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| Image Courtesy www.facebook.com/AgentsofShield |
So now that the Agents
of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 2 finale has had a chance to sink in a bit, I’m
going to start a short mini-series looking back at season 2 and ahead to season
3. Up first is a recap of everything
that happened in season 2. Hold onto
your hats, because there was a lot that happened!
The season began about
6 months after the season 1 finale.
Coulson was Director of the new S.H.I.E.L.D. and had been busy traveling
to recruit agents—generally loyal agents of the old S.H.I.E.L.D. At the same time, he was also traveling to
track down Hydra leads and put “Theta Protocol” into action. One of Coulson’s first missions in season 2
was to track down the “Obelisk”—the original “0-8-4”—an object which can turn
anyone who touches it to stone. In so
doing, Coulson’s team also confronted Carl Creel, aka “Absorbing Man,” who was
working for Hydra. He placed at least
two agents undercover in Hydra—Jemma Simmons and Bobbi Morse—to gather
intelligence and figure out what Hydra was doing. When Simmons’ cover was blown, Morse helped
her to escape—blowing her own cover in the process—and they brought much of
Hydra’s research back to S.H.I.E.L.D.
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| Image Courtesy www.facebook.com/AgentsofShield |
Hydra meanwhile had
also been busy consolidating its power.
The primary villain for the first half of the season was Daniel
Whitehall, one of the six “Heads of Hydra” serving under the direction of Baron
Strucker. Each of the Hydra Heads had
their own area of expertise; Whitehall’s was human enhancement. We found out over the course of the half-season
that he was an original member of Red Skull’s Hydra who was captured by Peggy
Carter and the Howling Commandos after Red Skull’s death/disappearance. Prior to his capture, he was experimenting
with the Obelisk—experiments which proved fruitless until a Chinese woman
touched it and it began to glow. In 1989,
after spending 45 years in a S.H.I.E.L.D. prison, Whitehall was released by Alexander
Pierce, a high-ranking Hydra mole within S.H.I.E.L.D., after that same woman
was rediscovered in China, not having aged a day. Whitehall vivisected her and used her organs
to give himself her gift of youth.
We were also
introduced to Skye’s father, Cal. We
learned that he and Raina had history together and that he had been searching
for Skye/Daisy for decades, ever since S.H.I.E.L.D. stole her. In fact, he blamed S.H.I.E.L.D. for most of
his problems—at least those that he did not blame on Whitehall, who callously
cut his wife to pieces. Cal formed an
alliance with Whitehall and Ward in order to get his revenge on both Whitehall
himself and Coulson (whom he blames for Skye’s hatred of him).
Ward began the season
in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody following his capture after Garrett’s defeat at the end
of season 1. He agreed to give
S.H.I.E.L.D. information in exchange for face-time with Skye. After a failed attempt to hand him over to
his brother, Ward managed to escape from custody and exact revenge against his
brother before infiltrating Hydra to find Cal and help arrange a meeting
between Cal and Skye.
Meanwhile, Coulson’s
compulsive alien writing—revealed at the end of the season 1 finale—had been
getting progressively worse, to the point that he was doing it all the
time. Finally, when it seemed to be driving
him insane, he discovered other people who had been doing the same thing and
started putting the pieces together. Skye
(who was also exposed to the Kree blood but had not been drawing symbols)
realized that it is not writing, but rather a diagram. When Coulson found a man (a former
S.H.I.E.L.D. agent) who constructed the alien symbols into a three-dimensional
train set, he realized that it was not supposed to be flat, and used the
three-dimensional diagram to track down the location of a hidden alien city in
Puerto Rico.
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| Image Courtesy marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.com |
Skye and Cal finally met
in “What They Become” (2x10) after Ward captured her and took her to Hydra at
the hidden alien city, and Skye initially rejected Cal. However, when Whitehall double-crossed Cal
and Ward, S.H.I.E.L.D. attacked to rescue Skye and destroy the alien city, killing
Whitehall in the process. In the
confusion, Skye and Raina wound up in the temple in the middle of the alien city
with the Obelisk (which has been revealed to be a “Diviner”), joined by Tripp. The Diviner activated, revealing Crystals
which released a Mist that caused Raina and Skye to be encased in stone. When Tripp panicked and kicked the Crystal,
destroying it and the Diviner, shards of Diviner metal embedded themselves in
him, causing him to turn to stone. The
stone encasing Skye and Raina crumbled away, revealing their transformed
bodies—Terrigenesis!
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| Image Courtesy www.comicbook.com |
The second half of the
season picked up right where the first half left off—Skye and Raina had just
undergone Terrigenesis, and both were scared and confused. S.H.I.E.L.D. tried to help Skye, but failed
spectacularly. Raina, meanwhile, was
rejected by Cal and at the point of despair before Gordon, an Inhuman with the
ability to teleport, appeared and whisked her away to the secret Inhuman
sanctuary called Afterlife. A Kree
warrior/scientist who picked up the signal of the Diviner activating came to
Earth to locate the people who had been transformed, kill them, and eliminate
any trace of the Inhumans, explaining to S.H.I.E.L.D. that the Inhumans were
the results of failed genetic testing done by the Kree thousands of years
earlier—these people are alien weapons.
