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Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD Recap – Season 2 Finale: “S.O.S.”

By Christina Roberts

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It’s the season two finale of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. If you weren’t hyped up enough before this, then hot damn does this episode do it. Since it’s a double-length, the recap may be a little longer than usual. Let’s see how much I gush!

I did my best to keep this as organized as possible. Bear with me if it gets a little heavy-handed.

Not-So-Short Summary: The gist of the first four minutes: Jiaying claims Gonzales wants to terminate all Inhumans. May mentions Bobbi is missing, so Hunter takes off to investigate. Simmons gives an update to the team about what has happened with Gonzales, though no one knows he’s been disintegrated. Gordon infiltrates a quinjet and fires at Jiaying so bystanders believe it’s SHIELD. She plays the guilty card on Skye, asking why she would do this to her people.

May charges into Afterlife looking for Gonzales when she runs into Skye and tries to get her to come with SHIELD. There’s a Skye/May face-off where May dominates until Skye decides to use her powers and tell May she isn’t welcome in Afterlife. SHIELD retreats and its heads argue about what exactly happened. Coulson has no intention of starting a war without having all the answers, and he also doesn’t believe Skye would turn against them. By the way, what does Cal know?

Mack is getting ready to leave the boat when the news comes in that Gonzales is dead. He decides to stick around, see how it all plays out.

Inhumans: Skye goes to talk to Raina about what happens next because she’s sure Raina has seen what’s going on. She talks in riddles, about the past and the future being intertwined and puts it out there: Jiaying is misleading her people, and Skye is destined to leave. In an aside, we see Jiaying suck the life out of someone to heal her bullet wounds..

Bobbi-Front: Hunter and Fitz look at footage from before Bobbi left and realize it was 33 as May. Ward and 33 explain what they want from good ol’ Mockingbird. Bobbi apparently willingly gave 33 up to Hydra, knowing full well what she did. They want her to confess what she did so 33 can heal. She promises that if she apologizes under torture, it’s a lie. They’re not going to get anything out of Bobbi that easily!

Bobbi even tries to show 33 what Ward is doing to her, molding her into what he wants. She doesn’t buy it. Ward comes in later to work over Bobbi, but she throws the truth in his face. She may have betrayed one person, but he betrayed his whole team. It’s a very dramatic speech.

Then she breaks out of her binds and kicks some ass. Seriously, she goes up against Ward and then 33 and then both at the same time until Ward stomps on her leg, breaks her femur (or maybe her knee?), and hands a gun to 33, who can’t kill her because Bobbi’s not sorry or even afraid of dying.

So they tie her up and rig it so that the first person through the door will trigger a gunshot straight to the person’s head. They’re 99% sure it’ll be Hunter and they want her to suffer.

Meanwhile, Coulson discovers it was all a setup back at Afterlife while Hunter and Fitz drop the news about Bobbi; May and Hunter take off and find Bobbi’s quinjet in Spain.

Hunter, May, and a SHIELD TAC team raid the warehouse in which Bobbi’s being held. Hunter closes in, getting more and more desperate. He finds where she’s being held and as he opens the door, Bobbi leans to the side to take the bullet so perfectly aimed at Hunter’s head. May sets up a trap for 33, who’s still using her face. She sends her to a far corner of the warehouse where Ward finds her and since she looks like May, shoots her in the stomach. Multiple times. And kills her.

Raina tells Jiaying there’s only one thing ot save the Inhumans from destruction: Skye. She’s there to reveal the truth about Jiaying to the Inhumans, so Jiaying stabs her in the neck…with Skye as witness. She puts the pieces together while her mother is bitter about SHIELD breaking their peace. Jiaying’s bodyguard knocks out Skye and takes her away.

Coulson takes a first crack at Cal; it’s a no-go. Simmons discovers a million different ingredients in those vials, and it looks like a bad super soldier serum. One vial could kill any normal man. He took three.

Coulson goes back in. Cal explains about the serum–if he wasn’t born with Inhuman powers, he would make his own. He never got it quite right and it makes him “moody.” He’s in SHIELD’s custody to take out as many agents as he can. Coulson also realizes Jiaying is the real monster, using Cal to do her dirty work. The shock of it all sends Cal into cardiac arrest and they take him to Simmons, who gives him a shot of adrenaline.

And Mr. Hyde comes out in full. He tosses a bed aside and breaks out of the room. Coulson and FitzSimmons try to knock him out with icers, but it just makes him lose feeling in his legs. He chases after everyone with FitzSimmons leading him into a trap where Coulson pins him against the wall with a car.

Coulson has a heart-to-heart with Cal, discussing how they both want to protect Skye, how his fatherly love has blinded him all these years. He says that he believes Cal isn’t a monster. Cal screams he was trying to put his family back together; he reassembled Jiaying and she was never the same; before Whitehall, it was a village elder who sacrificed their life for her every few decades and she felt so guilty about it. Now, she doesn’t even think twice about it. Humans are worthless to her, and that’s part of the reason why he had to change himself, so he could be worthy in her eyes. He wanted to fix her and believed that promising to protect their daughter and fix their family would help.

Cal breaks free, grabs Coulson by the shirt, and says he will help him.

On the boat, Mack discovers unconscious Skye being carried off somewhere mysterious. Gordon goes after the Kree weapon and suddenly, the Inhumans have taken the entire boat. Mack faces off against an Inhuman who can multiply herself, and not just holograms like Loki. He breaks Skye out of jail to use her hacking powers while the Inhumans are going to load the crystals into the main air flow. Jiaying wants the emergency beacon to every SHIELD base to bring them all while Mack and Skye plan to shut it off.

