Tag Archives: Deathlok

by

Agents of SHIELD – S1E22 – Beginning of the End – Recap

art of level 7 beginning of the end

When last we saw FitzSimmons, they were being “saved” by Ward dropping them into the middle of the ocean. We catch up to them now. They’re still in the cargo container/escape pod that Ward jettisoned from the Bus. But now it’s at the bottom of the ocean. Both of the geniuses are trying to figure out to escape and survive…and are coming up with nothing. Eventually, Simmons figures out how they can blow the window and escape, and Fitz figures out how to save Simmons, but at the cost of his own life. We get a sweet scene of FitzSimmons expressing their feelings for one another. The window blows. Simmons, the stronger swimmer of the two, hauls an unconcious Fitz to the surface. Unfortunately, they’re still in the middle of the ocean. That’s when  FitzSimmons is saved by…Nick Fury! The opening credits gave away that Samuel L. Jackson, aka Nick Fury, would be in this episode, but I didn’t see this one coming. Fitz isn’t doing well. We actually don’t see him for the rest of the episode.

Over in Hydra/Cybertek central, Garrett is going crazy. When he said last episode that he could see the universe, he wasn’t speaking in metaphors. He thinks his perception and brain power have been significantly enhanced. Maybe they have. Or maybe he’s just coo coo for Cocoa Puffs. He talks about being able to see the universe so much that he starts to remind of me of Katamari Damacy. 

feel the cosmos

 

Now that I think about it, Garrett makes as much sense as the King of the Cosmos in this episode.

katamari rainbow

 

Ward is worried about Garret’s sanity and says as much to Raina. But Raina is all in. She likes Garrett’s new crazy eyes. They kind of match her own.

After Fury saves FitzSimmons, he sticks around and helps Coulson take down Garrett. Fury and Coulson get some closure during this climatic final battle against Garrett, and Coulson’s team emerges victorious.  But hold the phone! After Coulson and company think they’ve won and are clearing out, Garrett reemerges more Deathlok-ed out than ever. Ruh-roh. Oh wait, he’s quickly disintegrated by Coulson in what has to be Coulson’s best entrance since the first episode, when he emerged from the shadows and blamed it on a broken light bulb.

garrett deathlok beginning of the end

Coulson’s team is set up with a new base, and a new Patton Oswalt?!?! Say hello to Eric Koenig’s twin brother Billy! Alright, Patton Oswalt as a series regular in season two!

billy koenig

But all isn’t 100% okay. In the final scene, Coulson is asleep in his new SHIELD base. Garrett’s crazy flowchart is next to him. Coulson either wakes up or is sleepwalking. He then proceeds to start digging into the wall with a tool, recreating Garrett’s flowchart and adding to it. Double ruh-roh. Maybe injecting people with blue alien blood while surgically messing with their brains isn’t the best idea after all…

coulson symbols the beggining of the end

Well here we are. The end of season one of Agents of SHIELD. I know some people were disappointed by this show, but it really exceeded all of my expectations. Joss, Jed and company really made me care about these new characters. I’m looking forward to season two in the fall very much. If you haven’t jumped back on the Agents of SHIELD train, I definitely recommend doing so, especially the post-Winter Soldier episodes.

by

Agents of SHIELD – S1E21 – Ragtag – Recap

art of level 7 ragtag

Ragtag by Emma Rios (Art of Level 7)

We learn a lot about Ward’s back story in Ragtag, specifically his relationship to Garrett. Ward was recruited by Garrett straight from juvenile lockup. Ward had been shunned by his family, but I guess that’s to be expected when you ditch military school to set the family home on fire while your brother is still in it. I wonder if we’ll ever see Ward’s brother. I can see him growing up to be a burnt-face enemy assassin, like Game of Thrones’s The Hound or WWE’s Kane.

Garrett leaves Ward in the woods with nothing but a dog named Buddy and his wits. Garrett checks in him on the seldom side of periodic. Ward and Buddy live in the woods for 5 years. During this time, Ward manages to forage for food and supplies, build himself a cabin and finally get a decent haircut.

young ward

Young Ward’s hair is best described as “serial killer-esque.”

What’s really interesting about this back story is the order of Ward’s recruitment by Garrett. Initially when he meets Ward, Garrett says he works for a secret organization. But a few years later, he tells Ward all about Hydra before telling him about SHIELD, making Ward a Hyrdra agent first and a SHIELD agent second.

