(WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD)
I’m forever going to be disappointed by the fact that
‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ didn’t get the attention it deserved when it first
debuted in September 2013. I guess you can say that it was just due to overly
high expectations being that this was the first time that the Marvel Cinematic
Universe had taken a step into the superhero TV series market, a market that,
obviously, they had no prior experience with. The bottom line, though, is that
overhyping anything (movies, TV shows, boxing matches, etc…) is never a good
thing and quite frankly that is why I think the show didn’t get a lot of
positive buzz early on. But being a fan from the get-go, I stuck with it in the
hopes that the show would be able to prove its biggest critics wrong. Thank god
then for ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’. Not only was it one of the
MCU’s best films to date, but it also gave this show the much-needed boost that
it needed with its big twist revolving around HYDRA’s takeover of S.H.I.E.L.D..
That of course carried over to ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ as the characters now
found themselves in a very dangerous situation unsure of who to trust and
without many of their fancy S.H.I.E.L.D. resources to help them. While I will
always defend the first half of Season 1 as being better than most people gave
it credit for, suffice it to say that the show really got going after the big
HYDRA reveal and thanks to it, we S.H.I.E.L.D. fans were graced with another
season of this great show.
So now with Season 2 of ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’, the stakes
are obviously much higher for newly appointed director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Phil
Coulson, and his team. Not only do they have to deal with the remaining forces
of HYDRA that are still out there, but now they must operate while they’re fugitives
of the government due to the fact that, at the end of ‘Winter Soldier’, all of
the organization’s secrets were leaked to the public by Captain America and his
team in their attack against HYDRA. But as Coulson and his team soon find out,
there’s a lot more for them to deal with this season than just HYDRA. Not only
do they soon come into conflict with a different faction of S.H.I.E.L.D. that
is heavily opposed to Coulson’s methods but also a new race of beings with
special powers known as ‘the Inhumans’. These Inhumans are primed to get their
own film adaptation in the MCU in 2019. But thanks to this series, people like
me who were unfamiliar with this group (similar to how most people were
probably not familiar with ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ when their film adaptation
was first announced) are given a proper introduction four years early. It may
seem like a lot for one show to handle in just a single season, but thanks to
the great writing, well-rounded characters, and phenomenal cast, Season 2 of
‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ effectively allows this series to finally take its
rightful place as a true force to be reckoned with amongst the current crop of
superhero TV series.
At the end of Season 1, after defeating the organization
known as Project Centipede and their leader, ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. turned HYDRA agent
John Garrett, Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) was promoted to the role of
Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. by Nick Fury and tasked with rebuilding the
organization following its fall into disarray after the events of ‘Winter
Soldier’. As Season 2 begins, Coulson and his team; Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen),
Skye (Chloe Bennet), Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker), Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth
Henstridge), Antoine Triplett (B.J. Britt) and new members Lance Hunter (Nick
Blood) and Bobbi Morse (Adrianne Palicki) begin to hunt down the remaining forces
of HYDRA. While this is going on, Coulson, who has been compulsively carving
alien symbols as a result of the GH-325 drug that was used to resurrect him
after he was killed by Loki in the first ‘Avengers’, discovers that these
symbols are actually a map to a mysterious city. Not wanting HYDRA to find it
first, Coulson and his team begin to search for it in order to uncover its
secrets. But once they do, the situation is forever changed when Skye suddenly
gains new powers as a result of a mysterious object known as ‘the Diviner’. As
the revelation of these new powers start to test the relationships between her
and her teammates, she soon gets involved with the group of beings, known as
the Inhumans, who are also given special powers like her. But soon their peaceful
way of life is put into jeopardy when S.H.I.E.L.D. discovers their secret safe
haven.
