Tag Archives: Agent May

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Agents of SHIELD – S2E4 – Face My Enemy – Recap

Man, compared to last season, this season of Agents of SHIELD is so good! I don’t know if it just takes a season for the writers and actors to really discover the characters, or if it’s the fact that Coulson and his team are the underdogs this season. Maybe it’s a combination of the two.

This episode focuses mainly on Coulson and May, as the two most experienced members of the team, crash a very fancy house party in order to retrieve a painting that on its backside has the same weird alien wingdings that Coulson has been drawing. There’s a small, but major complication to this when they show up and see that Talbot is at the same party. Oh, and did I mention that the party is at a Hydra house? And that Talbot seems to be in league with the Hydra guy whose party it is. Oh boy.

But the biggest problem really is just Talbot being there, whether or not he’s in league with Hydra. Coulson and May are at the party under assumed identities. If Talbot spots them, their cover is completely blown.

Before discovering Talbot is at the party, Coulson and May have one of the coolest scenes in the history of this show. They’re dancing together, but using every turn, dip and spin to scope out the room, taking notes of cameras and guards while reminiscing on past adventures together.

CLARK GREGG, MING-NA WEN

Coulson confronts Talbot, telling him that he’s on a mission at this party that could benefit them both. Talbot is surprisingly receptive to the idea.

Once the mission gets underway, we get some serious Mission: Impossible action going down. May flirts with a guy and tells Coulson to take their picture. But what Coulson is really doing is scanning his retinal patterns to bypass a lock later. Unfortunately, when they go for the painting, their cover is blown and the painting is nowhere to be found. Skye alerts them that the US government has the painting. Coulson meets with Talbot, and Talbot agrees to let Coulson see the painting…but only if they’ll meet him a secure location. Talbot also seems to be working with a bad guy here behind Coulson’s back. Uh-oh…

May checks out the secure location and is ambushed by the brainwashed Agent 33, who uses this digital mask thing to copy May’s face onto her own. Where does Hydra get these wonderful toys? The disguised-as-May Agent 33 arrives at the Bus, convinces Coulson to go to the secure location with her, and manages to install some nasty devise onto the Bus’s mainframe. 

Agents-of-SHIELD-2x04-I-Will-Face-My-Enemy-11

Agent 33’s device sends the Bus into lock down mode. Coulson’s entire team is trapped inside the Bus. Crap. Oh, and the Bus is going to explode. Double crap.

may fight

At the hotel that is the secure location, Coulson figures out May is an imposter when she agrees to get a cup of coffee with him when this is all over. The real May hates coffee. Real May frees herself and it’s a May on May fight to determine who may walk away.  It’s a fantastic fight scene. I hope they include a making of for this scene in the DVD release of season two. The real May wins the fight. Coulson recovers the painting.

may fight 2

On the Bus, Fitz manages to save the day. This gets both Fitz and the rest of the team to believe in Fitz a little more. Fitz had been standoffish around the others earlier in the episode. But once he saves the day, he is ready to interact with the team again on a personal level. They’re all bitching about exes. Fitz joins in to complain about a girl who left once she found out how her felt about her.

Agents-of-SHIELD-Face-My-Enemy-3

So that was never Talbot. It was a Hydra guy in a Talbot mask all episode. When Coulson gets hold of the real Talbot, Talbot is amused that Coulson didn’t find it odd that he would just go along with this plan. Coulson’s team makes a discovery about the painting: it’s old, but the carvings aren’t. That means unless Garrett did this before he went completely Loony Toons, someone else is out there making these weirdo alien carvings too.

As the outro for the episode, Raina is taken by the Hydra silver fox from last week. He wants the obelisk, and wants her help retrieving it. To entice her to see things his way, he tortures her with some device and tells her she has 48 hours to bring it to him.

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Winter Soldier & Agents of SHIELD

MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW. If you haven’t seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier yet, see it first and come back. And if you’re an Agents of SHIELD fan, make sure you watch Winter Soldier BEFORE you watch the tonight’s  episode! But if you don’t plan on watching Captain America: The Winter Soldier before tonight’s episode, this post should catch you up with everything you need to know.

agents of shield winter soldier

I feel more than it affects any of the other Marvel movies, Captain America: The Winter Soldier dramatically affects the Agents of SHIELD TV show. In the most recent episode of Agents of SHIELD, Coulson figures out that the villain The Clairvoyant is a SHIELD agent or has SHIELD agents in his employ. In Winter Soldier, it’s revealed that SHIELD is even more deeply compromised than Coulson suspected. Hydra has secretly taken over huge parts of SHIELD (and the government) from the top down, including the senator played by Garry Shandling in Iron Man 2 and long time SHIELD agent Jasper Sitwell!

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The Doctor and Rose reenact the pivotal scene between Senator Stern and Jasper Sitwell from Captain America: Winter Soldier.

