Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Turn, Turn, Turn

Warning: Spoilers for AoS and The Winter Soldier

I don't know if it was someone's screw up, but for some reason Agents of SHIELD's next episode was already up on Hulu before it aired –– would probably be taken down at any time though.

The episode picked up right after the last ended; Coulson and Skye had their guns on May and no one trusted anyone. This episode happened at the same time as the events in The Winter Soldier. May revealed that she was reporting to Fury, but refused to say why because it was an order.

We later found out that Fury had May keeping an eye on Coulson; they knew Coulson would ask May to join his team. The scene where May told Coulson that *she* assembled the team, not Coulson, was chilling. Simmons is there to repair his body. Fitz is there to "reprogram" his brain. Ward is there to nullify him. It seems that no one knows if the alien blood would have any side effects, not even Fury. Coulson's team, including May, seemed to be unaware of Fury's survival. SHIELD is completely cut off from each other.

The best part about this episode is that you really don't know who to trust. I guess I should have listened to all the "don't trust anyone" warnings. Hand, who I assumed was the Clairvoyant by the end of the last episode –– who wouldn't, though, it was presented that way –– turned out to be one of SHIELD's remaining agents. At least that's what it looked like for now. Seriously, I couldn't tell anymore who's Hydra and who's not. My assumption is that Hydra agents know each other. Therefore, when asked to kill non-Hydra agents, they don't actually shoot each other.

Agent Garrett showed up early in the episode when he was trying to evade a SHIELD missile targeted on his plane, and he asked Coulson for help. I mean, he had a SHIELD missile on him, and with SHIELD presumably being controlled by Hydra, you would assume that Garrett is SHIELD right? Well, that's twist number 2. I don't even know how many twists and turns there were in the movie (probably three, hence the title?). Then again, I wouldn't have expected Sitwell to be Hydra! He's been there since the beginning! So has Hydra, to be fair.

So, I think, at this point, Garrett is the Clairvoyant and is a Hydra agent. The last "turn" happened at the very end. Hand and Ward, along with a couple SHIELD agents, were escorting Garrett to "the fridge." Ward, told by Hand to just kill Garrett, instead shot the SHIELD agents and Hand a few times. Does this mean he's also Hydra?! There are theories going around that he's actually a brainwashed sleeper agent, which is why he seemed off throughout the episode. Especially that "talk" he had with Skye. Too cringeworthy for my liking, and hopefully it was just because Ward wasn't himself. I certainly prefer Ward-May much more than I do Ward-Skye. Interestingly, in the after credit scene, Garrett was telling a story about a past operation, which he had previously told to Coulson. Is Coulson also a sleeper agent, and the story is the trigger? I doubt they would go that far, but how amazing would that be? Well, to be fair, I wouldn't expect the Marvel Cinematic Universe to destroy SHIELD seeing as they have a whole TV show around their agents. I guess Ward and Coulson as sleeper agents is still a possibility. Fingers crossed.

The thing is, though, after all that happened in TWS, with SHIELD basically destroyed and Hydra taking control, Coulson's team seemed to save "the hub" pretty easily. Sure they had help from a few agents but I would have expected a better fight. Hydra supposedly has control of the high ranking agents. But they sent level fives? And I know they're level fives, but what kind of training did they skip that Ward was able to defeat a bunch of them by himself?

Hand revealed that Hydra has control over "the treehouse" and "restaffing headquarters" (could be where Sitwell was stationed since it was mentioned that he recruited the agents). Hand was supposed to go to "the fridge" and keep Hydra off of it. So, what happens there now that Hand is dead?

The end of TWS revealed that Fury was going to Europe; Black Widow was laying low for a while; Cap and Falcon were looking for Bucky; Hill was at Stark. Now that SHIELD is in shambles, with no real leader, Coulson might be the highest ranking agent who is not Hydra. Would they still be "SHIELD" or are they now rogue Hydra agents? It would be intriguing to see how they would patch SHIELD back together.

I love that they used a Hydra logo at the end of the episode. Hail Hydra!



Well done, Agents of SHIELD, this is three weeks in a row you got me excited for the next episode. Although I'm worried that this is because the episodes are enhanced by the big budget blockbuster movie The Winter Soldier, and the show gets a ripple effect because of how good the movie was. The show can't have the big story that the movie had, so it really benefited from it. Now, all the show has to do is tie up everything nicely for the remaining few episodes of the season. Hopefully the show isn't just good because it surrounds a well done movie, but continues to be good for seasons to come. I'm now very excited for Avengers: Age of Ultron to see how much more distrust the Avengers have towards SHIELD as an organization, and how they would react to all this mess. Assuming with the information out there, they all know that Coulson is alive and they know what SHIELD/Fury did to him. Wonder if Cap would trust Fury after that?

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