to have Bakshi interfere and die instead.

They save Deathlok and Lincoln and get out of there before fake!SHIELD can blow them all up, but not before Coulson gets intel from the base like Black Widow in Captain America: The Winter Soldier on the Lemurian Star.

Ward skipped out on heading back to SHIELD HQ to keep his memories in his head. But he does give Coulson 33 and tells him to do his best with her, because he’s not the right man to fix her and she had everything taken away. She should be given another chance. With Bobbi treating her like a normal person and everyone else dancing around her, I have a feeling she’s going to go wherever Bobbi does.

In an aside, Gonzales tells Bobbi that he got what he really wanted out of this: enhanced people under his roof in his custody. Bobbi seems silently outraged, but not for long because Coulson hands over Fury’s Toolbox and says he can do with it what he wants, but Fury will be back for it. And it took me far too long to remember that Gonzales doesn’t know Fury’s alive. That’s gonna be great.

Coulson takes a call from Maria Hill, which probably infuriates Gonzales even more. “Does that mean you found it?” she asks and he shows off his intel: Loki’s scepter. It’s in Sokovia (where Quicksilver/Scarlet Witch are from), and he says that Theta Protocol is ready. It’s time to bring in the Avengers. I’ll just end this with my notes while this episode was happening: HAWKEYE CAMEO?! COULSON IN ULTRON?! SO MANY QUESTIONS!!!

Post-Credits Stinger: Exclusive look at Age of Ultron. I won’t say anything more because some of you may be avoiding new footage like I tend to do in the weeks leading up to movies like this (though I heartily enjoyed this two-minute clip)

Badass Moment of the Week: Skye’s fight scene. Yet another scene choreographed/directed by Kevin Tancharoen, who also directed Mortal Kombat. And it shows.

Best One-Liner: “Really starting to wish I hadn’t eaten that Hot Pocket earlier,” Coulson confesses as their quinjet gets battered as it falls from the sky.

Runner-Up: “I thought her gift was to spin really fast and collect gold rings,” Skye jabs at Raina and it took me a full five seconds to realize she was talking about Sonic the Hedgehog.

Raina ended this episode having visions of men made of metal tearing their world apart. She also threatens Jiaying with taking over her position of authority and this is after Cal warns Jiaying of how dangerous Raina really is. I feel like Raina’s days are numbered on this show, which is fine by me. I love her as a character, but damn I wouldn’t be sad if she got killed off (which means Ruth Negga is doing a fantastic job portraying her).

Dr. List name-drops both Strucker and “the twins” and we even get Strucker on the phone. Thankfully, these little cameo nuggets don’t detract from the emotional pull of this episode.

There are so many things I know I didn’t even begin to touch on. Simmons’ blatant rage and anger at Ward felt very off-base to me until I realized that she hasn’t seen Ward since getting dropped into the ocean by him, so of course she’s going to be ticked off beyond belief. I would probably try to do the same thing if I was in her shoes. Still…something seems off with her and I’m beginning to wonder if Hydra didn’t do something to her while she was undercover. I mean, she covered up the fact that she straight-up murdered a dude and doesn’t seem fazed by it at all.

But we do get a great FitzSimmons scene, and it’s really great to see them getting along again. Especially with them being able to see first-hand that Skye is doing much better with her powers and not about to pull a Raina on them.

Speaking of Skye, hot damn. I know it was the BAMOTW, but that fight scene still has me reeling. I want to see more of Chloe Bennet’s Skye kicking ass and using her powers like that. It gives me hope for a live-action X-Men series…or even that this show will focus more on Specials.

Hunter also meets up with Mack, one of the few scenes with Hunter in it this episode, and tells him that he forgives him for what he did. But he still hasn’t talked to Bobbi. That will be big whenever it happens. We also get a very tender scene between Cal and Jiaying where she realizes her mistake of trying to get him to leave and allows him to stay in Afterlife for a little while longer.

This is it, guys, this is the week Avengers: Age of Ultron comes out! I was going to potentially skip a Brainstorm Session this week, but since I’m left with so many reeling questions, I think we’ll be posting it on Thursday instead of Friday. And it may be mostly around Joss Whedon’s aptly-timed tweet.

I hope you all have the chance to see Avengers: Age of Ultron sometime this opening weekend. Because next week’s Agents of SHIELD looks like it’s going to be good, and I have no idea what we’ll need to know from AoU.

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