Back in present, we’re quickly reminded that while Colson’s team is back together, Garrett and Ward have the Bus and Skye’s hard drive. Coulson wants both back. Skye has developed a trojan horse that can take down Garrett’s network. It’s installed on her stolen laptop. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to finish it. But as long as she can insert a thumb drive with the patch into any Hydra computer, it will launch the malware across their entire network. In order to sneak in Skye’s thumb drive, Coulson and May pose as renegade SHIELD scientists applying for jobs at Cybertek, the company behind Deathlok. This job interview was quite possibly my favorite scene in the episode. Coulson and May are being fed lines by FitzSimmons, causing both of them to fall into brogues as FitzSimmons argue and talk over each other. It was especially great to see a flustered Fitz/Coulson defending his work over a Hydra knock off. Unfortunately, May and Coulson don’t get job or get the job done. There are no computers in the entire building! They do find the file facility on the fourth floor, where they find a cabinet dedicated to the Deathlok program and make a shocking discovery, namely that Garrett is Deathlok 1.0! They download the files the old fashioned way, throwing the entire cabinet out the fourth floor window to Tripplett below.

Agents-of-S.H.I.E.L.D.-Coulson-and-May-Undercover

My other favorite scene came a little earlier when Tripplett retrieved his great-uncle’s Howling Commando gear. It’s all very James Bond by the way of World War II. Coulson is in heaven. And Fitz got to play comic relief by accidentally setting the curtains on fire with a laser cigarette.

The team tracks Garrett to an old SHIELD facility in Havana. FitzSimmons scout for the Bus, while May, Coulson and Tripplett check out the SHIELD base. FitzSimmons are three hours away from the team when they find the Bus in an airfield, too long for Coulson and company to rejoin them before the Bus takes off. FitzSimmons decide to sneak on the Bus. They’re quickly caught. While being questioned by Garrett, Fitz pulls out one of Tripplett’s great-uncle’s toys, a joybuzzer that’s also a short-range EMP. It shorts out the lights and Garrett’s Deathlok systems, giving FitzSimmons a chance to flee.

Garrett is not doing well. His Deathlok parts are fine, but his biological parts are giving out. That’s the entire reason for it all: Centipede, stealing the TAHITI information: it was all to keep him alive. Now that his Deathlok system is shorted out, he’s fading fast. Garrett wants FitzSimmons dead and commands Ward to kill them.

Cut back to the past, where we find out Garrett’s final test for Ward: killing his dog Buddy, whom Ward has been living with for the past 5 years. Ward can’t do it. Out of Garrett’s sight, he shoots his pistol in the air, which sends Buddy running. Ward can’t do it in the present either. He traps FitzSimmons in a cargo hold. When they won’t come out, Fitz’s pleading puppy eyes remind Ward of Buddy, and he ejects the cargo hold they’re in from the plane, seemingly dooming them in the ocean, but really saving them.

Flowers has managed to synthesize a single dose of the alien blood that helped resurrect Coulson. In order to save Garrett, Flowers injects him with the synthesized alien blood, mixing it with the Centipede formula already in his system. For a moment, it looks like he might explode like one of the Extremis soldiers in Iron Man 3, but he cools down and is good as new. Ward tells Garrett that he killed FitzSimmons. You know what? I don’t care that Ward let them live. He can’t be trusted. I don’t want him on Coulson’s team next season. Just sayin’.

Back in Havana, Coulson, May and Tripplett are ambushed by a guy holding what looks like an Asgardian staff. He doesn’t do anything except for smile menacingly. But  in the dark room they’re in, suddenly single red eyes burst to life. They’re being ambushed by Deathloks! And it looks from the silhouette like these are classic Luther Manning-style Deathloks! Alright! I can’t wait until the next episode.

In the kicker, Ian Quinn is attempting to sell a Deathlok army to the US government and the higher ups in the military that he’s meeting with look very intrigued.

by

Agents of SHIELD – S1E20 – Nothing Personal – Recap

I have to say, I really like the synergy that Agents of SHIELD and Captain America: The Winter Soldier have together. Having the story from Captain America: The Winter Soldier tie in so much with the last quarter season of Agents of SHIELD has been wonderful.

nothing personal art of level 7

Nothing Personal by Stephanie Hans (Art of Level 7)

Colbie Smulders guest stars in this episode, reprising her role as Fury’s second-in-command Maria Hill, who when we saw her last at the end of Winter Soldier was taking a job with Tony Stark. Hill is still at Stark. When we catch up to her this episode, she’s heading to her car, and making every agent trailing her along the way. She soon realizes that those agents she made have all been waylaid. For a moment, I thought Blackout had returned from last episode, but it’s quickly revealed to May whose behind the agents being taken out. May quickly explains what’s going on with Coulson and company.

maria hill s1e20

Speaking of Coulson, FitSimmons and Triplett, they’re very surprised when they return to Fury’s secret base only to find everyone gone. They review the tapes and see that May left first heading one way and then Skye and Ward left with the Bus heading the other way. But where is Koenig? FitzSimmons discover the answer to that question, as Fitz finds the “WARD IS HYDRA” scrawled on one of Koenig’s exterior mood photos just as Simmons finds Koenig’s body.