Now that the odds are very much against Coulson and his
team, the stakes are definitely much higher than they were back in Season 1. Simply
put, a lot of things happen during this season; HYDRA, Inhumans, ‘the real S.H.I.E.L.D.’,
etc. It may seem like a lot for just one season but the show does a really nice
job at balancing all of these storylines out while still maintaining enough
focus on its main characters. And with the introduction of the Inhumans, a
whole new fascinating side to the Marvel Cinematic Universe is revealed, with
Skye, who is revealed to be the character ‘Daisy Johnson’ (AKA Quake) from the
comics, being impacted the most out of any character on the show. Since the
first season, Skye has always been one of my favorite characters and this
revelation really helps her character grow even more as she tries to come to
terms with her newfound powers. As this series has gone on, I’ve realized that
one of the best elements of the show has been the relationship between Skye and
Coulson, which has a very noticeable ‘father-daughter’ feel to it thanks to
Gregg and Bennet’s great chemistry. Though this does make things a little more
complicated with the introduction of Skye’s real parents; her father, mad
doctor Cal (Kyle MacLachlan), and her mother, fellow Inhuman Jiaying (Dichen
Lachman). The whole storyline with Cal in particular is really one of the best
parts of the season, as MacLachlan really shines in the role of Skye’s crazed
father while at the same time also making us feel sorry for him at times given
the fact that he just wants to be with his family again.
One of the other great things about this show is that there
are many times where it has this` ‘morally gray’ vibe to it. One of the key
themes of the series is how at times we question if S.H.I.E.L.D. is doing the
right thing, especially now that the whole ‘HYDRA took over S.H.I.E.L.D.’
reveal has come into play. Not only that, but there are many instances where
the main characters begin to question their teammates’ motives. Skye’s
transformation and the introduction of what its members refer to as ‘the ‘real’
S.H.I.E.L.D.’ are obviously the major examples of this but while those two
situations are primarily based around Coulson and Skye, that doesn’t mean that
they’re the only ones who get attention in this show. As I noted last season,
the original six leads were all developed incredibly well with a great ensemble
cast to play them. And this season continues that streak, as every main member
of the group gets their own chance to shine. This includes a crucial episode
that finally revealed the secret behind May’s past (and why she got the
nickname ‘The Calvary’) and the numerous occasions where we, the audience, were
hit with the feels as Fitz struggles to overcome the injuries that he was
stricken with at the end of Season 1 thanks to Grant Ward (Brett Dalton), his
former teammate who was revealed to be an agent of HYDRA. And oh yeah, we can’t
forget Ward, who’s still a factor in all of this out with his agenda.
The new additions to the cast are also excellent. The new
additions to the main cast, Nick Blood and Adrianne Palicki, pretty much
immediately make a great first impression. While Hunter’s true allegiances were
put into question in the first few episodes, thankfully that doubt was put to
rest and he officially joined the team. And like Gregg, Bennet, and many other
Whedon regulars before him, Blood easily becomes well-versed in the
Whedon-esque style of dialogue, resulting in him getting a lot of the best
lines in the show. As for Palicki, she immediately makes one hell of a first impression
in her debut episode in the role of the badass Bobbi Morse AKA Mockingbird. As
I noted a few days ago in my Spoiler Post for ‘Age of Ultron’, this is just
further proof that Marvel has actually done a really excellent job with their
female leads, especially the ones on their TV shows. It’s also good to see
that, compared to DC after the whole fiasco with the canceled ‘Wonder Woman’
series, Marvel has given Palicki much better treatment as far as her role in
‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ is concerned. This season also gave us a number of
memorable ‘S.H.I.E.L.D. adversaries’, including Whedon vet Reed Diamond as Dr.
Daniel Whitehall, MacLachlan and Lachman, as noted earlier, as Skye’s parents,
and Edward James Olmos as Robert Gonzales, one of the heads of ‘the real S.H.I.E.L.D.’.
