IT’S BACK *flaily muppet arms*
Ahem, sorry about that, but I really have missed Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD over the summer.
In case you forgot what happened last season…well loads happened.
First off, Coulson isn’t dead, instead he’s running a team of SHIELD agents who travel around on The Bus – the most kick ass plane you will ever see in your life. The team includes:
Skye. Hacker turned newbie SHIELD agent who just happens to have some kind of mysterious alien origins.
Melinda May. So badass she’s known as The Cavalry. On her own.
Grant Ward. Team specialist, ultimate goodie two shoes…until it turned out he was actually a supreme evil bastard working for HYDRA.
FitzSimmons. Two adorably nerdy science types; Jemma Simmons is Biological Sciences, Leo Fitz is the tech guy. Super adorable banter and some growing feelings…until Ward dropped them out of a jet in a sealed container into the ocean.
So HYDRA (the bad guys) are back, and have destroyed SHIELD from the inside, so now everyone thinks SHIELD are the bad guys. Coulson and his team (minus Ward and with the new addition of Agent Tripp) are on the run, still trying to protect the world from things they don’t, and shouldn’t, know about.
Season two kicks off with a flashback to World War Two which saw Agent Peggy Carter (she of the imminent spin off) alongside the Howling Commandos raiding a HYDRA facility and taking a bunch of weapons and artefacts into custody. The final thing is some weird looking metal object that HYDRA call The Obelisk which is loaded into a crate, sealed and stamped with the designation SSR 084… 084 – the code modern day SHIELD uses for an Unknown Item of Alien Origin (like Skye).
In the present day someone is trying to sell said crate, or at least a high level security file pertaining to it, to three dodgy looking types, one of which happens to be Xena Warrior Princess herself. They are interrupted by someone on whom bullets have no effect, in fact they seem to just be absorbed. Anyway, he snags the file and takes off, May, Skye and Tripp appear and we discover that the three dodgy types are actually working with our team.
Meet Isabelle ‘Izzy’ Hartley, Lance Hunter and Idaho. Back at The Playground (SHIELD home since The Bus is grounded – giant plane with the SHIELD logo stamped on it isn’t exactly incognito after all) Director Coulson (Fury is on a break) is trying to recruit new, loyal, agents to SHIELD but is spooked enough by pictures of the original 084 to cancel his flights and get back to work with his team.
Skye and May discuss the lab and how the mood is, obviously Fitz is still suffering the after effects of oxygen deprivation and things are a little strained. Fitz seems to be struggling with remembering certain words and Simmons is helping him, he’s also considerably more introverted than he ever was before, and Simmons is extra perky to compensate. May comes down to check on progress and before their eyes the shard of metal that chipped off our Absorbing Man turns to flesh and starts to bleed – ewwww. DNA confirms the dude was meant to have been killed by Garrett, Mr HYDRA from season 1, but obviously they recruited him instead.
Skye has spent months analysing whatever the hell that was that Coulson was sleep-drawing on the walls at the end of season one but so far hasn’t got anything. Coulson comes to see her but instead of asking about the code he wants her to go talk to Wardand use his feelings for her to get intel on the Absorbing Man. Ward gives the team the way to track HYDRA agents, and to find the guy they are after and wants to tell Skye about her origins but she soundproofs his prison before he can. What on earth does he know?
Brigadier General Talbot (Adrian Pasdar and a terrible moustache) is out with his family when he gets a call on a planted cellphone telling him he is in danger.
He calls for reinforcements just as Creel arrives. May appears and drop kicks Creel and then vanishes as “reinforcements” arrive. However two of them just happen to be Hartley and Hunter and they spirit Talbot away while the real reinforcements fight Creel. There’s a brilliant little moment for comic book fans where Creel breaks off part of a chain link fence with a ball attached to absorb its structure, just like in the comics.
Creel is being held by the Army while Talbot is held by SHIELD. Coulson tries to make a deal with Talbot to work together but really it’s just a ploy to get his fingerprints in a far more hi-tech method than the usual “offer them a glass of water” trick.
Fitz is upset because Koning is running the analysis rather than him, he feels like he is being sidelined because of his condition. Simmons reassures him that she knows he is getting better and so does everyone else, he just needs to see it for himself.
Talbot gets the news that he’s taken Creel exactly where he wanted to go, the location of the original 084. Talbot refuses to co-operate with SHIELD so Coulson hits him with a NightNight dart and Talbot wakes up in his underwear in a car near an airfield.
The new team members question why the entire team is being sent into a secure military compound after Creel who is being guarded and surely is no longer an issue but Coulson tells them that Creel and the 084 are not the only things that they are going for. After some technological chicanery from Skye and Koning the team are admitted to the base where Creel and the 084 are being held and start looking. Hartley finds the 084, opens it and takes it out of the case with her bare hand when Creel attacks. It fuses to her and her arm starts to decay even as the symbols Coulson drew being to appear on the surface of the 084. Skye and May contact Coulson to see if they should abort the mission with Hartley being injured but he declines and tells them to keep on with the secret second objective. Hunter ignores the order and leaves with Hartley and Idaho. Hartley gets Hunter to cut off her arm before the 084 kills her.
Back at the base the team got what they had come for, a QuinJet with cloaking technology that will allow them to carry on their mission to protect the planet from the stuff it doesn’t even know about. Coulson knows Fitz was working on cloaking tech but since the accident doesn’t think he is capable, and since Simmons left he has been getting worse. Yes. Simmons has left. All the conversations we have seen so far between Fitz and Simmons have just been hallucinations, Fitz talking to himself. Yeah, I’ll admit there might have been tears just then.
Hunter succeeds in removing the 084 (and half of Huntley’s arm) to save Huntley’s life, sadly it’s all in vain as moments later Creel attacks their truck, flips it and Huntley and Idaho are killed. Creel takes the 084. The man who had been giving Creel his orders goes to his HYDRA superior, a Doctor Whitehall, who has been searching for the 084 for a very long time. Almost 70 years it would seem since Dr Whitehall is the HYDRA officer who was taken by Peggy Carter and the Howling Commandos back at the start of the episode.
So do we have our season arc already set here? The quest for the 084 and the rebuilding of SHIELD. Whether it’s that, or whether that only takes a few episodes to resolve and the overall arc for the season is something else entirely, I have a feeling it’s going to be great.
