*Spoilers Ahead*
Agents of SHIELD returned this week with Coulson and the team fighting to save everything they hold dear. With the betrayal of Bobbi and Mack coming to light this week, the team has to fight back against one enemy they never saw coming, SHIELD. Skye gets a visit from our unknown Inhuman Gordon, who looks a lot like Reader, who offers to take her with him and receive help with her powers. With the walls crumbling down around the team it falls on Coulson to find a way to make things right.
The show starts with Bobbi returning to the team after her meeting with the other SHIELD about taking out Coulson. She uses her story about chasing after Hunter to cover up where she has been and Coulson seems to buy it. Coulson is finally letting Mack look under Lola's hood and they have a fun back and forth about the model Mack built not being able to fly. Then Coulson drops the bomb that he knows Mack built in some sort of device into it and grills him about who he is working for and with. Mack swears he works for SHIELD but Coulson doesn't buy it and it soon dawns on him who is working with Mack.
Coulson tells May to get to Bobbi and she enters Coulson's office just in time to witness Bobbi extracting Fury's toolbox from Coulson's desk. Bobbi tries to explain but May starts a fight before the conversation goes any further. Bobbi gets away from May after a virus Mack installed earlier shuts down all the power in the headquarters. Mack also escapes Coulson and the team of agents that had him at gun point and Coulson orders everyone to find the pair.
Bobbi eventually runs into Simmons who appears to be complete unaware that Bobbi is the one everyone is after. After Simmons plays her usual inncocence card she tricks Bobbi into letting her guard down before Simmons uses a gadget to knock her unconscious. Coulson recovers the toolbox, while across the base Fitz runs into Mack. Mack promises Fitz he would never hurt him and moments later the base is raided by the rest of the other SHIELD.
Coulson is taken into custody along with the rest of his SHIELD while Bobbi and her SHIELD turn her attention to finding Skye. Here we get a very interesting little Easter egg from the MCU, the safe house where Skye is hiding is called the reservation. The reservation it turns out, was designed by Bruce Banner and gives us some knowledge that Banner has been friendly and done some work with SHIELD since the events of the first Avengers movie. This was a nice little tie in to remind the viewers that they are still in the big picture.
Once Bobbie and her task force leave to go after Skye, Agent May is able to free herself long enough to give Skye a warning. Coulson is brought into his office in handcuffs to have a talk with Agent Gonzales, the somewhat director of other SHIELD. Gonzales is not happy with the way Fury handled SHIELD, the secrets and lies are what he believes brought on the destruction of SHIELD. We also get a series of flashbacks thought out the episode of the day of the Hydra attack during Captain America The Winter Soldier. These flashbacks show Agent Gonzales' ship being attacked and Fury ordering it to be scuttled so that Hydra does not obtain the cargo on board.
Bobbie is sent to destroy the ship during the flash back but Mack talks her out of it and they instead take back the ship from Hydra. This would appear to be the moment this new SHIELD bonded together and formed. In the present day, May enters Coulson's office after her call to Skye and disarms the guards and Agent Gonzales setting Coulson free. Coulson then escapes his own base by using a secret elevator hidden behind a wall in his office in classic SHIELD fashion.
Back at the cabin, Skye is running for her life from SHIELD helicopters. She finally gets cornered by Bobbi and Agent Calderon. When Calderon aims his pistol at Skye, Bobbie tries to yell and warn her before he takes the shot as a sign that she is still a good guy just working for the wrong side. Skye turns and instinctively uses her new powers to vibrate the air in front of her and deflect the bullet. Her usage of powers levels a small portion of the forest, erupting the trunks of trees into a thousand splinters and knocking Bobbi and Calderon backwards to the ground. However, Skye's powers shattered trees but only knocked Bobbi and Calderon to the ground, this is either really poor screenwriting or proof she does have a little more control of her powers than anyone thinks she does. After the fight a very shaken Skye whispers for Gordon to help her and he appears out of thin air and teleports her to the Inhuman area where he is from.
The closing scenes from the episode show Coulson sitting at a bar somewhere tropical and Hunter walks up and takes a seat next to him. He apologizes for it taking him so long and tells Coulson he will take the job offer to join the team permenantly. The back and forth leads the viewer to the conclusion that Hunter was sent to confront Mack by Coulson and his being captured may have very well been the plan the whole time. If Coulson knew about the other SHIELD and smacks betrayal the whole time he may be the ace up his sleeve that saves everyone.
The show is finally moving at a pace much more like its DC counter parts on the CW. Stories are developing and coming to ahead in fewer episodes then in the past and its flowing very nicely. Seeing Hunter take up the position Coulson offered gives the shower and good solid character for the foreseeable future and fills a void left behind by Tripp and Ward. We all know Bobbie Morse has a long history as an Avenger in the comics but as we seen with Jasper Sitwell things can change. While the show may not turn Mockingbird into a bad guy they could let her walk away and not play the role it was looking like she would in the future.
The two SHIELDS having such different views is a good foreshadowing of the upcoming civil war event. However, it seems rather hard to keep the two sides fighting long enough for the movie considering how fast the conflict has escalated in recent episodes. A lot of fans have speculated that each side will be controlled by Stark and Rogers but Stark controlling a SHIELD that is trying to take out Coulson would be a stretch considering how important Coulson was to the Avengers. An Avengers tie in with Hawkeye showing up on the show would be a nice way to start his and Mockingbird's story and do some explaining of where Hawkeye has been since the Avengers movie. With only a handful of episodes before the next silver screen story affecting the MCU the stability of SHIELD will surely been resolved before Ultron tries to take over the world.
Episode Rating: 9.5