Fitz cannot bring himself to believe that Ward is Hyrdra. He bonded with Ward a lot when they went in the field together. He wants to believe Ward is still a good guy, to the point of questioning what they know about Triplett when Triplett tries calming Fitz down. Fitz makes his way through all five stages of grief fairly quickly, and focuses his anger at Ward in a positive direction, namely getting Skye back.

Speaking of Skye, she and Ward head to the diner where she first met Mike Peterson in the pilot episode. Skye claims that’s where the geolock on the drive can be opened. It’s interesting watching their conversations. On the one hand, it feels like it should be painfully obvious to Ward that Skye is onto her and to Skye that Ward knows she’s onto him, so the diner scene comes off like neither of them wanting to acknowledge it, though Skye sure does get close.

Up north at Fury’s base, Nathan from Heroes , Talbot arrives to arrest Coulson and company just as they’re about to take off to rescue Skye. Coulson gets the best line when he asks Talbot if his men are going to shoot him, because if they are, he’s not going to come out. How’d Talbot and the army find Coulson? Maria Hill led them there as part of her deal. Nice job, Hill. To Hill’s credit, once it’s revealed that Talbot is not going to go lightly on Coulson and his agents, Hill helps them escape. Man, Colbie Smulders is really good at fight scenes. Now that How I Met Your Mother has ended, I hope she becomes a regular fixture on this show.

In LA, Skye makes her move. The diner is filling up with cops, fast. Ward notices. Skye plays dumb, but then reveals that she alerted them to Ward’s presence and fugitive status on her laptop. Skye’s been playing Ward the whole time, as the geolock for the drive wasn’t this diner. I really liked when Skye called Ward a Nazi, and then backed it up by pointing out that Hydra was founded by the Red Skull, a Nazi. In the ensuing melee with the police, Skye bolts. Now hold on a second. Aren’t the LAPD a little more trigger happy than the cops shown here? Ward is taking out a room full of cops and none of them shoot him in even the leg? Come on…

Skye steals a police car. Just when she thinks she’s free, Deathlok literally drops in her. Ward and Deathlok return Skye to the Bus. Skye is ready to not tell them anything, until Deathlok induces a heart attack in Ward. Seeing Ward dying gets Skye to talk. Skye tells them that geolock has nothing to do with latitude or longitude, it’s all about altitude. I feel a Jimmy Buffet song coming on…

Actually, can we talk about Deathlok for a minute? I can’t figure this guy out. I get that Garrett is giving him commands in his eyeball all day, but he talks like he’s really into what he’s doing. I just don’t get Mike Peterson these days. There doesn’t seem to be any hesitation in him going along with the villains. I get that he wants to keep his son safe from harm, but you’d like there would be more internal dilemma here. Sure, Garrett is giving Mike commands, and sees through Mike’s eyes, but he can’t see if Mike were to gesture frantically at people or mouth something to them. I’d really love to get an episode told solely from Deathlok’s POV one day, or half told from the Agents’ POV and the other half showing the same events from Deathlok’s POV.

J. AUGUST RICHARDS, CHLOE BENNET

Hill, Coulson and company block their take-off, sort of. The bus can take off vertically, but Hill does threaten to blow them out of the sky if they take off. It’s a Mexican standoff, but Ward gets Hill to blink first, or so Ward thinks. Hill lets him take off, but this was all a distraction so that Coulson could sneak onto the Bus through the landing gear.

Once on the Bus, Coulson finds Skye, who ask him what his plan is for dealing with Deathlok. Coulson’s reaction? “Deathlok’s here?” Deathlok’s here. Coulson and Skye flee to the hanger and jump in Lola. Ward and Deathlok catch up to them and start firing. Ward is definitely trying to take off Coulson’s head. Coulson manages to open the cargo bay door and drop Lola from the Bus. Unfortunately, Lola’s thrusters are all out of whack from being shot at by Coulson and Deathlok. Skye almost goes flying out. Coulson: “I told you to buckle up!” Coulson is the best. Coulson manages to right Lola enough to drop it perfectly in a tight parallel parking spot near the valet outside the Ritz Carlton. Skye’s hair is hilarious, as is the valet nonchalantly asking them for $20. I really wish Rob Huebel played the valet in this scene, even if it was just for one line. Yes, yes, I know we already saw Huebel in the series in a previous episode. I just like the guy so much.