Big changes came to ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ following the
release of ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ and that has helped the series
quite a lot. Story-wise, the whole ‘HYDRA’ twist gave the series the boost that
it needed to stand toe to toe with the other big superhero TV series currently
on right now, namely CW’s one-two punch of ‘Arrow’ and ‘Flash’. To put it
simply, quite a lot of things happened this season. We were introduced to the
Inhumans, Skye was revealed to be one of them, and the characters’
relationships were put to the test in the increasingly morally gray world that
is the ‘post-Winter Soldier’ Marvel Cinematic Universe. And based on how Season
2 ends, it’s safe to say that Season 3 is going to be even bigger, with Ward
taking control of HYDRA for ‘closure’ (AKA revenge) against S.H.I.E.L.D. and
the reveal that a bunch of crystals containing the substance known as the
Terrigen Mist, which mutates anyone who is an Inhuman (and kills anyone who
isn’t), has been leaked into the ocean, has been consumed by fish, and has
finally been transferred into fish oil pills. Oh yeah and let’s not forget to
mention the beast of a cliffhanger at the very end of the finale when Simmons
is sucked into the mysterious Kree weapon that S.H.I.E.L.D. had found that
could’ve been used to destroy the Inhumans. Seriously, can Season 3 come any
sooner?
Final
Season Rating: 5/5!
And now, just like I did last season, here are my Top 5 favorite
episodes of the season but of course, first let’s start with the Honorable
Mentions…
SHADOWS
Season 2 got off to a really nice start with the premiere
episode, ‘Shadows’, which effectively showcases how much things have changed
for Coulson and his team since we last saw them at the end of Season 1, with
Coulson now faced with the task of trying to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D. after the
whole HYDRA fiasco. But the most interesting thing about this episode is that,
for the first episode of the new season, it didn’t really end on a high note
for the protagonists. The bulk of the episode has them going after a mysterious
object known as the Obelisk but even though they do acquire it, it is then
immediately taken from them by Carl ‘Crusher’ Creel, a man who has the ability
to absorb the properties of whatever he touches and who also kills a few S.H.I.E.L.D.
agents in the process, including Agent Hartley who’s played by Lucy Lawless in
a very brief ‘cameo’ (she does return later on in a flashback in the episode ‘One
Door Closes’). This episode also illustrates the fact that now, as the title
suggests, S.H.I.E.L.D. must act ‘in shadows’ now that they can’t rely on the
government to help them anymore. All in all, this episode perfectly highlights
both the heightened stakes and the darker turns to come out of this second
season.
A HEN IN THE WOLF HOUSE
Early on in the season, Simmons had gone undercover at HYDRA
but in this episode, her cover is at risk of being blown when HYDRA learns
about the situation, while not immediately realizing that she is the mole
within their system. Simmons tries to maintain her cover but attracts the
suspicion of agent Bobbi Morse. Thankfully, Morse is revealed to also be a S.H.I.E.L.D.
agent working as a mole in HYDRA and helps Simmons escape from HYDRA’s forces
once they learn that she’s the mole. This episode is one of the best primarily
thanks to Morse’s bad-ass introduction. And as noted earlier, it’s nice to see
that Adrianne Palicki got a much more substantial role as far as superhero TV
series are concerned after the fiasco surrounding the unaired ‘Wonder Woman’
pilot she starred in.
AFTERSHOCKS
‘Aftershocks’ was the first episode of the 2015 run of the
series, following the ‘Agent Carter’ mini-series, and was coming off of an
episode where, to put it quite simply, a lot of s*** went down. One of those
events was the tragic passing of Tripp and his death is felt throughout this
episode, especially when the team starts to argue with each other over the
situation. But of course the other big part of this episode is Skye’s initial dealings
with the powers she acquired while down in the secret Alien city. When Fitz
discovers this, he keeps her newfound abilities secret from the rest of the
team, especially after Simmons remarks that people like Raina (Ruth Negga), who
was also ‘changed’ by the Terrigen Mist along with Skye, should be ‘put down’.
Speaking of Raina, we also see her struggle with her new mutation which gives
her a thorn/spike-like appearance (and yes, there is a ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’
reference in a later episode). I’d also like to point out that this may
actually be the most violent episode of the series to date as we do see blood
spatter when Raina kills a few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. All in all, you really felt
the weight of all that happened in the last episode here, and that’s why it’s
another stand-out episode from this season while continuing to build up the
debut of the Inhumans.