Sitwell appeared briefly onscreen in Thor and Avengers, but has seen the majority of his screen time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe on the Agents of SHIELD TV series, including in last week’s episode, where he was still thought to be a loyal SHIELD agent. The revelation that Sitwell is in fact an agent of Hydra is a huge bombshell. Before Winter Soldier, there was no reason to think Sitwell was a traitor. Now, unless he’s revealed to be a triple-agent, Sitwell will be remembered as a traitor. I doubt he survived being thrown into oncoming traffic by the Winter Soldier on a busy DC highway. That said, he may be in part of tonight’s episode, as he was still alive in last week’s episode, and we don’t know yet how much of tonight’s episode takes before or during the events of Captain America: Winter Soldier. 

sitwell

We also don’t know how much of last week’s episode took place during or after Winter Soldier. Remember how hard a time Coulson was having trying to get in touch with Nick Fury last week? Could the reason for Coulson’s difficulty be the assassination attempt on Fury’s life in Captain America: The Winter Soldier? Coulson’s crew has been isolated and on their own recently. Unless they hear something from Victoria Hand or Agent Garrett (Bill Paxton), there’s a good chance they won’t hear it. And it was revealed last week that Hand has her own agenda counter to Coulson.

victoria hand

Could The Clarivoyant from Agents of SHIELD be part of Hydra? The tagline “Everything is Connected” that ABC has been running in their advertising for Agents of SHIELD certainly makes it seem so. In the most recent episode of SHIELD, Coulson deduces that the Clairvoyant isn’t actually a psychic, but it rather someone with deep access to information, who uses that information to predict the future.

clairvoyant shield agent

Could the Clarvoyant be the now computerized Arnim Zola? It fits, as Zola was using everything from Facebook and Gmail to predict how people would act and who needed to be taken out. The main thorn in this theory is that I feel we’ve seen the Clairvoyant in silhouette already, unless that was just the man in the wheelchair who Ward killed in last week’s episode.

I’m guessing that one of Coulson’s team will be revealed as a Hydra agent. But I can’t think who I would want that traitor to be. I’ve grown to like every member of Coulson’s crew this season and will be devastated if any of them are traitors. Right now, I’m hoping it ends up being Garrett or Triplett if it has to be anyone. I do not think Agent May is a Hydra agent. I think her suspicious behavior is a red herring and that her secret phone line is a direct connection to Fury. And I don’t know what to make of Hand. Is she a Hydra agent? Or is she operating her own agenda?

agents of shield trust no one

Tonight’s episode of Agents of SHIELD is going to be huge! Do not miss this episode!

 

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Agents of SHIELD – S1E16 – The End of the Beginning – Recap

Big episode this week as Coulson and his team hunt down The Clairvoyant!

Bill Pullman Paxton and Ward 2.0 return at the very start of the episode. They’re checking into a hotel and are ambushed by Deathlok. Deathlok shrugs off gunfire and electric shots. Garrett and Ward 2.0 are quickly overpowered by Deathlok and it looks like this is the end for them. Until Deathlok decides to jump through the room’s ceiling and flee instead of taking them out. Okay, that was weird.

OG Ward and Ward 2.0

OG Ward and Ward 2.0

Coulson’s crew hooks up with Paxton and Ward 2.0. They’ve narrowed down The Clairvoyant’s ID to three likely suspects. In order to not get the mission compromised by a potential leak, Skye randomly assigns the agents into three teams of two, one agent knowing where they’re going and the other knowing who they’re going after.

May and Blake (The Good Wife’s Titus Welliver) seemingly strike pay dirt attempting to question a catatonic guy in a nursing home. They never reach him, but Deathlok ambushes them, sending Blake to the hospital, but suspiciously not harming May, despite having the drop on her.  I don’t know if this was an intentional piece of fan service or not, but Blake asks May if she’s a Scorpio, joking that he guessed they were paired up by their astrological signs. In the comics, Scorpio is the name of a classic SHIELD villain. The original Scorpio was Nick Fury’s brother, Jacob. I wonder if we’ll be seeing Scorpio, either as an individual or as a new villainous group, in Agents of SHIELD. Or maybe this Scorpio line was just a red herring.

scorpio

Scorpio

The team manages to find a warehouse where they believe the not-quite-comatose dude is hiding out. Garrett leads the charge with one of the best lines of the episode. Ward (1.0) asks him if he’s going to ring the bell or knock. Garrett says he’s going to knock and then blows the door open with a grenade launcher. F-yeah, Bill Paxton!

deathlok 2

Skye is monitoring things remotely and spots Deathlok on a camera. I really do not like the way Michael Peterson looks as Deathlok on the show. It’s just a little too boring of a costume right now. I want the classic Luther Manning look with the half-metal head. Those who fall into the same boat as me were given a nice piece of fan service this week when Skye scanned Deathlok, revealing the classic Deathlok look hiding just under skin deep. I hope something happens to Peterson to expose this half-metal head permanently soon.

deathlok

Garrett, Ward, May and Coulson find The Clairvoyant, who is revealed to be a Stephen Hawking type guy trapped in a wheelchair who communicates through his computer. The robotic voice of The Clairvoyant’s computer mocks Coulson and threatens to kill Skye. Ward snaps and shoots the The Clairvoyant in the heart, killing him. My immediate thought: “This isn’t the real Clairvoyant.” Coulson comes to the same conclusion, noting that The Clairvoyant never actually spoke, his words always coming from the computer. Someone else could have been saying those words and this now dead psuedo-Clairvoyant could have really just been a catatonic patsy.

