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I think this episode of
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., “Chaos Theory,” might have been the most
emotional one to-date. It saw the payoff
of a major plot thread from the first third of the season—which incidentally
offered one of the biggest character moments we’ve gotten yet from one of the
original cast members. On the Inhumans
and Secret Warriors fronts, this episode also offered some interesting
development with a couple of potential new Secret Warriors being set up to join
the team in the near future. Additionally,
two more of the major plots of the half-season received very quick and
interesting developments near the tail end of the episode.
There was a lot that
happened in this episode, so hold on tight!
We start right off the
bat with the ramifications of Werner von Strucker’s “dying confession” (he’s in
a coma, though, so they could bring him back at some point). The opening scene is a pair of flashbacks
which stand in sharp contrast to each other.
In the first, Andrew and May are enjoying their tropical vacation and
May is surprisingly happy. In the
second, Andrew is going through some of Jiaying’s books to try to help
S.H.I.E.L.D. understand the Inhumans and the potential threat they pose. Instead, he opens an old ledger (a genealogy
of the Inhumans—Genetics Council Easter Egg?
Maybe, but probably officially unrelated) and sets off a booby trap
Jiaying placed in it: a Terrigen Crystal
breaks, and Andrew is exposed and begins to transform. I like this opening for the contrast it
offers between their happiness together and the abrupt end to that happiness
when Andrew transforms. I also like that
it places May and Andrew front and center—and this episode is really their
story, with everything else tying into it.
In the present,
Coulson and Daisy are arguing about the merits of the A.T.C.U.’s containment
policy while Andrew/Lash listens in. Daisy
thinks that the A.T.C.U. is completely in the wrong for locking people like her
up, but Coulson seems to be sympathetic to Rosalind (I can think of a couple
reasons why…). Coulson and Rosalind are
going to brief the President and other leaders on the Inhuman situation, and Coulson
wants to have a success story to share (one that’s not Daisy)—and that’s where
Joey Gutierrez comes in. Andrew offers
to meet with him to reevaluate him and then send the report to Coulson in time
for his meeting with the President. However,
while this is going on, May starts doing some digging of her own and discovers
Andrew’s secret. Evidently she was
completely unaware of Lash before now—which actually makes sense since she was
with her father at the beginning of the season and then out with Hunter for the
rest. However, she learns from Daisy
that Lash can transform into a human, and from Andrew’s flight logs that he was
within 30 miles of 5 Inhuman murders. She
goes to the off-site facility where Andrew is meeting Joey to confront him.
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I really liked seeing
Joey again, and especially seeing him with more control over his
abilities. He uses his power to melt a
file cabinet down and turn it into a smooth, shiny ball of polished metal. That is far more control that he displayed in
“Laws of Nature” (3x01) when everything he touched melted! I’m glad they decided to progress him along
further, since that’s what we should expect after a couple of months have
passed, especially since he knows what happened (unlike Daisy last season). He’s also talking about Daisy’s Secret
Warriors and the possibility of doing some good there. However, in stark contrast to Joey’s apparent
control it seems abundantly clear that Andrew is just barely controlling
himself. In fact, he has a sudden and
jolting daydream of turning into Lash and putting a hole in Joey’s chest—something
which I’ll admit made me jump. However,
just as Andrew was starting to behave erratically and menacingly (was I the
only one expecting Andrew to “Lash out” and kill Joey this episode? I don’t think so), May barges in and orders
that they be given privacy. As soon as
Joey and the agents are out of the room, she turns on Andrew with what she
knows, demanding to know if it is true. He
starts to panic, and Ices her before he can instinctively transform and kill
her. I think the best part of that scene
was the pleading in May’s eyes and voice, almost begging him to tell her that
it wasn’t true. But it was. And he ran off with her.
Meanwhile, we can pick
up with Mack and Lincoln, who are meeting off-books. Lincoln tells Mack that he believes Lash must
be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent because all of his Afterlife friends have been
killed. And because they are all experts
at blending into human society, only someone who already knew about them would
have been able to hunt them down. And
the only way to know would be to have Jiaying’s ledger. And S.H.I.E.L.D. has the ledger. Mack agrees to help him get to the bottom of
it. This seems somewhat contrived as a
way to get Lincoln back into the S.H.I.E.L.D. fold, but it does also make a
degree of sense. As far as we know
Lincoln, Daisy, and Alisha are the only survivors of Lai Shi/Afterlife, and as
far as Lincoln knows the only way for an outsider to find out who they are is
by reading Jaiying’s ledger—which S.H.I.E.L.D. has. And the only agents he can know for a fact
are not Lash are the two with whom he fought against Lash at the hospital, Mack
and Daisy. I’m not sure why he wouldn’t
go to Daisy, but I wonder if he isn’t trying to protect her after their moment
in “A Wanted (Inhu)man” (3x03). Regardless,
at this point this seems like the simplest way to move the plot forward and return
Lincoln to S.H.I.E.L.D.
