The Agents of SHIELD A Hen in the Wolfhouse episode (s2e5) opens on Pete and Mariah, who are having the worst ever Best Man’s speech. I mean, seriously? This was awful. But when the toasts are made, the people all drop with a weird face disease, which turns out is a test of a new Hydra weapon. The results are disappointing to Bakshi, Whitehall’s number one man.
At Shield headquarters, Skye is unwilling to let things be and keeps pushing at Coulson, until he harshly reprimands her. When Skye leaves the room Agent May shares with Coulson what we all know, keeping Skye in the dark won’t end well, as she will keep looking for answers.
Elsewhere, we see Skye’s dad performing surgery on a man with a bullet hole. As he and his friend engage in playful bad guy banter, Skye’s dad then answers the door, welcoming Raina. As the two of them have a conversation about the Obelisk, the two goons just look on. (Personally, I feel worse for the guy with the wound. I mean, his buddy can just get up and leave as the speech drones on, but he is stuck.)
Raina reveals that she needs to get the Obelisk for Doctor Whitehall, and Skye’s dad seems to get angry, upping his strength before he punches a glass. (Bad guys should pick other things to punch. Punching the glass just seems so cliché now.) As Raina leaves and says she will try to bring Skye to him, he declares that isn’t her name and then looks very irrate at the two hoods who showed up to get their wound bandaged.
At Hydra base, Simmons and her boss Kenneth are summoned to the main room, where they encounter Doctor Whitehall, who Kenneth describes to Simmons as “one of Hydra’s new heads.” (They need to do more with this Hydra imagery. It would be an interesting plotline to drill out who the different “heads” of the beast are and what they are each focused on.) They are all gathered to talk about how to reverse engineer some alien weapon and Simmons offers some insight into why it probably isn’t working well. Whitehall reveals that they want to gain possession of the alien Obelisk and see how they can reverse that technology and use it. Kenneth then grins like a school boy when Simmons points out that it could kills millions or even billions.
Back at Shield HQ, Fake Simmons and real Fitz have a conversation in which Fitz reveals that he is well aware that Fake Simmons is a part of his subconscious, but that he is keeping Fake Simmons around because he misses the real Simmons.
Meanwhile, Skye is studying the painting from last episode and talking to Lance Hunter, who witnessed her earlier verbal sparring match with Coulson. He tells Skye that the best way to handle someone with secrets is to keep digging deeper. Which leads us to Ward, where he and Skye volley back and forth, with Ward ultimately revealing that his source for information about Skye is Raina. But Ward does recognize the drawings, pointing out that he saw Garrett do them after he went crazy from the alien drug injected into him in season one. Skye is putting the pieces together and is clearly worried about Coulson.
And as Raina is entering Hydra, she sees Simmons, following her outside to get a conveniently timed photograph of Simmons sending Coulson an urgent message about the alien weapon Hydra is wanting to create.
At Shield HQ, Skye confronts Coulson with all the dots that she has connected, which leads to the obvious question: Why is everyone else exposed to the alien DNA turning into a carver of designs and she isn’t? Coulson casually drops the idea that Skye could be an alien, which flips her out, and is only heightened when Coulson admits to having her monitored to see if she will ever become a carver as well. In the midst of that conversation, Raina interrupts.
At the Hydra base, an alarm sounds at Laboratory, putting it in lockdown. A new character comes out as part of the security team to shake down everyone, announcing that they are looking for a mole. As Kenneth is giving Simmons a cross eyed look, Simmons and this security lady are having an intense conversation about where their loyalties lie. It ends abruptly however as they discover the device Simmons used to send the message…at Kenneth’s station. So much for the grin about the millions being killed…
Coulson and Raina meet for dinner and a conversation at a nice restaurant. As they banter back and forth, it is a weird little sexy time conversation, as Raina hits on him, much to the chagrin of Hunter, who is watching from a couple of tables over. Coulson rejects her advances and she reveals that she knows about Simmons. Simmons is then shown being given the breakdown from the Hydra security lady, who points out what we all have known all along: Simons is a terrible liar.
Meanwhile, Coulson and Raina are trying to reach an agreement that includes Raina wanting to take Skye with her. Her leverage? She starts a two minute program that will send out the cell phone picture of Simmons out to all of Hydra. (This makes your wonder what kind of application the whole organization of Hydra would be using? What do you think it is? I think it has to be Snapchat. I mean, obviously right?)