Coulson comes to the conclusion that The Clairvoyant isn’t psychic, but rather has high-level SHIELD clearance. They’re being taken down from the inside!

Back on the Bus, Coulson interrogates Ward, questioning if Ward shot the man in the wheelchair on his own accord, or if Ward was taking orders from someone else.

While Coulson is interogating Ward, Fitz finds out that May has a private communications line in her cockpit that she’s not supposed to have. From Fitz’s explanation, it sounds like a two-way line that only communicates with one other.  Fitz disables it, and it then hunted by a very determined May. In what was the scariest part of the episode for me, May fires at Fitz. Thankfully, he was standing behind bulletproof glass. But knowing Joss Whedon, I really thought Fitz might not have made it out of this episode. Thankfully, Fitz is saved by Coulson who points a gun at May. May explains her gun was loaded with Fitz’s stun bullets. Coulson says his are real. Skye enters with a gun drawn on May, saying May can’t take them both out. May surrenders. As she surrenders, the Bus changes course mid-air. Coulson demands to know what May did to their plane. May claims she did nothing. A cut away from this scene reveals the plane to be in control of Victoria Hand, who sounds ready to take out Coulson and his entire team once the Bus lands.

Takeaways:

Is May working for The Clairvoyant? My theory is no.

Who is on the other end of May’s phone? I think it’s Nick Fury.

Is Victoria Hand The Clairvoyant? She might be. Or maybe she’s The Clairvoyant’s right hand woman.

victoria hand

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Agents of SHIELD S1E8: “The Well” – Review

It’s finally here, the Thor: The Dark World crossover with Agents of SHIELD! Sadly, there was no sign of Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston or Natalie Portman in this episode. Not even a Cat Dennings or Stellan Skarsgård. We do get an Asgardian though. Unfortunately, it’s not this Agardian:

Sorry fellas. No Sif in Agents in SHIELD.

Sorry fellas. No Sif in Agents in SHIELD.

Instead, we get this Asgardian:

elliot randolph

That’s right, mother-fucking Dr. Janoch Pohaa! Sorry, I mean Dr. Elliot Randolph as played by Peter MacNicol. Sadly, MacNicol is not using his excellent foreign accents skills in this episode. And he doesn’t worship any paintings of Vigo, the Scourge of Carpathia, the Sorrow of Moldavia.

But MacNicol is a full-fledged Asgardian in this episode. He’s wearing a suit in that photo and not a bitchin’ set of armor because centuries ago he renounced being an Asgardian Beserker to live a quiet life on Earth. Unfortunately, a Nordic hate-group has discovered his Beserker staff, which he broke into three pieces and hid, and hid well. One of the pieces was inside a tree! Just a fragment of the Beserker staff is enough to give a mortal superpowers (and as Ward found out, dredge up all your worst memories). The staff is like half power ring and half Scarecrow fear toxin.

CLARK GREGG, BRETT DALTON, PETER MACNICOL

“How do we stop Gozer?!”
“Um, wrong Ghostbusters movie, jerks.”

The effect of the Beserker staff on Ward really lets Ward’s asshole side take charge. At the same time, it opens up new layers of the character. We see the childhood trauma that shapes so much of Ward’s present day. Holding the staff is too much for him, but not for Agent May, resident bad-ass of the SHIELD crew, who takes it and doles out a whupping on the bad guys.

"I got this."

“I got this.”

The “Holy shit!” moment of the episode came after the villains were defeated and the SHIELD team was getting a rare night of R&R in a hotel instead of sleeping on The Bus. Skye wants to hang out with Ward, but he decides to head up to his room alone instead. Agent May is entering her room as Ward reaches his door. She’s holding a bottle of wine and leaves the door ajar as she heads inside. Ward follows her in. WHAAAAAAAATTTTT! It looks like Ward and May are going to get the effects of the Beserker Staff out of their systems in the most fun way they can.

I was hoping for more of a tie-in with Thor: The Dark World than Coulson’s team acting like a Damage Control clean-up crew. But their roles as janitors to superheroics did lead to an interesting expansion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the introduction of The Berserker. I just wish MacNicol gave The Beserker a Carpathian accent.