One thing I’ve always really appreciated about “Shield” is that it doesn’t drag out the inevitable. The status quo generally shifts just before you get fed up with waiting for Coulson to find out about X or the bad guy to do Y, so I’m grateful that Skye’s transformation is out in the open now. If only the same could be said about Mac and Bobbi. I detest their B plot in this and every episode, carefully circling around a big reveal, dropping hints in the worst “Lost”-esque fashion. I’m over it. I was over it from the start. Their reveal better be catastrophic or bring in a major character. Even if that is the case, I think the way they’ve dragged things out was poorly executed. If this is something that’s meant to be timed with “Avengers 2″ I’m going to be frustrated.
The Inhumans mythos is deep and complex and opens so many doors for the MCU. I’m glad they are using the series as a way to introduce these big ideas before the film. This episode took a familiar “violent meta on the run” formula and subverted expectations to tie it back into the season arc in a unique way. This was a big episode and things developed here that are going to impact the future of the MCU, that’s what I love about this connected film universe.
Early in "Who You Really Are," Coulson shows Lady Sif a photo of their adventure from the show's first season, and for quite a while, this felt like a throwback to that directionless pre-"Winter Soldier" phase of the series — when it was less a TV show in its own right than a collection of footnotes for the more successful parts of Marvel's live-action empire — mixed in with some of this season's more frustrating traits.
I get that Jaimie Alexander is one of the few recognizable actors from the films who's available to periodically stop by "SHIELD." And I get that using an Asgardian's knowledge of the larger Marvel cosmos was an easy way to explain a lot of the backstory involving the Kree and the Inhumans that's driving what's going on with Skye. But even with Eddie McClintock playing interestingly against type as Vin-Tak of the Kree, the info dump of it all was clumsy, and the idea of an amnesiac Lady Sif wasn't nearly entertaining to justify the amount of time spent on that (including her acting very much like an Earth teenager with her "Shut. Up!"), or on the various Superhero CSI antics that were better left behind in season 1. And too much of the episode involved characters making big emotional decisions based on secrets, whether they were ones characters like Skye and Fitz were keeping from each other for reasons the show never did a good enough job justifying, or ones where characters like Bobbi and Mack were keeping secrets from both the other characters and the entire audience. There comes a point where the latter stops seeming intriguing and just becomes a protracted, annoying tease, and we reached it here. Bobbi and Hunter have made for an entertaining couple, but how can we be expected to care about her being torn between her feelings for him and her devotion to whatever her hidden agenda is if the show won't tell us anything about it?
This week on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the gang took a detour from the adventures of Inhumans, Hydra, and Bears (Oh my!) to welcome Lady Sif back into the fold once again. This time around, Sif emerges from the ocean in Portugal and can’t remember her name or anything about her life in general. Jaimie Alexander as Sif is always a welcome addition to the show, as it’s obvious from watching her performance for more than two seconds that she loves the role and is ready and willing to jump back into the armor at the slightest notice. Hopefully, whether it be on NBC or Netflix, someday down the line we can get a Lady Sif television show. It’s great to see that she can not only hold down the action beats, but also can quip with the best of them (like Coulson and May), quite like Hayley Atwell’s Agent Carter.
On the team front, man, did I ever hate the subplot of trying to hide Skye’s powers from the rest of the team. It’s just completely ridiculous, and Simmons’ constant “we really need to just eradicate the VIRUS!” cracks are out of nowhere. It seemed like this was created to just be another “drama bomb” to hang over the heads of the team, so it was nice to see it done away with in a timely manner in this episode. The team has needed someone who could fall right into the “powers department,” and having that person be Skye gives the audience a nice twist to the character originally introduced as the P.O.V. agent. Even with that addition, however, I still think that the Agents are a little top-heavy in general, and could perhaps let another member or two loose. The most surprising part of this episode was the amazing exposition dump from the revealed Kree warrior, Carver, who was fighting Sif, causing her to lose her memory at the start. If you were wondering what the origin of the Inhumans was, it’s all laid to bare as Carver goes into detail about the Kree, who they are, how they created super powered beings, and so on. I know I usually rally against the idea of letting plotlines dangle for too long, but this is something that I feel should have been revealed at a later time, and with much more gravity. After so much buildup to the Kree in the first season, for the Agents’ first encounter with this alien race to be … some guy, just really took the wind out of the sails of what could have been an amazing reveal. To be honest, I thought Carver was going to be revealed as a Frost Giant, especially with him pumping liquid nitrogen into himself.
Back around to the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. themselves, the drama from this episode also came from the secrets of Bobbi and Mac, who are talking to one another in the shadows, and having to keep Hunter at arm’s length to stop him from discovering whatever it is they’re doing. Ultimately, this just feels like a retread. Whether the duo is working for Hydra or Nick Fury or heck, even Tony Stark, it just doesn’t have the same urgency that we had when everyone was being shown to be agents of Hydra in Season One. It feels like a subplot spawned to eat show time and give these characters something to do, when it will ostensibly be revealed that they were secretly good the whole time but had to keep it from the team “because reasons!” It rings hollow, and there surely MUST HAVE been some better plot to give to these two. The in-fighting at the end of the episode among the team about what should have been done with Skye — only for the camera to pan back to show that Skye had been right there the whole time — is just a cliche that’s been done a million times over. In the long run, this episode was very middle of the road from last week’s spectacular outing. While the plot was on point and Sif was a welcome return, the group dynamics were awful and the secrets are becoming a bit much at this point. However, next week promises the return of Kyle MacLachlan and his team of newly assembled super villains! Really looking forward to that one.
Positives:
-Lady Sif duh
-We have Kree contact!
-May: “Skye, do you wanna talk to us?”
-Didn’t have to wait for Skye’s secret to come out
Negatives:
-Still waiting for Mac and Bobbi’s though…
-That truncheon looked ridiculous
Easter Eggs:
– Man, Daredevil looks REALLY good. That commercial they played during one of the breaks was amazing.
– Whenever something Asgardian appears in the show, it’s a treat insomuch as you get to wonder what is happening in the “Realm Eternal” with Loki currently posing as Odin, following the end of Thor: The Dark World. Why did he really send Sif to Earth?
– I know why they can’t really have Thor drop into the show, but it does seem a bit funny that they wouldn’t attempt to make some sort of contact with him since he is on Earth and hanging out in Avengers tower, and this was straight up Asgardian business.
– Skye: “Going full Mortal Combat?”
– Bobbi: “Fun was never hard for us.”
– Police Officer: “Pick up her sword from booking before you go.”
– Coulson: “I’m sure he’ll turn up somewhere.”
May: “Twitter…Skye found it.”
– Sif: “My mind is that of a lost adolescent!”
– Coulson: “Who can explain the mysteries of the Asgardian brain?”
May: “I can.”
– Sif: “Answer his question, elderly man!”
– Skye: “He’s like Willy Wonka blue.”
– Sif: “We don’t need you to talk!”
Coulson: “Actually, we do.”
– Carver: “That’s noble. Stupid, but noble.