WHO YOUR REALLY ARE
And that was followed by another solid episode in the form
of ‘Who You Really Are’, which featured a cameo by Lady Sif (Jaimie Alexander),
who suddenly arrives on Earth suffering from amnesia. The amnesia is so bad
that she doesn’t even remember who Thor is. But anyway, in this episode, S.H.I.E.L.D.
aids Sif in tracking down a Kree who is hunting down whoever was recently
affected by the Terrigen Mist; he’s also the one responsible for Sif’s amnesia.
Of course, as we all know, that person just so happens to be Skye, whose powers
are finally revealed to the team sans Fitz due to him learning about it in the
last episode. She is nearly killed by the Kree but he is defeated by Morse. This,
however, changes things as now the rest of the team start to become fearful in
regards to her new abilities. The relationship between Fitz and Simmons is also
strained due to Fitz not telling Simmons the truth though as noted earlier,
given the fact that in the last episode she said that she believed that people like
that should be put down, can you blame him?
FACE MY ENEMY
One of the best earlier episodes of the season, ‘Face My
Enemy’ has Coulson and his team going undercover at a fundraising event in
order to find a painting that has the same alien symbols that Coulson has been
carving engraved on it. Sort of a ‘Mission Impossible/Avengers’ (not those Avengers,
for the record; the British TV series ‘The Avengers’) style plot, the episode
started off with some fun banter between Coulson and May, including one of the
rare times May is seen laughing, which she immediately follows up with by
telling Coulson “her face hurts”. But the best part of the episode is the final
fight between May and Agent 33, who had taken on May’s voice and appearance
with the help of special S.H.I.E.L.D. technology. Simply put, it’s a fight
between Ming Na and Ming Na and it’s one of the best-shot action sequences of
not just the season, but the whole series. This is the first of three episodes
this season directed by Kevin Tancharoen, brother of series co-creator Maurissa
Tancharoen and spoilers, all 3 of his episodes are in this psuedo-Top 10 list of the best 'AoS' episodes from Season 2
And now, here are my Top 5 favorite episodes from Season 2...
5. ONE OF US
Also directed by Kevin Tancharoen, this episode belonged to
Kyle MacLachlan as Cal, in which he recruits a group of ‘Gifted’ individuals to
take on S.H.I.E.L.D.. As noted earlier, his crazed nature results in some of
the best moments of the season while at the same time also making us feel sorry
for him at times due to him wanting to re-connect with Skye. It all culminates
in a pretty cool final battle at a football stadium in what is revealed to be
Coulson’s hometown of Manitowoc, Wisconsin. This episode also serves as the
introduction of May’s ex-husband Andrew Garner (Blair Underwood), who is
brought in to assess Skye’s new powers and although he warns Coulson that Skye
should leave S.H.I.E.L.D., Coulson decides to go against his suggestion. Also
there’s this…
4. THE DIRTY HALF DOZEN
This episode, the third of which Kevin Tancharoen directed,
succeeds in being both incredibly nostalgic for fans of the series as well as
being fairly awkward at times. The nostalgic factor comes from the fact that in
this episode, Coulson enlists his original team, including Ward, for a mission
to free Mike Peterson (AKA Deathlok) and Inhuman Lincoln Campbell (Luke Mitchell)
from HYDRA’s custody. The awkward part of this, as you might have guessed,
comes from the fact that, you know, Ward betrayed the team. The scene where he
tries to apologize to the team for all that he did is the pinnacle of how
awkward this situation gets. I mean while there is, for some reason, a part of
me that kind of wants things to go back to the way they were for Coulson’s
team, it’s hard to excuse Ward for all that he’s done since the episode ‘Turn,
Turn, Turn’. It’s so messed up that Simmons, in a rather disturbing move,
actually tries to kill Ward but ends up killing HYDRA agent Bakshi instead when
the latter sacrifices himself to save Ward. Being the final episode before ‘Avengers:
Age of Ultron’ was released here in North America, the episode ends on a nice
set-up for the film as Coulson gives Maria Hill the location of HYDRA leader
Baron von Strucker’s secret base so that the Avengers can go stop him.
