Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4, Episode 11, "Wake Up" REVIEW (SPOILERS)

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Sorry this is going up on Friday instead of Wednesday; as mentioned on Tuesday, I was at a conference and then was busy the last couple of days.  Fortunately, the episode was more than worth the wait.  Not only does it further the LMD arc in a completely unexpected manner, but it also gives several of the secondary characters strong character-development moments.

Positives:

• At the beginning of the episode they do a good job of making everyone a suspect as the LMD.  The primary suspects are Mack, Fitz, Simmons, and Talbot, but they are all really obvious.  However, none of them is the second LMD, which makes the reveal all the better at the end.
• I liked the conversation between Daisy and Mace at the Senate hearing, considering their respective histories with Coulson.
• Coulson and Talbot have a very interesting dynamic:  They don’t exactly trust each other, but they don’t entirely distrust each other, either.  That was something I liked about last season and hope they will follow through on moving forward.
• May fighting AIDA is an interesting sequence, particularly with the reveal that it was all taking place in the Matrix.  By the time May gets out of AIDA’s captivity, she could be a thousand times better as a fighter than she even was before all of this started.
• Radcliffe using May’s affection for Coulson against them is a nice touch.  Radcliffe seems to believe that he is acting in the best interests of the human race, but his actions certainly suggest differently.
• LMD-May’s programming is fascinating.  She is programmed to find the Darkhold, and she’s even programmed to want to find the Darkhold.  In fact, even though she no knows that she is not really May, she still can’t go against her programming by telling Coulson that she’s a LMD.
• Fitz’s discovery that Radcliffe was a LMD was really clever, especially after his “obsessing” over AIDA.  However, since Fitz was able to see through the Radcliffe LMD, I suspect that either Fitz or Simmons will expose May before too long.
• I suppose a May episode wouldn’t be complete without Bahrain coming up

Negatives:

• I’m not sure about the Fitz-Simmons dynamic after all the “obsessing”
• I actually like the reveal of Mack’s daughter, though that does risk turning this into a soap opera with Mack and Yo-Yo
• I assume this will be answered, but why is Radcliffe teaming up with Nadeer?  As of now the only connection is a hatred of S.H.I.E.L.D.; other than that their purposes seem completely at odds.

Things to Look For:

• Nadeer’s office is in the “Stamford Wing,” which I assume is an Easter egg for the comic book Civil War, which started after an explosion in Stamford, Conn.
• Is there another LMD at S.H.I.E.L.D.?
• I’m assuming that the “Superior” will be revealed sooner than later, considering that we are 3 episodes into the LMD arc.  Of course, the Superior could just as easily be a tease of what’s coming in the third arc

All in all, this was a really exciting episode and filled with interesting character moments, particularly for Mace, Fitz, May, and Mack.  I am quite interested to see where this is going from here, particularly now that the two main “villains” are working together.  Next week Patton Oswalt will be back and we might be getting some answers about how the multiple Koenigs work.

What was your favorite part of this episode?  Who do you think the “Superior” is, and why is he interested in Inhumans?  Let me know in the comments!