The Theta Protocol and the Inhumans take center stage in the penultimate S.H.I.E.L.D. before the season finale next week.
Never leave home without your lanyard.
(screencap courtesy of CTV.ca)
Previously on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
With Hydra openly experimenting on Lincoln and Deathlok, Coulson negotiated with Gonzales to lead a team for a rescue mission, using the Toolbox as a bargaining chip. What followed was a mission where the original Team Coulson was sent to an unknown arctic location to retrieve Hydra’s captives. The mission was a success, though it resulted in the death of their man on the inside, Bakshi, who died after protecting Ward from a vengeful Simmons.
Later, Coulson divulged intel to Maria Hill on the whereabouts of Loki’s sceptre, which was now in Sokovia along with Baron Strucker. Hill asked Coulson if Theta Protocol was ready and was told to call in the Avengers to help with retrieving the sceptre.
In Afterlife, Raina was dressed down by Jiaying for using her visions to convince Skye to go on the rescue mission with S.H.I.E.L.D. after the latter was told by husband Cal not to trust Raina. However, the quill-faced Inhuman had a vision of “metal men coming to tear our cities apart”, and that’s where we left things for the week.
Recap (Full Spoilers Ahead)
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is a show that succeeds in playing with audience expectations in terms of where the plot will go, following it with turning said expectations on an axis. The latter half of Season One was rife with that sort of action, and it once again arrives in full force with “Scars”, the penultimate episode before the “S.O.S.” two-part story next week takes us to the end of Season Two.
The heavily-discussed Theta Protocol – briefly mentioned last week as having some sort of relation to the Avengers – turns out to be the rebuilding of the No. 64 Helicarrier for emergency purposes, which of course is was the helping the Avengers rescue civilians during their fight with the title villain in Avengers: Age of Ultron. The show doesn’t dwell on that fact too much, relegating the reveal for the cold open before the title card zooms in on screen, but it still lingers a good chunk f the episode. In fact, the immediate scene following that revelation features Coulson and S.H.I.E.L.D. Beta mostly patching things up, on the basis of how Coulson’s Theta Protocol helped prevent a further calamity during the Ultron attacks. The fact that this reveal is summarily dealt with is actually a benefit, since it allows for S.H.I.E.L.D. to develop its own ongoing stories without them being overshadowed by tie-ins with the latest Marvel Studios release.
On the negative, this does provide a rather abrupt conclusion to the “Real S.H.I.E.L.D.” arc that dominated quite a bit of Season Two’s second half, which is a disappointment. The conflict was being set up as a war of ideologies clashing (Coulson’s way of handling threats versus the S.H.I.E.L.D. Beta council’s democratic stance and Gonzales’ views on Enhanced people), but the payoff could’ve been better executed.
I’ve noted before about how nothing is ever as it seems on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and this episode just increased that notion tenfold. The big elephant in the room in this case here would be what goes down in the final moments of “Scars” between S.H.I.E.L.D. Beta’s Commander Gonzales and Jiaying, the matriarch of Afterlife. Given his rhetoric in past episodes regarding Enhanced people – and by extension, Inhumans – one would expect Gonzales to be the one who sets off war, but the show subverts that by having him actually try to play nice with Jiaying, in the hopes to get her people to agree to work with S.H.I.E.L.D. as potential assets. And then there’s a further subversion when we learn that Jiaying does have a monstrous side to her, murdering Gonzales via Terrigen crystal and then creating a false flag situation by intentionally shooting herself to make it appear to her people that S.H.I.E.L.D. tried to kill her.
The Jiaying we see at the end of the episode is a far cry from the one we saw peacefully trying to train Skye in the use of her powers a few weeks back. It’s quite clear that the “scars” that give the episode its title name run far deeper within Jiaying than the physical scarring inflicted on her when Whitehall and Hydra dissected her way back, as it also helps exacerbate her decisions in regards of wanting to wage full-on war with S.H.I.E.L.D. to accomplish the goals of protecting her fellow Inhumans. It’s an “ends justify the means” scenario going on with Jiaying. You can’t help but feel sympathy, but at the same time, she’s still taking things to an illogical extreme, and her next choices could spell disaster for the Inhumans.
On top of that, you’ve got Raina, who’s found herself in a “cry wolf” situation with her visions. We’re left to assume that her visions of a meeting with Jiaying and S.H.I.E.L.D. representatives would end in violence are more of her lies, and the Afterlife folks do take special note of that, not trusting her in the slightest. So it really comes as a surprise that Raina was right all along and is now the least “villainous” out of the Afterlife Inhumans at the moment.
Elsewhere, it seems Ward and Agent 33’s sympathy play last week was all an act, as the two schemed to kill Bobbi for an apparent secret the latter has involving her and 33. It helps figure into the whole “appearances can be deceiving” thing that has firmly entrenched itself into the very fabric of this show. Mockingbird may be down and out, but she’ll definitely make sure that Ward and Kara have hell to pay.
With only two episodes left in the season (though both will air on the same night), we once again get an episode primarily made up of setting up the pieces for next week, but it does so in a way that provides a boatload of shocking twists that you never see coming.
Grade: 8.5/10
Notes from the Field
- The playful teasing from the creators about the Koenig siblings’ status as potential Life Model Decoys was in full force with the song in the background during their appearance in the intro being about robots, and robot socks even being seen in one shot.
- Mack decided that he’s had enough of things and apparently quit S.H.I.E.L.D. as a result. It seems that his comic counterpart did the same thing and ended up writing a book about S.H.I.E.L.D. secrets after. I wonder if he’ll go thru the same route.
- The predicament Mockingbird finds herself in at the end of the episode might normally spell trouble for her, but given the fact that she’ll be featured in the spinoff series to H.I.E.L.D. in the near future alongside Lance Hunter, I can safely say that she’ll be alright.
- I reviewed Avengers: Age of Ultron here, if you want to see my thoughts on the film.
- “Call your sister” (a notepad on Billy Koenig’s mirror)
- “This way, we’ll have a cool underground base. And a boat.” (It’s a deal you just can’t beat.)
- “That looked old. Was that old? Sorry.” (Cal on the value of tables)
- “I think, maybe we’ve been spending too much time together.” (Nothing wrong with some bonding time, Phil.)
Next Week
You enjoy stories that end with a bang? Then you’ll love next week’s two-hour season finale, as the war between S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Inhumans really heats up. And yes, I’ll be covering both hours in one review. Don’t miss out.
Marc Quill just happens to cover shows aired on Tuesdays at 9/8 on ABC that are also based on Marvel Comics. He’s also very Canadian. You can reach him on Twitter @MarcQuill.