If you want to catch-up on last week’s episode, you can find that here
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This week’s episode seemed to find a way to combine some of the best elements from the early episodes of AoS with its light tone and whimsical nature, while progressing the deeper, darker story of Skye coming to terms with her powers in a meaningful way. There were some road bumps along the way, but overall it was a pretty successful mix, and a sign that the show is not holding back on the full-steam ahead trip to its season finale.
Lady Sif disguised in civilian clothes
We start out with the welcome return of Lady Sif, walking out of the ocean on the coast of Portugal, seemingly amnesic and unsure of anything other than her quest for “Kava”. The Agents find out about her appearance on Earth from a sleeper agent they had around they are, and Coulson and May arrive to investigate. He tries to introduce himself (reminding her humorously he is “Son of Coul”) and she tells him all she remembers is that she is Asgardian, but he shows her photos of her last time arriving on Earth and she begins to trust him. May finds some footage of what Sif was doing before she lost her memory (Apparently from Skye searching through Twitter), and she seems to be fighting some very strong warrior. It is really interesting for the show to acknowledge that this takes place in the modern world, and super-human powered fights occurring in public places would be really well documented and regular people really do have to live in this world. He hits her with some device and throws her off a pier, which seems to be what caused her memory loss in the first place.
The Kree warrior attacking Sif
Sif is determined to figure out who he was and return to the scene of the fight. Coulson asks her if she knows why Odin would have sent her down to fight this guy (she says “Shut Up!” when they tell her she knows Odin, it’s fun to see Asgardians fangirling over the “celebrities” of their world), but she can’t remember. When Hunter is looking at a light pole, it cracks with just a slight touch and they figure out that whatever spurted out of the other warrior when he was attacked by Sif’s blade was not human. Fitz sends a sample to Simmons back at HQ, and the results return that it contains liquid nitrogen. They find a balloon salesman on the beach who is upset about Sif’s involvement in destroying his stand, and complains that the man stole the gas release valves from his Helium tanks. They surmise that the warrior must need nitrogen to exist on earth, and his nitrogen containment unit was probably damaged by Sif, so maybe he will try to refill them at a hospital where Nitrogen is used for medical equipment. The group shows up at the nearest hospital, and they see that one of the nurses has also lost her memory, which makes sense since we were shown earlier that the warrior threatened this nurse, and turned slightly blue, an interesting little tidbit.
Lady SIf confronting the Kree
They search the premises looking for him, and find the warrior filling his tanks with liquid nitrogen, and guarding the “Kava” Sif spoke of earlier, when he attacks. The Warrior knocks Bobbi out, after a valiant effort, and is about to attack Skye (where his skin turns blue again) when her powers activate, knocking a medical supplies rack down on top of herself. When it seems like he is about to get away, Coulson hits him with the new and improved ICERs (Simmons seems to think the “elevated threats” of the Inhumans running around is cause for the design to be more forceful than before).They make it back to the Bus and regroup, figuring out through interrogation that the Warrior is of Kree origin and is here because of the resurgence of Inhuman activity recently occurring on Earth.
We get some much needed confirmations about the origins of the Inhuman’s origin in the MCU, which will be familiar to comic fans. It seems, like the comics, the Inhumans were the result of genetic experiments done on many species including pre-historic humans, in an attempt for them to breed super-soldiers for their dwindling armies due to the war they were losing (could this be the infamous Kree-Skrull war in the comics?) It seems this was undertaken by a radical faction within the Kree ranks, but was shut down by the rest of the Kree when almost all of the subjects died. But it seems the experiments were fantastically successful in Humans, to the point that the subjects were considered to be extremely powerful and dangerous.
This particular Kree came to Earth to kill the newly christened Inhumans before they become powerful and word of their success gets back to the Kree home world, which he thinks will encourage their army to start the dangerous experiments again. This is incredibly fascinating, as we now know that the origins of the Inhumans and the Kree fall almost exactly in line with the comics, as fantastical as they are, and implies that the MCU is getting much more comfortable with its comic book source material, and embracing it (they even mentioned how the Asgardians don’t trust Kree, meaning they have tussled many times in the past, the Kree homeworld Hala, and Terrigenisis as an obvious in extraterrestrial culture). The Kree gives Sif her memory back and together they figure out “Kava” is a Kree word for “Key”, and Chaves, a city in Portugal, means “Key” in Portuguese and they can probably find the item the Kree was searching for there. After they find the case, the Kree reveals it should contain several Diviners, apparently enough to create thousands of Inhumans and generate an incredibly dangerous situation. It turns out that the Diviners were all gone, meaning that the Inhumans we have seen running around in the shadows probably have them, so just how many of these new Superhumans are there? While Sif, the Kree and S.H.I.E.L.D. are arguing about how dangerous these new Inhumans could be if they were allowed to run around using their powers irresponsibly, Skye starts getting the picture that she would be included in these “exterminations”. She begins to panic, and tremors begin rocking the Bus, with everyone at first thinking it’s a normal earthquake, until they realize its coming from Skye herself. The Kree begins chasing her to destroy her “for her own good”, Sif decides that she must take her to Asgard to help her, and the Agents are concerned and want to protect her.