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I really like how
high-tech they are making Zephyr One, up to and including the way-out-there
docking method for quinjets. Daisy gives
Rosalind a tour of the base, but the two of them immediately come into conflict
over the A.T.C.U.’s fear of the unknown and the length to which they are going
to fight something they can’t understand and which Daisy does not consider a
threat worthy of their level of response.
Of course, Coulson isn’t thrilled that his new partner and surrogate
daughter aren’t getting along. However,
Rosalind does seem to be coming around, at least as far as Daisy is
concerned. Naturally, she and Coulson
start flirting behind closed doors when she offers to help him tie his tie
before his meeting with the President. However,
that has to be put on hold when Mack and Lincoln arrive and they piece together
that Andrew must be Lash. They all fly
off together to rescue May and find Andrew.
Oh, and Lincoln drops the bombshell that Andrew doesn’t have the ability
to shift between human and Lash forms; his body is still in transition. Once he finishes transitioning, “Andrew” will
be completely gone, replaced by “Lash.” I
can definitely see the build-up to this reveal:
we found out pretty early on that Daisy and Raina’s bodies weren’t feeling
quite right after Terrigenesis. Lincoln
explained in “Afterlife” (2x16) that the body goes through a transition period
as it adapts to having a thousand years of evolution occur
instantaneously. I can see the
progression from this concept to the idea that major physical alterations such
as Andrew’s would take a while to fully take hold, considering the degree of
difference between Andrew and Lash—on top of everything else, Lash is substantially
taller! And considering the formfitting
nature of Inhuman chrysalises on this show, it would make sense that those
extreme changes couldn’t occur within those tight confines, unlike the larger,
more butterfly-like chrysalises in the comics.
Meanwhile, Andrew is
starting to lose himself after taking May to the old Culver University
Administration Building. He does not
want to do what he’s doing; he’s doing it because he has to. He blames everything Lash has done on “instinct,”
though I don’t know if “instinct” can account for his refusal to kill Daisy
when he had the chance. He also compares
what he does to what May did in Bahrain (I knew
that would play a part in this!). In the
end, he is left begging her: “I never gave up on you. Please don’t give up on me.” It’s at this point that they kiss and Coulson
walks in.
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What follows is easily
the most complex set piece of the episode as the A.T.C.U., S.H.I.E.L.D., and
the Secret Warriors (Daisy, Mack, and Lincoln) move into position to subdue
Andrew/Lash and force him into a S.H.I.E.L.D. containment unit and then move on
him. Lincoln, blind with rage at what
Andrew/Lash did to his friends (did no one see this coming? I mean, seriously) barges into the room where
Coulson is trying to talk Andrew in without incident, and accuses him of
murder. Andrew transforms into Lash, and
the two of them fight. All through the
following fight I was more-than-half-expecting Lash to kill someone important,
but he just barely avoided it every time.
First Mack prevents him from killing Lincoln, then Coulson prevents him
from killing Mack. The A.T.C.U. team
arrives just in time to save Coulson, and Rosalind jumps in just in time to
save a couple of the A.T.C.U. agents.
Lash drops Rosalind at least three stories, but Daisy uses her powers to
catch her above the ground and save her life, which is pretty awesome. Lash disappears, but he and Lincoln find each
other before long, just as a newly-freed May is examining the wreckage of the
A.T.C.U. team. Lincoln and Lash fight
again, but May breaks them up by putting herself in front of Lash and appealing
to Andrew. This may be one of her most
intense moments, as she literally tells her ex-husband to just kill her and be
done with it: she has imagined a lot of different scenarios for her death, but
never that she would be killed by Andrew.
All of this has a profound effect on Lash, to the degree that she talks
him back into Andrew. And then before
anything else can happen May empties an entire magazine of real bullets into
him, pushing him backward into the containment unit, and activates it. The look on May’s face when she tells Coulson
that she didn’t know that shooting Andrew wouldn’t actually kill him pretty
much says it all: she is every bit as
torn up and conflicted and devastated by this loss as she was by what happened
in Bahrain, and perhaps more so because it’s someone for whom she has real
feelings. All in all, I really liked the
intense action and good character drama, particularly with May. However, I was kind of surprised that Lash
didn’t kill anyone we care about!
