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| Image Courtesy www.facebook.com/AgentsofShield |
I have to say, the last
five minutes or so of “What They Become” might be the best part of the entire
half-season—and better than anything in the first season, too, for that
matter! And seeing it all for the second
time I noticed several things that I hadn’t seen the first time. Not only did this episode give us a
satisfying conclusion to the alien writing/alien city plot, but it also offered
several hints at the second half of the season.
Oh, and did I mention that it introduced an entire race of super-powered
people from the comics, a race which will be getting its own movie after Infinity
War? Because it did that, too. Sweet!
Reminder: Retro-Reviews contain potential spoilers for everything to-date.
The episode picks up
right where the previous episode, “Ye Who Enter Here” (2x09), left off, with
Whitehall having ordered the destruction of the Bus. May assumes from the get-go that Ward is
planning to double cross them, so she already has a plan in place: she dives for the cloud cover, followed by a
pair of Hydra quinjets. The quinjets
launch missiles right after the Bus passes through the cloud cover, and May
ejects their pods and cloaks while the quinjets can’t see them. The missiles detonate on the pods, and Hydra
mistakes those explosions for confirmation that the Bus had been
destroyed. I really liked the action in
this scene, and I thought the effects were very good—actually I liked the
effects for this entire episode, and especially in the alien city.
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| Image Courtesy www.lylesmoviefiles.com |
Meanwhile, Coulson has
Fitz and Simmons working on a method for them to get into the city and plant
explosives (detonated by a few of Trip’s old Howling Commandos mechanical
detonators). I really liked the
Fitz-Simmons moments in this episode.
While they are working on this problem they also talk about Mack, which
gives them some time to bond and mend fences.
They aren’t quite the seamless team from season 1 here, but you can see
definite improvement over even the previous episode. Naturally this can’t possibly last (this is
Joss Whedon we’re talking about, after all), but it is definitely nice to
see. They also have a moment in the
tunnels where Simmons expresses genuine concern for Fitz going off on his
own. I don’t think there was ever a
question as to whether she cares about him, but I still found it to be a nice,
touching moment.
Hunter and Bobbi also
have a few moments together in this episode.
The first is when she is going through what I assume is Mack’s things
and takes a thumb drive out of his bag.
Hunter comes in and finds her and offers some comfort for Mack’s
presumed death. This gives us some interesting
insight into their relationship as well as Hunter’s character. Hunter clearly cares for her, and he wants to
trust her, but there still seems to be some suspicion on his part. They also go on a mission together to meet
with Bobbi’s local contact, which leads to them kissing to avoid the suspicion
of the Hydra agents with whom the contact was meeting (Seriously, is there some
sort of Female S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents’ Handbook where this technique is described,
and all the male S.H.I.E.L.D./Hydra agents haven’t read it? That’s as good an explanation as any for
Black Widow and Mockingbird both using it to avoid Hydra agents’ suspicion.). It’s interesting to see the two of them on
missions together, especially now that their spinoff series, Marvel’s Most
Wanted, has been announced. They
also work as a team while infiltrating the Hydra base above the alien city’s
temple. I liked their scenes together
and how they managed to develop their relationship a little more even in an
episode that was already extremely packed.
Skye and Cal finally
get the opportunity to meet, which is a very interesting scene. I like how incredibly awkward the whole thing
is: Skye really doesn’t want to be there
because she was taken at gunpoint and wants nothing more than to get the Obelisk
from Hydra and escape; Cal wants nothing more than for Skye to go back to being
his baby daughter and is terrified that she will pull away from him. We learn quite a bit about Skye’s parents: Cal ran a clinic in China and Jiaying was his
translator, “S.H.I.E.L.D.” (really Hydra) dragged Jiaying away and claimed she
was dangerous, and Cal followed them to Europe but arrived too late to save
Jiaying. Considering that in the first
season Skye wanted nothing more than to meet her real parents, her reaction
here was extremely understated. Of
course, considering that she’s heard nothing about her father except that he’s
a murderer and a monster, I think that is to be expected. Sadly, their reunion is cut short when
Whitehall summons them and the plot really starts moving.
Whitehall’s meeting
with his coconspirators (Raina, Cal, and Ward) is a cool and fun scene. It turns out that Whitehall has known who Cal
was all along; he recognized him as the same man who had come for Jiaying. He also knows who Skye is: the daughter of Cal and the woman he had
butchered. He forces her to pick up the
Obelisk, which she immediately uses to kill a Hydra soldier. And that’s when Whitehall starts to show his
real villainous side: Ward
double-crossed him by pulling a gun on Hydra to protect Skye, so Whitehall
orders him tied up and indicates that he will have him brainwashed into
compliance at a later time. He then
tells Cal that he’s already killed Cal’s wife; now he’s going to kill his
daughter before finally killing Cal himself.
