Agents of SHIELD is back, after its mid-season break. To get back up to speed on the show, you can check out this handy list of characters and this recap of the major storylines of the show thus far.
After last week’s episode of Agents of SHIELD, what will happen if secrets get out?
Caution, spoilers ahead.
[divider]Recap of Agents of SHIELD Episode 212: Who You Really Are[/divider]We open with Lady Sif walking out of the ocean, carrying a sword and saying that she needs to find “Carver”. We realize she doesn’t know who she is.
Back at the SHIELD base, Skye and May are sparring and they get into a deep conversation about guarding their emotions. Skye is clearly concerned about losing control, while May doesn’t understand that Skye is worried about the new, yet still secret, powers.
Morse and Hunter have resumed their marital relations and Coulson has offered him a permanent job, with more responsibilities. Hunter says that the thing that came between the two of them was her dedication to SHIELD and it will be easier now that they are on the same team. Morse’s spy work and secret with Mac seems to quietly underline the whole conversation. Something is DEFINITELY up.
Coulson and Mac are doing inventory and Coulson reveals that Mac is going to be less a mechanic and more of a field operative. And the first mission for him comes when May comes in to say that got word about Portugal, and it is going to be an all-in kind of mission.
When they get to Portugal, Coulson is able to tell Lady Sif who she is. And then they get a clue about why she has come from Asgard in the form of a video on Twitter, where she is fighting an opponent who is clearly gifted and defeats her, throwing her into the ocean.
We then see the man in the video, who turns blue, like the alien that was in deep storage and provided the Tahitian goo in season one for Skye and Coulson. He has a tool that erases memories of encounters with him.
Simmons talks about new protocols and procedures to contain and take down bad guys. Skye and Fitz give each other a worried look as they head to the place where Sif and Mystery Man did battle. Sif is surprised that she normally is in full armor and she can’t remember much, except she does let out a giddy schoolgirl smile when May mentions Thor.
May and Sif are walking on the beach, when Coulson finds a witness who had the helium stolen from his balloon cart by the alien man. Simmons and Coulson deduce that he needed the helium valves for liquid Nitrogen, presumably because of alien biology.
Agent Morse and Skye find him near hospital liquid nitrogen, and he is blue, but turns human color before he and Morse get into it. (Can I say, I love the commitment of the show to Mockingbird’s bo-staffs. I love it. Little touch but it is a big part of the character in the comics.) When Skye draws her gun, she gets the shakes something awful, taking the gun apart and making the nearby shelves fall on her, allowing the alien to make a run for it.
Back at the base, they put together some facts with Sif’s help. The alien is Kree, that the word Carver in Kree means “key” and that he must be looking for one.
Mac and Morse talk over the circumstances; she wants to bring Hunter on-board with the secret, but Mac is against it. Mac is worried about it blowing up, especially if he takes “their” side. He thinks Morse should push Hunter away.
Detective work done, the team has figured out they are headed for Chavez, Portugal, where Dr. Whitehall unearthed the Obelisk way back in 1944. Skye asks to sit this one out, clearly anxious about her newfound powers, which May finds suspicious.
When the team gets there, the Kree is opening a box when Coulson shoots him with some kind of electrified net. And just like that, the Kree is in custody being interrogated by Coulson and Sif. He says that he took Sif’s memory only because she was tracking him. He says his name is Vin-Tak and that he will restore her memory, that his intentions are noble.
Morse is examining the truncheon – Vin-Tak’s memory wiping device – when Hunter shows up. She instigates a fight with him and he walks away. When they get Vin-Tak and the truncheon in the same room, he attacks Coulson to get it and quickly strikes Sif, returning her memories. She punches him in the face.