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Once they are safely
away, Rosalind offers May the option of placing Andrew in stasis while they try
to find a cure. May is still pretty
shell-shocked and turns to Daisy, who says that she wants them to be able to do
something for Andrew after he helped her so much. I think this scene serves several
purposes: it places Lash in the A.T.C.U.’s
control, pays off the stasis gel from the last episode (“Among Us Hide…,”
3x06), and shows Daisy growing to accept the possibility of the stasis gel
being a viable option for some Inhumans.
I don’t think this means she’s completely comfortable with what the
A.T.C.U.’s been doing—you can see it in her face—but she’s willing to go along
with it in extreme cases like Andrew’s. At
the end of the episode, May flies off into the sunset, thinking about Andrew
and her lost chance at happiness with tears in her eyes.
I think this episode
also gives us the most development to-date in terms of fleshing out the final
roster for the Secret Warriors. There’s
of course Daisy, the leader, but we see 3 or 4 other potential members in
action as well. Mack’s been there since
the beginning—but I think that at some point Fitz is actually going to design a
“shotgun-axe” for him to use! Joey has
gained substantial control over his abilities and seems very much interested in
joining the team. Lincoln is finally in
the fold with S.H.I.E.L.D. and doesn’t want to go anywhere. And May… we don’t really know what May’s
doing right now, but it’s always possible she will join the team, though I don’t
think it’s likely. There are 3 episodes
left until the midseason finale (assuming they follow last year’s schedule), so
we could definitely see a “Secret Warriors 2.0” team in the midseason finale.
Now on to the minor
plots. First up is Bobbi and Hunter, who
only received a handful of scenes in this episode. The gist of their one intimate scene is that
Bobbi does not want them to go after Ward again because she doesn’t want to
lose Hunter… and she doesn’t want them to lose themselves in revenge. This offers a major counterpoint to Andrew
and May, where Andrew has completely lost himself in Lash’s mission of “curing”
the Inhuman outbreak.
The two of them also
appear in a scene with Fitz, who is poring over the data from Simmons’ phone to
try and find a way back to the planet. Though
Fitz is not the emotional center of this episode—that’s actually May for once—this
is still an emotional moment as he is trying to push himself to go through the
data, even though there are multiple reminders of Will. There are a couple of very touching moments
where Fitz is listening to her journal entries directed at him and she is
talking about all her future hopes with him.
She also mentions that there are a few times when the moons and stars
seem to disappear, but I’m not sure the significance of that. At some point we’ll probably find out. In the end, Fitz makes a connection between
the NASA mission logo and a symbol they saw on the wall of that English castle
in “Purpose in the Machine” (3x02). This
leads him to believe that the same group was responsible for both sets of
Monolith experimentation. And perhaps
this group will know how to get back to the planet.
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The final minor plot
comes at the tail end of the episode when we see Ward and Malick having a
meeting. Malick kind of scoffs at Ward’s
apparent missteps with Werner, but in the end he does seem willing to work with
Ward. Ward for his part reveals that his
ultimate goal is to “cut off the head of S.H.I.E.L.D., because without Phil
Coulson, S.H.I.E.L.D. won’t grow back.” That
is certainly a worthy aspiration for a Hydra Head, though considering that last
time Hydra went after S.H.I.E.L.D. Coulson lopped off four heads with a single
chainsaw swipe, I don’t know how successful Ward can expect to be, inside knowledge
aside. Besides, without Coulson there
are still at least 3 viable replacement Directors in May, Daisy, and
Weaver. Oh, and Fury’s still
around. However, the plot thickens when
it is revealed that Rosalind is at least in communication with Malick. At this point we don’t know if she’s working
for him, knows his nefarious purposes, or just thinks he’s an important
government leader; it looks like we will find that out next week. However, that will definitely be hard on
Coulson, since the two of them are now sleeping together!
Overall I really
enjoyed this episode. It paid off some
major developments in good ways. I especially
liked how this episode focused so heavily on May and her reaction to
discovering that Andrew is a “monster” who is killing Inhumans. Even if you saw that plot twist coming last
week, May’s reaction still made it worth it.
This episode did a decent job of furthering all the major plots of this
half-season and tying them together quite well.
However, it still felt like most of the characters—thinking especially
Bobbi and Hunter—didn’t have their stories done justice. It all tied together well, but I really
prefer having a few less plots given a lot more development. Hopefully Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will
find a way to conclude several of these plots this half-season and focus in a
little more on a smaller number in the second half. Also, I can’t wait for the spinoff to start,
since I’m sure that will cut back the number of characters and plots for each
series.
What did you think of
this episode? Do you think there’s too
much going on in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. this season? What is your ideal Secret Warriors
roster? Personally, I like the one we
have (Daisy, Mack, Lincoln, Joey), with the addition of Alisha and Deathlok,
though that seems a bit Inhuman-heavy. Let me know your thoughts in the
comments!
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