Raina is completely left out of his plans and I’m not sure why. Whitehall knows that Raina can also hold the
Obelisk, so is he planning to let her continue helping as long as she’s useful
and then butcher her? I’m also not sure
what I think of the portrayal of Whitehall in this episode: he doesn’t have much motive for hating Cal so
much; is it just that he knows Cal hates him and he’s planning to do whatever
it takes to keep Cal from taking his revenge?
He was an interesting villain because he was so driven to uncover
whatever alien artifact was in the alien city, but his plans once he had it
were never entirely clear. To be honest,
I think the best think you can say about him is that he had a major role in
Skye’s story and also set both Jiaying and Cal on the paths which culminated in
their season 2 stories.
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| Image Courtesy www.facebook.com/AgentsofShield |
Cal, Skye, and Ward
are all left alone with a Hydra guard, but Ward and Cal engineer an
escape: Ward distracts the guard long
enough for Cal to get rid of the paralyzing device Whitehall had attached to
his neck, and then Ward uses the downed guard’s knife to free himself and
Skye. And then Skye shot him, though 2
shots hit his bulletproof vest and only 2 hit him, knocking him to the
floor. Cal went after Whitehall, but
before he could attack, Whitehall pulled a gun… and Coulson shot him from
behind, killing him. Cal then flew into
a rage and tried to kill Coulson using his super strength, but Skye stopped
him. I loved how they waited until that
moment before Cal finally called Skye by name:
“I’ll always love you, Daisy.” I
already had a good idea that Skye was going to be Daisy Johnson based on her
father’s name, “Cal,” but this finally confirmed it. Cal left, and Skye went to recover the
Obelisk and prevent Raina from bringing it into the city through the tunnel
which Hydra had drilled through the rock using a plasma drill. However, this meant that she and Raina were
both down in the alien city with the Diviner, and they wound up in the temple
together.
S.H.I.E.L.D.’s efforts
to destroy the alien city really didn’t get them very far. Fitz, Simmons, and Trip plant the explosives,
but then Trip has to pull the detonators out of the explosives when May tells
them that Coulson and Skye are in the city.
That makes it feel like something they could have left out, but at the
same time it was an important part of Coulson’s character that he was not
interested in using the Obelisk and city but rather wanted to keep them out of
Hydra’s hands. It also put Trip in the
wrong place so he was in the temple with Skye and Raina when the Diviner
activated—and that was actually necessary to answer the unasked question of
“what would happen to a regular human who breathes the Terrigen Mist?” (Answer:
Nothing really.)
Before getting to the
Terrigenesis scene, however, we need to talk about how Trip and Coulson could
go down into the city without being taken over like Mack. I have a theory: the city was only designed to take over a
single non-Inhuman as its protector. The
protector was given super strength and some knowledge of the city in order to
bring the worthy to the temple and keep the unworthy away. This explains why he was set up close to the
temple and did not interfere with Fitz, Simmons, and Trip. It also explains why the city released him as
soon as the Terrigen Crystal activated.
It’s not a perfect theory, but it does explain what happened to Mack and
why it didn’t happen to Trip or Coulson.
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| Image Courtesy marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.com |
The Terrigenesis scene
itself was absolutely amazing. Being
able to see it on Netflix on my second computer monitor, I was able to pick up
on a lot of the details in the transformation effect that I hadn’t noticed on
the TV. For one thing, the chrysalis
formed around Skye and Raina like a liquid that almost looks like lava from a
volcano. After they started to break out
of the chrysalises, you can actually catch a quick glimpse of Raina watching as
Skye goes seismic, though not much about her appearance is clear from that shot
(really just a couple eyes in the dust).
Additionally, it is even more clear that Trip was not killed by the
Terrigen Mist; he was killed by the shards of Diviner metal that embedded
themselves into his chest. This means
that regular humans shouldn’t have anything to fear from the Terrigen Fish Oil
tablets (assuming that the Diviner metal can’t dissolve). All in all, that was a really well-done scene
and I really liked it.
As far as midseason
finales go, I think this is an excellent one.
It puts the plotlines to the first half of the season to rest while
simultaneously hinting at and building up the plotlines for the second
half—there’s even a “Theta Protocol” reference where Coulson tells (a) Koenig
to return to base and prepare to activate it if things go badly in the
city. I think easily my favorite moment
in the episode was the Terrigenesis because it’s so awesome and throws the
doors wide open on a completely new world within the MCU.
What did you think of
the Terrigenesis/Inhumans reveal? What are
you most excited about now that the Inhumans are going to take a major role in
the series moving forward? Let me know
in the comments!
Quick note: this is the last Retro-Review I’m writing for
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (at least for this summer). If you want to see my reviews of the second
half of season 2, check the sidebar with post history and go all the way back
to the beginning, back in March. I’m
still going to have Agent Carter Retro-Reviews on Mondays for the next
couple weeks before Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns, but I’m replacing my
Wednesday and Friday reviews with articles looking ahead to Agents of
S.H.I.E.L.D. season 3. Next week
will be my theories on Simmons and the Secret Warriors; the week after will be
the antagonists: Lash and the Advanced
Threat Containment Unit. Be sure to
check them out!
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