As the clock timer moves rapidly towards zero, Raina thinks she has the leverage to get Skye to come with her to meet Dear Old Dad. And Skye is willing, even fighting Agent May’s order to stand down, in part because she doesn’t want to be the reason that Simmons gets killed. But Coulson has a plan, even as the clock strikes zero and the email goes out, revealing Simmons as an Shield agent.
Simmons is now on the run with Bashki in pursuit. Bobbi Morse, the security guard from earlier whips out her staffs and starts kicking some tail on Hydra giving them a getaway. Of course, she is the plan! And we welcome Mockingbird from the comics to the team!
Raina reveals some of the information on who Skye’s father is but not long after Hunter tags Raina, so that she can lead them to Whitehall. Coulson has definitely become a bit more devious in his schemes.
At Hydra, Agent Morse, I mean Bobbi, then breaks out the whupping sticks, buying Simmons time to get to the roof, where an extrication team should be waiting. They have to jump off the roof and on to the cloaked Quinjet, piloted by Triplet, who may or may not have a little thing going on with Bobbi.
Coulson has a discussion about Skye and what to do next, and the team discovers that Skye has abandoned ship and is headed to a location that Raina has given to the team. As Skye works her way into the building, it appears that Dear Old Dad has abandoned the location, leaving only an old photograph of Skye and him when she was first born. Coulson meets her there and comforts Skye, who has heard in the same day that she might be an alien and that her dad is alive and wanting to meet her. May discovers the two guys from earlier dead and gone at the hands of Dear Old Dad, who flips out and punches his iPad, as we watched Coulson comfort his daughter via camera. (Personally, I think he is just wanting to upgrade the iPad. Have you seen the specs on the new models?)
As Simmons arrives at home at Shield HQ, Morse is announced as a new members of the team and Fitz and Simmons have a tentative reunion. We then discover that Hunter’s aforementioned she-devil wife is none other than Bobbi!
Skye then affirms her loyalty and makes Coulson promise to bring her into the loop fully so that they can track down her father and the Obelisk. At this point, Coulson shows the latest set of markings that he has carved and Skye quickly reveals that she thinks it a map.
Finally, at the Hydra base that is being disassembled, Skye’s dad shows up and hands the Obelisk over to Whitehall, revealing that in its native language it is called The Diviner. The two then hatch a plan to kill their common enemy, Phil Coulson, along with everyone else.
A solid 6.5 out of 8 nerds for this episode.
Thoughts on this episode:
- Mockingbird! Bobbi Morse has a long and awesome history in Marvel Comics, moving from Shield agent to costumed superhero, even marrying Hawkeye. I think it is a great move to see her here and it opens up some intriguing future storylines. Personally, they are well on their way to creating the West Coast Avengers for the movies. Maybe Avengers 4? I mean, the major players are almost all there: Hawkeye, Vision (who appears in Avengers 2), Scarlet Witch (who appears in Avengers 2), Iron Man or Iron Patriot or War Machine (James Rhodes, already appearing in Iron Man movies). They still need to introduce Wonder Man but that could easily be the focus of their first adventure together. (Tigra is the one member I don’t have figured out yet.)
- A map! Of what kind? Is she really alien? Are the Agents of SHIELD going to have a cosmic adventure before the Avengers? Seems unlikely but man, some kind of Guardians of the Galaxy quick hit could be awesome! And if she is alien, will she have powers? Could all this be a rouse? Maybe it didn’t have the same effect on Skye as Coulson and Garrett because she is a lady.
- Oh, the humor between Hunter and his ex-wife is going to be glorious. They have done an excellent job of setting up that from the beginning of this season and I hope it pays off in humorous gangbusters.
- I don’t think we have seen the end of Kenneth. Call it a gut instinct, but I bet old Kenny gets some weirdness and shows up in a fight before the end of the season.
- Plot point that is interesting: Coulson seems to be taking on his predecessor’s “Do whatever it takes” mentality. It made Nick Fury a bit of the bad guy, especially in the Winter Soldier movie. It could show itself up in a variety of decisions he has to make. For example, I could argue that this episode got its title not just in regards to Simmons at Hydra, but also in regards to Raina with Coulson.
- And I am telling you, this different “heads” of Hydra thing has legs. It was too specific a word to think they just threw it in there when Simmons met Whitehall for the first time.
Tabletop Takeaways: Tips for Dungeon Masters with a Narrative Spin