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“Yes Men” is probably
one of my favorite “tie-in” episodes with a Marvel movie—at least in terms of
pure fun value. It diverges from the
main storyline which has just started picking up steam, but I actually like
that they will occasionally diverge; it seems realistic for an international
peacekeeping agency to be called on to juggle a number of different threats
simultaneously. The episode gives us a
little insight into a few of the characters, but it blows the doors wide open
on the possibilities for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the wider Marvel
Universe.
Note: All "Retro-Reviews" contain spoilers for all of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seasons 1-2.
The episode begins
with Skye still recovering from her two gunshot wounds and subsequent
miraculous recovery. Simmons is taking
multiple blood tests in an effort to recreate the GH-325, but Coulson is blocking
her efforts to bring in outside help.
Coulson is afraid because he now knows that the “miracle” that brought
him back to life and saved Skye’s life came out of a dead alien, and he doesn’t
want it getting out until they know if there will be any side effects (spoiler
alert: there are). I actually find Simmons’ efforts to crack the
secret of GH-325 interesting, particularly her statement that as a S.H.I.E.L.D.
scientist she has a duty to pursue the GH-325 because it may save lives. This is the beginning of a major arc for
Simmons which extends through the remainder of this season and the full second
season. Pursuing the GH-325 ultimately leads
into their pursuit of the mysterious writing, which placed Skye and Raina in
the Kree temple with the Diviner and resulted in their Terrigenesis. It is only after all of this that Simmons
realizes that she has been tampering with things she can’t control. And that is a major turning point for her
character.
Meanwhile, we find out
that Coulson has been spending a lot of time away from the Bus trying to track
down Fury. At the beginning of the
episode Coulson is in Lola having a flashback to his discovery of the blue
alien. He wakes up and we see that he is
waiting in a parking garage for a S.H.I.E.L.D. car driven by Agent Sitwell. Unfortunately, Sitwell does not know where
Fury is because he is off the grid. Apparently,
no one knows where he is. Where this
falls in the Captain America: The Winter Soldier timeline is uncertain,
but I’m pretty sure the attack on Fury’s life is still a week or so away (after
the events of “End of the Beginning” (1x16)), so this can’t be happening during
the time that Fury was presumed dead—and if it was, I’m pretty sure Coulson’s
contacts would have told him as much. I
think the likelier possibility is that Fury found out that Coulson was close to
finding out what had been done to him, and had decided to dodge all his calls
until he absolutely had to explain everything to him (which happens a lot
sooner than he would hope).
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Coulson’s search for
answers is interrupted temporarily when S.H.I.E.L.D. picks up atmospheric readings
consistent with the Bifrost being opened.
S.H.I.E.L.D. sends Coulson’s team (sans Coulson, who is off with
Sitwell) to act as the “welcome wagon,” along with a few SUVs of backup
agents. As they are nearing the site,
the readings suddenly spike again as the Bifrost is opened and Sif appears in
the middle of the road. Fitz runs facial
recognition on her and identifies her as a friend of Thor’s at the same time
that Sif notices the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo and realizes that they are friends. Sif tells them that their world is in grave
danger, and Coulson’s team agrees to help her with her mission to recapture
Lorelei, the Asgardian woman who first appeared at the end of the previous
episode, “T.A.H.I.T.I.” (1x14). Lorelei
has the ability to bend men to her will simply with the sound of her voice and
with a touch. She escaped from the
prison on Asgard in the confusion when the Dark Elves attacked during Thor:
The Dark World, and came to earth through one of Loki’s passages. Sif was sent by Odin himself to recapture her
and return her to Asgard. Sif also has a
collar which will render Lorelei mute and break the spell on her victims. I like how this ties the events of the
episode directly into the prison break in Thor: The Dark World: this is a natural result of the events in the
movie.
The team brings Sif
back to the Bus, where she is surprised when Coulson walks into the briefing
room, reaching for her sword and demanding, “What dark magic is this? Thor said you perished at the hand of Loki”
(would you want an angry Sif reaching for her sword the moment she saw you?).
Coulson quickly calms her down by explaining that S.H.I.E.L.D. had a few
tricks up its sleeve and managed to bring him back. Sif is glad to see him alive and comments
that Thor will also be pleased because he considers Coulson a friend, a feeling
which Coulson reciprocates. However,
Coulson asks Sif not to tell Thor about him because he would prefer to do it
himself, and Sif consents. In other
words, Thor’s not hearing about Coulson from Sif.
That is not the only
fan theory that Sif debunks with her visit to Midgard; she also answers the
age-old fan question of “Do Asgardians understand human technology, or will
they go into a Berserker rage the moment a wall talks to them?” The answer comes when Coulson tries to
explain the holo table to Sif: “I’m
familiar. It’s an antiquated system we
and other realms had ages ago.” Boom!
So Sif has absolutely no trouble in
using S.H.I.E.L.D.’s advanced technology.
In fact, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s most advanced technology is as exciting to the
Asgardians as a first-generation scientific calculator is to us today.
While he has an expert
on other planets available, Coulson decides to press her for information about
his blue alien problem. Sif mentions 7
races of blue aliens, including “Interdites, Levians, Pheragots, Kree, Sarks,
Centaurians… Frost Giants.” Of the 7,
three should be familiar to us. The Kree
control a major empire in the Marvel Universe, and several of them have
appeared both in the comics and in the movies:
Captain Mar-Vell (the original “Captain Marvel”) and his assorted family
members, Ronan the Accuser, and Vin-Tak (the Kree from “Who You Really Are”
(2x12)) are the most obvious that come to mind.