3. WHAT THEY BECOME
This was the first ‘big’ episode of the season, as quite a
lot happened in this episode, which revolved around Coulson and his team trying
to reach the secret alien city before HYDRA. To start things off, Skye is
finally reintroduced to her real father and we learn the true identities of
both of them. His name is Calvin Zabo (AKA ‘Mister Hyde’ from the comics) and
we learn that Skye’s real name is Daisy Johnson (AKA ‘Quake’ from the comics).
This then leads to Skye going down into the alien city where she, along with
Raina, is transformed by the Terrigen Mist that came from the Obelisk everyone
had been after during the first half of the season. The finale in which this
occurs is one of the most epic moments of the entire season, especially the
part when Skye erupts out of the cocoon she had become encased in with her new
earthquake powers. Unfortunately, this episode also ends on a sad note as
Tripp, who had tried to save Skye when she and Raina started to become encased
in cocoons, dies as a result of coming into contact with the Terrigen Mist. It’s
even sadder because Tripp was quite frankly one of the coolest/bad-ass
characters in the show, having made quite a nice impression after first
debuting in Season 1. I was hoping that this season he would be promoted to the
position of ‘series regular’ but of course, this is a Whedon production so you
know that not everyone is going to get out of this alive. As the final episode
of the season’s 2014 run, it definitely left us fans with one hell of a
cliffhanger. At least we had ‘Agent Carter’ to hold us over until the series
returned in March.
2. MELINDA
Easily one of the most emotional episodes of the entire
season is ‘Melinda’, in which we finally learn the truth about what happened years
earlier in Bahrain where she earned the nickname ‘The Calvary’, which Skye also
learns about from her mother Jiaying. After single-handedly storming a building
full of bad guys, May fought a member of the Inhumans who had been stealing Terrigen
crystals for her daughter, who in turn had her mother hurt others to feed on
their pain. May is then forced to kill not only the mother, but also the
daughter as well. As this series has gone on, we the audience have been slowly
learning more and more about what really happened to May in Bahrain that had
forever changed her into the stone-cold bad-ass that she is today. And with
this emotional gut-punch of an episode, now we know why.
1.
S.O.S.:
PARTS 1 AND 2
And finally we have what is, in my opinion, not only the
best episode of this season but also one of the best TV season finales that I’ve
ever seen: the two-parter ‘S.O.S.’. This season has been building up to an
inevitable war between S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Inhumans. It finally gets started
when Jiaying fools everyone into thinking that she had been shot by agent
Gonzales when in reality she killed Gonzales and ‘framed’ him for ‘trying’ to
kill her. The ruse is so initially effective that even Skye believes it at
first. But, after witnessing her mother kill Raina, who had tried to convince
Skye of her mother’s true motives, Skye finally learns the truth and, along
with Coulson and his team, try to stop Jiaying and the Inhumans from unleashing
the Terrigen Mist upon the world, which would kill anyone who isn’t Inhuman. This
finale has it all; great writing, exceptional character development, awesome
action sequences, as well as plenty of very emotional moments, mostly courtesy
of Cal, who is forced to come to terms with the fact that his wife must be
stopped. And he does just that, killing her when she attempts to kill Skye. At
the end of it all, S.H.I.E.L.D. wipes his memory allowing him to finally be at
peace in his life. And given some of the big developments that occur at the end
of this episode, from Ward basically taking over HYDRA to Simmons getting
absorbed by the mysterious Kree weapon, it’s clear that Season 3 is going to be
big. But as for Season 2, ‘S.O.S.’ ends this great second season of this great
show on the best note. And that is why it is the best episode of Season 2 of ‘Agents
of S.H.I.E.L.D.’.
Also, Fitz has the
best line of the whole episode…
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