Skye’s free. Coulson has the team back together…yeah, minus Ward, but what can you do? Unfortunately, Maria Hill goes back to Stark. Coulson tells her to say hi for him, but then remembers that Stark still thinks Coulson is dead.

At the end of the episode, May lets a bombshell drop. She shows Coulson the video of who was in charge of TAHITI. It was Coulson! Coulson obviously has no recollection of this, but in the video, he advises Fury to shut down TAHITI. The program was initially devised for bringing back any of the Avengers if they should fall, but Coulson warned that the test subjects are too unstable. Huh, Coulson was in charge of TAHITI, and Fury used it to bring back Coulson even though Coulson warned him against using it. I feel like Coulson can still be mad at Fury if he wants to be.

Comic Book Connection:

Early in the episode, Maria Hill says, “I don’t know even know what a Man-Thing is.” Lucky for you, I do! Man-Thing is a Marvel comic book character created int he 1970s. It lives in the swamps of the Florida Everglades. Think Swamp Thing, but creepier looking…and less interesting. Unlike Swamp Thing, Man-Thing never speaks, making his stories a bit on the dull side in my opinion. Also unlike Swamp Thing, anything that knows fear burns at Man-Thing’s touch, like literally bursts into flames. There aren’t many things that don’t freak out when a giant swamp creature ambles in their direction.

man thing 1 cover

 

by

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

by

Agents of SHIELD S1E13 – T.R.A.C.K.S. – Recap

agents of shield tracks deathlok

Agents of SHIELD Episode 13, T.R.A.C.K.S., has Coulson’s entire team going undercover on a train travelling through the Italian countryside in order to intercept a package on its way to Ian Quinn.

This episode  uses a fun storytelling device. The episode goes along linearly until a certain point, then it divides into four non-linear stories before becoming linear at the end. The four stories are set around the four teams of SHIELD agents on the train: 1. Coulson & Simmons, 2. May, 3.  Fitz & Skye, and 4. Ward. Each story starts at the same place, just as the train is passing through a scenic mountain range, which coincides with the moment when Coulson’s plan goes to crap.

ELIZABETH HENSTRIDGE, CLARK GREGG

Stan Lee makes a great cameo. He’s flanked by two hot women and calls Coulson out for being a terrible “father” after hearing his “daughter” Simmons go on a long and detailed rant as part of her getting into her undercover character. Like many of Stan’s scenes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this scene provides the episode with a bit of lighthearted fun.

agents of shield tracks stan lee

Coulson’s team gets made, forcing Coulson and Ward to exit the train promptly while it’s still in motion. An enemy agent hurls a grenade that lets out a blue gas that seems to do nothing to Coulson and Ward, but the train immediately disappears at the same time. As we find out in May’s scene, the grenade paralyzed Coulson and Ward, and they weren’t even aware that any time had passed when they came to. This time-lapse grenade is what necessitated the non-linear story-telling in the episode, as it kept the nature of the blue smoke a mystery from not only the characters, but  the viewers too.

agents of shield tracks

The McGuffin that Coulson and company are after turns out to be a machine that when attached to Michael Peterson’s leg-stump transforms into a  fully functional robotic leg. Ladies and gentlemen…say hello to Deathlok.

For those of you unfamiliar with the character, Deathlok is a cybernetic soldier that is half man-half machine. The original Deathlok came from a dystopian future, but in the 1990s, Marvel introduced a present day Deathlok. This Deathlok was a man that had his brain put into the body of prototype Deathlok soldier, which was half-machine, half-reanimated corpse. Think Cyborg from Teen Titans: Go meet Warm Bodies.  The machine and human parts of Deathlok’s brain often came into conflict with each other, the machine lacking the soul and emotion of the human part.  Deathlok was recently reintroduced to Marvel Comics in Rick Remender’s excellent Uncanny X-Force.

The original Deathlok.

The original Deathlok.

This episode does not go well for Skye. She is the only member of Coulson’s team who manages to infiltrate Quinn’s mansion. She’s rewarded with a bullet to the gut for her effort. By the time the rest of the team finds her, she’s bled out a lot. The team places her in a stasis chamber to keep her alive, so Skye is basically in a coma right now. This is the most danger a member of Coulson’s team has faced since Simmons almost died in F.Z.Z.T. I wasn’t a fan of Skye during the first couple of episodes, but she has definitely grown on me. I don’t expect her to die, and it would be a real bummer if she did.

agents of shield tracks skye shot

At the very end of the episode, we get Ward’s reaction to Skye’s near-death experience. Ward is pissed, and not at himself. He blames someone else. He doesn’t say who, but he doesn’t have to. It’s fairly clear that Coulson is the target of his rage. Expect things to come to a head between Ward and Coulson soon.