Centaurians are aliens from Alpha Centauri—and the same species as Yondu
from Guardians of the Galaxy. And
of course the Frost Giants should be self-explanatory. However, the other four races she mentions
are also from the comics, though we have not seen any representatives in the
movies yet. Be that as it may, Sif assures Coulson that the only race she
mentioned which had been to Midgard was the Frost Giants, whom Asgard defeated
a millennium earlier. Of course, we now
know that to have been inaccurate as the Kree experimented on early humans many
thousands of years ago, producing the Inhumans.
However, even at the time we knew that it was not entirely correct;
there was some sort of blue alien in the Guest House. We didn’t know who or what he was, but the
best guess was that he was alien. Was
Sif lying? She might have been lying to
protect Coulson and the humans from the truth, but she could just as easily
have not known that the Kree had experimented on humans. The latter may in fact be true; in “Who You
Really Are,” Sif told Vin-Tak that Asgard knew of the Kree Terrigenesis
Project, but seemed surprised that Earth was one of the planets involved.
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The team finds several
police reports from the area around where Lorelei first appeared showing that
she is beginning to amass an army.
S.H.I.E.L.D. goes to investigate, and we learn that Lorelei has
enthralled a biker gang and turned them into the core of a new army. The gang tries to protect Lorelei from Sif
and S.H.I.E.L.D., but Sif defeats them and puts Lorelei to flight, at which
point she take Ward as her new man and he escapes with her to Las Vegas. While in Vegas, Lorelei and Ward have sex
before luring the team to their hotel room.
While S.H.I.E.L.D. is distracted, Ward and Lorelei sneak onto the Bus,
where Lorelei enthralls Fitz, who locks Simmons and Skye into the med pod
before tricking Sif into entering the Cage.
Lorelei and Ward meanwhile go to the cockpit and take off as soon as the
team is back on the Bus. When they are
in the air, Ward opens the Cage roof, causing Sif to be sucked out, though she
manages to grab onto the outside of the plane and avoid getting blown
away. Coulson frees Skye and Simmons
(giving us an amusing moment when Simmons tries to brain Coulson, fearing that
he is under Lorelei’s control). He tells
Skye to open the Cage again on the assumption that Sif is still out there, and
uses Simmons to lure Fitz down to the lab, where he knocks him out.
In the meantime, May
goes for the cockpit, confronts Lorelei and Ward, and engages in a vicious
fight with Ward that ends with him holding a gun on her and her holding its
magazine (one of the benefits of a no-magazine safety). While May and Ward are fighting, Lorelei goes
to retrieve Sif’s sword from the Cage, but stumbles upon Sif. The two of them fight, with Sif defeating
her. Before Sif can put the collar on
her, Lorelei first begs Sif to leave her on Midgard and then tries goading her
into killing her. However, Sif puts the
collar on her, breaking the spell.
The episode ends with
Coulson explaining the blue alien to Skye and telling her that the two of them
together would have to track down Fury to find out exactly what had been done
to Coulson and what the blue alien really was.
However, May is listening in, and makes an encrypted log update that
“Coulson knows.” What is going on with
May????
I really enjoyed just
about everything about this episode.
Bringing Sif into the mix was a lot of fun, especially seeing her with
first Coulson and then May. She and May
in particular seemed to hit it off—and that’s not surprising since they share
certain personality traits. I think Sif
has gotten more character development from 2 episodes of Agents of
S.H.I.E.L.D. (this one and “Who You Really Are” (2x12))—less than 1½ hours
not counting commercials—than she has gotten from 2 Thor movies. She was hurt deeply the last time Lorelei was
loose, when someone she loved was placed under Lorelei’s control—and odds are
that it was Thor. She really wanted to
kill Lorelei, but in the end her duty to Odin prevailed and she brought her
back to Asgard instead.
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| Image Courtesy www.marvel.com |
Lorelei was an
interesting villain who showed just how much variety is possible in strong
female characters. On the one hand, Sif
warns that Lorelei is a skilled warrior (though not as skilled as Sif herself). On the other hand, Lorelei does not fight her
own battles, but uses her “feminine wiles” (and magic) to entice men into
fighting for her. She is every bit as
powerful and strong as any other character in the MCU, but she uses her
sexuality (her “femininity”) as part of her package of abilities rather than
repressing or ignoring it. However, at
the same time there is someone whom Lorelei fears: Sif.
Lorelei is a strong and powerful woman, but she is afraid of another
strong and powerful woman because Sif is her match physically and immune to her
magic. This makes her a really
interesting and nuanced villain. I
really think that Lorelei has a chance of reappearing in the MCU at some
point—probably in conjunction with 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok. We know that after the events of Thor: The
Dark World Odin is no longer Odin, but is actually Loki in disguise. So when Sif brings Lorelei back to Asgard and
delivers her over to “Odin,” she’s really handing her over to Loki. It is entirely possible that Loki will be
using Lorelei in some way, shape, or form—either using her powers to ensure
that all the men in the kingdom are completely loyal to him, or simply using
her to keep Heimdall from seeing through him and warning the others. Either way, she could be the key to Loki’s
control of the Nine Realms.
In all, I thought this
was worlds (*ducks*) better than the actual Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
tie-in episode with Thor: The Dark World because it picked up key story
beats from the movie, brought in a character from the movie, and even
introduced a new character who could transition back to the movies in
the future. It gave us a lot of nice
humor, answered a few fan questions, and helped to develop several characters
(particularly May). There were plenty of
better episodes in season 2, but I would rank this one as one of the top 5 for
season 1.
What did you think of
“Yes Men”? Do you want to see Lorelei
again in a future movie or TV series?
What was your favorite Sif moment on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.?
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