Marvel's Agents of SHIELD returned to television with more possible stories the show could explore than ever before. The show has always felt like it was playing catch up to the silver screen MCU stories and played a bridging role to connect one movie to another without ever making a big impact. With the new focus of the show being around the Inhumans and a big budget Inhumans movie on the horizon, it is finally time for Agents of SHIELD to have a big impact on the rest of the MCU.
Last season, we saw the dispersal of the terrigenesis into the ocean, and it has now found its way into bottles of fish oil pills. The level of the chemical in the pills is enough to transform Inhumans but not enough to be fatal to people without the gene. Coulson and his team’s job this season is to track down the new Inhumans and bring them into SHIELD for treatment and training. This will be made difficult by a new U.S. government team tasked with the same mission.
The show begins right away with a new Inhuman named Joey, freaking out over his new abilities that turn certain metals into a liquid form. The U.S. Task force is already on location and start shooting at Joey when he is unable to control his powers and accidentally blows up a car during the confrontation. With Joey cornered in an ally, Daisy (apparently no longer wants to be called Skye) along with Mack and Hunter show up and with the help of Daisy's powers, rescue Joey to the new plane.
The Joey story doesn't really affect the path of the show as much as it just illustrates Daisy's new role in SHIELD and how she has grown with her powers. While a new super powered individual is exciting, the show stays away from the story for most the episode. Mack is now working closer with Skye on her missions and his blunt humor is refreshing in some of the heavy scenes.
For a nice change of things, we get introduced to a scene that has Fitz doing his very best James Bond impersonation while he sets up a meeting with a shady character. Fitz, we later find out, is after a scroll that holds the key to what the monolith does to people. After a brief fire fight and nice little car getting shot the back glass cliché moment, Fitz finally makes it back to the base and examines the scroll. The only word found on the parchment is "Death", and with that, Coulson tells Fitz it is time to move on because the team needs him more focused on what is going on in the lab instead of chasing dead ends.
Coulson has a nice meeting with the leader of ATCU, the other group after Joey, and it's established that they work for the government and are not the ones killing Inhumans that have been found dead. We get a nice shot of the President (same actor and name as Iron Man 3) proclaiming a very anti-Inhuman message. So much of this is taken straight from X-Men since Marvel doesn't have their television rights and being used to get the same story with a far less character group comic book wise. Seems like Marvel is doing everything they can to make the Inhumans the MCU's very own mutants.
During this time, Daisy has decided to try and bring Lincoln into SHIELD to help Joey medically and emotionally deal with his new gifts. During the debate of Lincoln saying no repeatedly, Lash appears at the hospital where Lincoln works and attacks the two. Lash is an Inhuman that in the comics starts hunting down new Inhumans and judges their worthiness to live with their new powers. Black Bolt (king of the Inhumans) does a similar massive global terrigenesis release similar to what happened at the end of last season. This seems to be what Lash is doing also in the TV series.
Daisy and Lincoln fight Lash off using both their powers in a very cool moment, but the ATCU show up and Lincoln bails on the group, forcing Daisy and Mack to return to base without him. The final moments of the show, Fitz is beating on the monolith begging for a sign that Simmons is still inside so he has a reason to keep looking for answers. The last cut scene shows Simmons trapped on a planet far away, running for her life after apparently being transported there by the monolith.
Review:
Agents has always lacked what most fans wanted, Superpowers. This is no longer the case, with the team building towards the much anticipated New Warriors theme and Daisy using her powers much more often, as it seems to be ready to deliver Flash-worthy powered fights. With the president talking about the events that has taken place with the Avengers and the new Inhuman threat, it is very possible that the Inhumans and the governments handling is what causes the riff between Tony Stark and Steve Rodgers in the upcoming Civil War movie. This could lead to an awesome season for SHIELD if they use the show to set up the events leading up to the movie.
Rating: 9