May and Skye getting away
As the Kree tries to get to Skye, Bobbi attacks him and while doesn’t quite measure up to his enhanced alien strength, she is only stalling him until Fitz can use on of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s big laser gun to knock him out, while Bobbi uses his memory staff to give amnesia. May takes Skye to the cell they were holding Ward in, and shuts down the laser wall grid and tries to calm her. Skye is panicking, totally unable to control her emotions regardless of May’s pleading, and it gets worse as Sif begins breaking through the laser grid. As Sif finally breaks through, Skye realizes the only way she can get out of this is to knock herself out with May’s ICER, putting the earthquake to an end. We see Sif take the Kree back to Asgard, while Coulson assures her that they can take care of Skye’s emerging powers. After this is all settled, we see a scene of the team concerned with Skye and Fitz lying to them about her emerging powers, with Mac exclaiming “she doesn’t need protection, we need protection from her!”, which Skye just happens to hear as she is passing by. She was on her way to lock herself in the fortified interrogation room we have seen many times, the symbolism being she now considers herself a dangerous enemy of the team, with maybe only Coulson, May and Fitz as her sympathizers. I am still not sold on how quickly Simmons has turned around on her thoughts about killing Inhumans, it doesn’t make sense for her character to hate these people so viciously, and her saying Skye doesn’t count is even more hypocritical. Elizabeth Henstridge does a great job but the writing just doesn’t feel genuine.
The Kree and Bobbi fighting
While all of this is going on, we got some clunky dialogue between Bobbi and Mac explaining Mac is too concerned with Hunter to bring him in on their plan, even though their relationship is better than ever. Mac tells her he thinks shunning him away entirely would be best, since he thinks he would snitch to Coulson, though they shouldn’t be too concerned because they are not HYDRA. So, its good to know they are not Triple or Double evil agents, but what is their angle, my guess is that they are Agents of S.W.O.R.D. (The Marvel Universe’s Men in Black, they are Extra-Terrestrial response agency, though how good would they be if they couldn’t do anything about the Chitauri attacking New York City). Honestly though, I don’t think Hunter, Bobbi, and Mac are interesting enough characters for me to really care what they are doing, I would rather their story would not be included at all, but maybe once its revealed it may change my mind. It is very interesting to see just how dangerous the MCU is setting up Inhumans to be, if literal God-like characters like the Asgardians and intergalactic super-empires like the Kree would be afraid of them. So it gets me that much more excited about Cal and The Reader’s (the eyeless inhuman) factions may be, and even how much more powerful the Inhuman Royal Family will be when they are revealed in a few years in the Inhumans film.
Simmons’ heel-turn doesn’t seem right
Seeing how fast the cast was introduced to Skye’s powers shows how much the pace has picked up on the show, which I love, as they could have easily dragged that reveal out for the rest of the season, much like the Alien map was. Hopefully, the revelations about the factions of Inhumans running around are revealed soon, and we see just how far the Inhumans will be set up this season. Also of note, is that this season’s tail end will overlap with both the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron and the Daredevil Netflix series. So, with the major shift that occurred on the show after Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s release last season, it can be expected that Ultron will also have a major impact on the show. As for what that will be, I’m guessing Baron von Strucker or Nick Fury will show up to talk some smack and maybe give S.H.I.E.L.D. as an organization a major boost in funding and manpower, giving the agency a boost in Season 3. Will Daredevil have any influence, it’s less likely but not impossible, maybe one of the less expensive actors will show up and have a cameo (I’m personally pulling for Foggy Nelson). It seems like next week will answer my questions about the Inhuman factions, and I can say these first few episodes of the second half of AoS season 2 have me very excited for the possibilities ahead.
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