OK, guessing with a title like that this is going to be alien scribbles a-go-go, ooh and some Tahiti stuff!
Rhinebeck, NY – a couple on a date get home, she’s trying to figure out where they know each other before since they noticed each other in a bar. OMG IT’S CREEPY TATTOO GUY FROM THE END OF LAST EPISODE and you can almost guarantee that’s not going to be a good thing. He starts unbuttoning his shirt – little bit forward – and she freaks out, even more so when she sees the tattoo and he pulls a knife.
Coulson is doing some carving of his own with a wicked jazz soundtrack until Skye interrupts, she’s on chaperone duty while May is off with Hunter and Bobbi searching for the escaped Ward. She’s been searching and trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. Ward knows her dad, who has the Diviner, which is connected to the writing, which has something to do with the GH serum that she and Coulson both have in their bodies…yeah that is quite a puzzle. She has been trying to match the ‘map’ but so far hasn’t come up with anything. Coulson begs her to keep going because they need answers.
May and Bobbi are looking for Ward who is in Philly, Trip clocks him first but May orders him to follow and not engage. Ward picks up a bag of passports, money, guns etc and Coulson then orders his team to bring Ward in by any means necessary. Trip is about to until Ward walks past and flashes him a glimpse of the C4 strapped to his chest and the dead man’s switch in his hand, enough explosive to take out the block. The team back off.
Skye brings bad news from one of her sources – crime scene photos that feature their alien writing – yep, creepy tattoo guy’s handiwork on the nice artist lady. Coulson recognises the woman,he says she was SHIELD. They go and visit the crime scene and find a bunch of paintings of the alien writing, one of which says “A Magical Place” at the bottom…oh hello…I thought that was just a Coulson thing! Coulson arranges the paintings and realises that they are the same design that he was working on but with some extra bits. Skye finds the artist’s SHIELD info but it says that she died 5 years before of cancer and asks how that is possible – well they will have to autopsy the body that Mac and Fitz have just stolen – Corpse-y Diem – Seize the Dead! Fitz, your brain might be a bit off but that was adorkably funny.
In Atlanta Ward gets off a bus. Bobbi is reading a book nearby while Hunter lounges on a bench (in a cowboy hat…). Ward seems to notice them both before he walks straight past to help a mother and son with their bags onto another bus to Dallas. He doesn’t sit with them though, he plonks down next to Bobbi and blows her cover. She hasn’t moved on in her book since she was sitting outside so she must be SHIELD (she was on the bus before you dude, maybe she had only just turned to that page when you walked past outside, stopped, got on the bus and had just opened the book again…ever think of that smart guy?). She plays dumb until he shows her the bomb trigger in his hand. He gets off the bus leaving Bobbi on board and boards a bus to Boston instead, the bus a Southern accent rocking Hunter is on.
Simmons says that the artist died from cardiac arrest rather than the wounds, very common in ritualistic murders like this. She also recognises the carvings as the same as the ones Garrett was doing. She says that there was GH325 in the artist’s system as well ass in the killers. Skye and Simmons have a lot of questions that Coulson is unable to answer to he says they will have to torture them out of him using Raina’s memory machine. Oh goody, cos that went so well last time. Skye is reluctant but Coulson insists. He starts reliving memories of interviews with Tahiti patients, including creepy tattoo guy. After treatment they all started losing it in some way, writing/carving, hair pulling, drooling, you know, usual batshit crazy stuff. Coulson wanted to shut the project down and destroy the alien producing the GH serum but the scientist he talks to says they can’t do that, the alien predates the pyramids (okay, time to start the speculation on who/what big blue is?). She suggests that the genetic material from the alien is overwriting the host memories and that maybe if they wipe their minds it would fix it. Skye forces Coulson to recall the new identities of those agents who were wiped.
In Boston Hunter (sadly minus the hat and accent now) trails Ward to a bar where he is welcomed home by the bar tender right before Bakshi shows up. Ward and Bakshi talk about Strucker (The HYDRA dude from the credit sequence in Cap 2 if the name isn’t familiar, one of the heads of HYDRA and currently in possession of Loki’s staff) and Whitehall. Ward asks if getting Bakshi close to Coulson would earn him a meeting with Whitehall
May and Trip are trying to contact home but everyone is busy putting Coulson through the machine of torment in order to track down creepy tattoo guy before he kills anyone else. When they eventually get through and Skye tells May what happened May orders her to lock Coulson down. He agrees but then chucks Skye in the cell instead and goes after tattoo guy who we now know to be Sebastian Derrick, a former assassin for SHIELD who is likely on his way to kill the only other surviving Tahiti patient.
Meet Hank Thompson, welder, electrician, family man, builder of epic train sets whose wife comes to tell him that ‘an old friend’ has come to see him.
At base Mac and Fitz are playing shoot em up games, Mac gets Fitz to play to help him get his brain and hands working together again and while he is distracted bv the game he questions Coulson’s suitability as Director if his brain is all scrambled. Fitz says that brains never delete files, they just lose connection but there is always a back up. Let’s hope that’s true for Fitz too! Simmons comes looking for Skye and sees her on the monitor down in the cell. They let her out and all go after Coulson. He’s now with Hank and is trying to get him to remember something about the alien writing.
Hunter, Trip, Bobbi and May go in to the bar to get Ward while Coulson badgers poor Hank – he doesn’t know what the symbols are, just like he told the other guy who right then shows up and knocks Coulson out.
The SHIELD team enter the bar to find it full of dead BYDRA goons with Bakshi tied to a chair in the back room, a gift for Coulson. Ward is long gone.
Derrick has Hank, his family and Coulson all tied up. He reveals his tattoo and Coulson says that he is trying to find the answer too. As Derrick talks Coulson notices the epic train set over in the corner of the barn and something seems to click. Hank manages to sget loose and gets hi family out to the road where they meet Skye and Mac and send them to stop the two guys trying to kill each other. Coulson and Derrick are fighting and Skye and Mac both have Coulson in their sights and are about to put him down when he suddenly lets Derrick go. He has forced him to look down on the trainset and the final piece clicks into place. The trainset is the map rendered in 3D – it’s not just a map, it’s a blueprint for a city. Coulson says that the compulsion to carve is now gone since he has seen the entire blueprint and he reveals the 3D plan of the city to the entire team. Now if the fan consensus is right on this one the city is Atilan, home of the Inhumans, and if that’s true then I have to hand it to Marvel. The Inhumans movie is slated for November 2018…that’s 4 years building up your audience towards one movie about a comic series most mainstream viewers have probably never heard of let alone read. I gotta hand it to Marvel on this one, that is some EPIC forward planning!
Meanwhile Ward is getting rid of that nasty prison beard, the dodgy tramp style clothing and looks a lot more like his sneaky old self.
Skye is about to try and obtain info from Bakshi’s phone when it rings. She answers with a Hail Hydra but it’s pointless, it’s Ward on the other end and he knows it’s her. He promises more Bakshi style gifts in the future and says that the “new recruits” aren’t very good. He also says he will see Skye and the others very soon but he has to deal with some family business first. Judging by the headline on the newspaper he throws into his bag of aliases…I’m guessing first on that list is big brother Christian!
