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13 best Agents of SHIELD episodes ranked from worst to best

By Wesley Bell

MARVEL AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. - ABC's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." stars Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson, Elizabeth Henstridge as Jemma Simmons, Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, Jeff Ward as Deke Shaw, Iain De Caestecker as Leo Fitz, Ming-Na Wen as Melinda May, Henry Simmons as Alphonso "Mack" MacKenzie, and Natalia Cordova-Buckley as Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez. (ABC/Mitchell Haaseth)
MARVEL AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. - ABC's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." stars Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson, Elizabeth Henstridge as Jemma Simmons, Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, Jeff Ward as Deke Shaw, Iain De Caestecker as Leo Fitz, Ming-Na Wen as Melinda May, Henry Simmons as Alphonso "Mack" MacKenzie, and Natalia Cordova-Buckley as Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez. (ABC/Mitchell Haaseth) /
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MARVEL’S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. – ABCs “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.Ó stars Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson. (ABC/Matthias Clamer)
MARVEL’S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. – ABCs “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.Ó stars Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson. (ABC/Matthias Clamer) /

4. Self Control – (Season 4, Episode 15)

While season 4 had many plot threads, they organized them by splitting the season up into pods. One of those pods centered around Life Model Decoys, lifelike robots created by Fitz and Holden Radcliffe to replace field agents. After Radcliffe became corrupted by the Darkhold, he started abducting team members, replacing them with L.M.D., and uploading them into the Framework, a virtual world he designed.

After Simmons and Fitz walk into a room and set off the detector that alerts them that one of them was replaced by an L.M.D., they almost immediately turn on each other. Fitz tricks Simmons and stabs her, but she overpowers and kills him. At the same time, Daisy stumbles across hundreds of L.M.D. duplicates of her, hiding among them from Mack, who had also gotten swapped.

Simmons and Daisy run into each other, and while they’re both distrustful at first, Daisy uses her powers to prove she’s human. In one of her best action sequences in the entire series, Daisy fights against the L.M.D. versions of Mace, Mack, and Coulson, defeating all of them. After convincing L.M.D. May to help them, Daisy and Simmons escape on the Zephyr before plugging themselves into the Framework to try and rescue their friends.

Since most of the team got replaced with emotionless decoys, the bulk of the emotional acting weight falls on Elizabeth Henstridge and Chloe Bennett. Iain Decaster also delivers an outstanding performance for the brief time he was on screen, selling both versions of his character before his demise. Much like “Turn, Turn, Turn,” this episode perfectly handled the paranoia aspect, trading the espionage story for body-snatching horror, making it difficult for the audience to know who could and could not be trusted. It’s a gripping final episode of the arc and a perfect transition to the Framework storyline that would close the season.

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