It turns out that Asgardians and the Kree have a beef and Odin sent her to check it out when Heimdall saw a Kree land on Earth. (But doesn’t Thor 2 tell us that Loki is Odin?!?!?) Vin-Tak and Sif then have a conversation about terragenesis, when ancient Kree seeded the Earth, revisiting the ‘blue angels’ talk from previous episodes. Sif says that they wanted to just use the world to create more soldiers. Vin-Tak says that it was just one subset of the Kree that did this but that when exposed to Terrigen crystals, it can unlock them. Vin-Tak says that the Kree shut down the experiments on Earth, but when he saw an ancient signal was triggered, he came to look for the Diviners, the trigger devices, because otherwise the Kree might renew their experiments. (As they explain all of this, we see Fitz and Simmons examining whatever large thing it was that Vin-Tak pulled out of the cave in Chavez.) Vin-Tak says that the crate has enough Diviners to create an army.
Simmons lets Coulson know that the crate is empty. And she discovers the information on Skye’s DNA, though Fitz lies to her and says that it is just simulation. The others are then talking about the transformation of Raina and putting her down, while Skye watches wide-eyed. Sif and Vin-Tak turn their attention to Skye for details about what she saw, while explaining that for some, the transformation isn’t visible. This makes Skye gets nervous and things begin to shake. Vin-Tak calls them abominations. May is the first to figure out that Skye is different than what she was, with Skye confessing she is the one making all the seismic activity happen. When Sif grabs her, Skye shatters all the windows around her.
Vin-Tak and Sif want to take Skye way, “deactivating” the weapon before it hurts someone. But the team grabs Skye and runs, with Simmons learning that Fitz knew. Coulson is trying to reason with Sif, when Vin-Tak attacks Coulson. They encounter Vin-Tak in the hallway, with Mac going down, Hunter going down, and Morse explaining she doesn’t love fighting but she will since Vin-Tak is coming after one of her people. They fight and Morse delays long enough for Hunter to show up with a new toy, knocking Vin-Tak to the ground and Morse strikes him with his own truncheon, wiping his memory.
As May and Skye hide in Ward’s cell from earlier in the season, May works to get Skye’s emotions (and powers) under control, when Sif’s sword comes through the force field wall. Skye is struggling and when the force field comes down entirely, Skye grabs May’s gun and shoots herself. Coulson talks Sif into leaving Skye with them, as she wants to get better and she needs the people she loves to help her.
As Sif prepares to leave, she explains leaving Skye with them poses a great risk. She is going to escort Vin-Tak back to his planet, memory wiped, meaning the Kree won’t come looking for Skye. But Sif tries to explain that there are things that they can’t change or swim against.
Back at the base, Fitz and Simmons are cleaning up and an argument ensues. Simmons is mad at Fitz for keeping a secret, even as he points out that Simmons didn’t deal with the changes that happened to him too well and that she was intent on “eradicating” the threat. Fitz says that they should be protecting Skye, but Mac says they are the ones that need protection from her. Of course, Skye stumbles into this conversation, grabs her stuff and locks herself in the containment and interrogation room.
The episode ends with Hunter confronting Mac, outlining that he knows something is going on with Mac and Morse. Mac gets close enough to knock Hunter out with a chokehold and the episode ends!
[divider]Thoughts on Agents of SHIELD Episode 212: Who You Really Are[/divider]- I think I might have played out the Fitz and Skye being the only two that knew for a bit longer but I am also glad that they didn’t drag that out. It moved that story point forward and quickly. And I think seeing the team rally around Skye, even as they have some other concerns, was great.
- I am really torn on this Morse/Mac thing. Part of me wants to think that they are working for Nick Fury, just making sure everything is okay from the inside. (I mean, Fury might have had worries about Tahiti and Coulson, and he may have thought May was too close to it.) But it is starting to feel ominous too, especially with the chokehold that ended this week’s episode.
- Skye needs help. And you know who has learned to control his emotions: Bruce Banner. The Hulk. Mark Ruffalo: are you available for an episode or two? (I mean, I know it won’t happen but it would be awesome if it did.)
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