Gordon and Lincoln look over the Kree weapon where Lincoln voices his doubts about Jiaying and what they’re doing. Gordon reminds him of how far Jiaying went to help him. Lincoln stumbles on Skye and shocks her, literally. She tries to give Lincoln the truth and he grudgingly listens because he’s already starting to doubt. He tells Skye where the crystals are, and Skye and Mack take off.

Simmons preps for Bobbi, who’s barely hanging on after that shot to the shoulder. Hunter’s in shock; the look on his face is sheer heartbreak. He waits by her side.

Coulson, May, Cal, Fitz, and others head to the boat to find Skye; Cal stakes claim on taking down Jiaying since this is a family matter. Fitz discovers a hidden message in the SOS from Skye: “It’s a trap.” Their lone quinjet continues on alone while the Inhumans prep to break the crystals when they arrive.

While Jiaying retreats, she finds herself face-to-face with Cal. He confesses that he failed them both. She’s done with him anyway, and Gordon teleports him to safety. Coulson and Fitz find Mack and Fitz sets up his contraption to contain Gordon. He ends up getting stuck in a ten-foot radius and this show toyed with my heartstrings when they made it look as though Gordon stabbed Fitz. But really, Fitz stabbed Gordon.

As Gordon falls, a crystal flies from his grip. Coulson leaps into the air and grabs it before it hits the ground to save the others in the room. Slowly, surely, his hand begins to turn to crumbling stone.

And that’s when Mack cuts off Coulson’s hand before it can go any further.

Lots of hand-t0-hand combat ensues elsewhere. Skye’s battle with five of the same girl is impressive and also feels and looks very much like a comic book. It’s another cool one-shot take, though not as impressive as the last one (again, because of the style). May and Lincoln come to her rescue and she heads off to find Jiaying, who’s taking the crystals elsewhere. Skye talks to her mother.

And that’s when Jiaying sucks the life out of her own daughter.

And that’s when Skye uses her powers to knock the quinjet full of crystals in to the ocean. Jiaying comes back for more, Skye starts shaking her. Cal comes to the rescue and offers to take the pain of killing her own mother from Skye.

And that’s when Cal kills Jiaying.

Fade to black.

It’s days later, Coulson’s doing okay and talking with Andrew. Bobbi is slowly recovering, and Hunter is still by her side. Bobbi says she can’t do it anymore. Mack is back, in charge of alien artifacts. May is taking some time off, looks like to reconnect with Andrew. Cal is on his way out, saying goodbye to Skye. “You know you’re better than I imagined,” he says. “And I imagined you perfect.” He’s going away for good. …And opens up a veterinary clinic, which I adore. But he also had his mind wiped by Project TAHITI to give him a fresh start. He’s now Dr. Winslow. Skye visits him in his new place of business and it’s a bittersweet feeling.

Ward is mourning 33 in a bar when he gets news that the heads of Hydra are long gone. Ward wants a team of Hydra around him. He wants closure. Five bucks says he makes himself the new head of Hydra.

Coulson gives Skye a new project: being the head of a team with powered people. It will be completely anonymous (Secret Avengers?!). They can’t get around everything they’ve done, they have to live with the consequences. There will be a rising tide from the ripple effect they have created.

We then see the crystals at the bottom of the ocean, leaking out into a group of fish, who are caught by fishermen, who are harvested for their fish oils, which are put into Omega-3 tablets, which are put on shelves.

Hot damn.

Post-Credits Stinger: Fitz asks Simmons out to dinner. Like a date. She says yes, and it’s adorable. Fitz leaves and Simmons starts cleaning up, only to notice the case around the Kree weapon is slightly open. She goes to close it right when it disassembles itself, absorbs her, and rebuilds itself as if nothing happened and it didn’t just make a person disappear.

That’s a way to end an episode, Agents of SHIELD.

Badass Moment of the Week: Bobbi’s break free from Ward’s chains only to kick his ass. I started cheering. You go, Bobbi.

Best One Liner: I had about five different ones written down, but it came down to Fitz uttering, “Science, biatch,” to Gordon.

But a tip of the hat to Mack calling Skye “Tremors” at one point, which is as close to “Quake” as we will get…but also had me thinking of giant subterranean worms.

May’s scene calling Andrew is a hint of sweetness in a dark and action-packed episode. It’s a side of Melinda we haven’t seen. The same can be said for the following scene where Simmons tries to bring up Fitz’s confessed feelings from the last finale at the bottom of the ocean.

What else can I say about this episode? It felt like an action-packed movie and I feel like I missed so many minute details. One thing I do want to say: I do enjoy that at least one person in everything Phase 2 of the MCU has lost a hand: Aldridge Killian, Thor, the Winter Soldier, Nebula, Agent Hartley, Coulson, Ulysses Klaw…did anyone in Agent Carter lose a hand? That’s thoroughness.

I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t know how I’m going to make it through to next fall until Agents of SHIELD returns. …What’s that, you say? …I’m getting married in August? Oh, okay, I guess that’ll help. Oh, plus Ant-Man in July. I suppose there’s enough to keep me moderately entertained until September.

In the meantime, keep a lookout for this week’s brainstorm session! I may also come up with some ridiculous theories I will expand on over these long summer weeks. Maybe even my X-Men: The Animated Series reviews will return at some point. All I know is that I’m here for all your Marvel Cinematic Universe needs.

Hail Hydra!

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