Lady Sif followed the Kree to Earth and confirmed his explanation of the
history, but permitted Skye to remain on Earth in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody.
Coulson put a plan in
motion that led directly to the deaths of four of the five remaining “Heads of
Hydra,” leaving only Dr. List (and Strucker himself) in charge of Hydra and
eliminating them as a major threat for most of the half-season.
Cal meanwhile put
together a small team of enhanced people to challenge S.H.I.E.L.D. and show
Skye what S.H.I.E.L.D. does to people like them. However, his actions angered the Inhumans,
who sent Gordon to take him away to Afterlife and keep him from drawing too
much attention to the Inhumans.
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| Image Courtesy www.comicbook.com |
Shortly thereafter,
Skye was forced to flee S.H.I.E.L.D. when a second S.H.I.E.L.D. organization
formed after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. (led by Robert Gonzales) invaded
Coulson’s base because they feared his secrets.
Skye called Gordon, who took her to Afterlife, where the Inhumans
Lincoln and Jiaying (revealed to be her seemingly-immortal mother) helped her
to understand and adjust to her transformation, as well as teaching her about
Inhuman history and culture. The Inhuman
city was in a virtually inaccessible area of the Himalayas, known only to
Gordon, who was the only way in or out of the city. The Inhumans value their secrecy above all
else, leading them to some questionable decisions later in the season.
The “S.H.I.E.L.D.”
invasion of his base forced Coulson into hiding, where he, Hunter, Fitz, and
Mike Peterson/Deathlok were forced into an uneasy alliance with Ward, who was
now working with the formerly-brainwashed Kara toward his own ends. This group placed a brainwashed Sunil Bakshi
(Whitehall’s former second-in-command) and Deathlok undercover to infiltrate
Dr. List’s Hydra group and find Skye’s location by finding out what Hydra knew
about Gordon. However, instead they were
led directly to Skye when Hydra tracked Gordon’s teleportation. This led to a brief confrontation between
Skye, Lincoln, Cal, S.H.I.E.L.D., and Hydra, in which Lincoln and Deathlok were
captured by Hydra. This forced Coulson
to make a deal with Gonzales to send in Coulson’s team to rescue Lincoln and
Deathlok, gather intelligence, and disable the air defense systems so Gonzales’
jets could destroy the facility. During
this successful infiltration, Coulson acquired information on the whereabouts
of Loki’s Scepter and Baron Strucker (along with the powers and background of
the “Twins”), which he passed along to Maria Hill for the Avengers’ use.
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| Image Courtesy www.comicbook.com |
Following the events
of Avengers: Age of Ultron, it was revealed that “Theta Protocol” was
the codename given to Coulson’s mission from Fury to repair the original
helicarrier in case of emergency. And
conveniently, that emergency arose when Fury needed the helicarrier to rescue
civilians during Avengers: Age of Ultron (uh… spoiler alert?). Because of Coulson’s key role in saving so
many civilians, Gonzales and his Board agreed to a merger with Coulson: Coulson continued as the Director of
S.H.I.E.L.D., with Gonzales and his Board serving as his Council (similar to
the World Security Council, but with a few less Hydra agents). Shortly thereafter, the Inhumans and
S.H.I.E.L.D. came into conflict because of a Kree artifact in Gonzales’ ship’s
cargo hold. S.H.I.E.L.D. sent Gonzales
to meet with Jiaying, who killed him and framed him for attempting to kill her,
inciting her people to war against S.H.I.E.L.D.
In the explosive season finale Raina sacrificed her life to reveal the
truth of Jiaying’s evil to Skye. The
Inhumans took over the ship and nearly killed the entire crew, but Skye,
Lincoln, Mack, and Coulson’s team prevented Jiaying and Gordon from releasing
the Diviner-metal-infused Terrigen Mist and killing all non-Inhumans. Cal transformed into Mr. Hyde, attempted to
destroy Coulson’s base, and was eventually convinced to help Coulson save Skye,
which he did by killing Jiaying.
At the end of the
season, Coulson lost his arm after catching a Terrigen Crystal, Skye was left
as the only “leader” we know of for the Inhumans as well as responsible for
recruiting a team of super-humans for S.H.I.E.L.D., Cal had his memory wiped,
Terrigen Crystals began dissolving into the ocean, Ward began rebuilding Hydra,
and Simmons was sucked into the Kree artifact.
Wait… what was that??? Check back
on Thursday to find out just what all of that means for season 3!
What was your favorite
part of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 2?
Which was your favorite episode? Was
there anything important that I missed?
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