November 21, 2014 by Billy Henehan

Agents of SHIELD – S2E6 – A Fractured House – Recap

The episode opens at the UN. Talbot talking about being in New York City during the battle for New York, aka The Avengers movie. In his speech, he stomps SHIELD into a mudhole. The Italian diplomat stands up to him. A squad busts in led by a guy who I thought was Batroc the Leaper (he’s not, pity) and starts hitting diplomats with those discs that obelisk people. Is obelisk a verb? It is now. The discs don’t turn people into obelisks, but it has the same effect that touching it, or you know, drinking champagne laced with the cells of its victims does. Not-Batroc and his people are wearing clothes sporting the SHIELD logo. Not-Batroc announces “SHIELD is done hiding” as tries to kill Talbot with one of those discs. Oh boy.

Ward opens his eyes like he’s Jack in the opening of the pilot of Lost. He then goes through the Desmond workout from the opening of the first episode of the second season of Lost. I’m starting to think I know what show the Agents of SHIELD writer like the most. Hint: it rhymes with “LOST.” Ward has an insane workout routine. Skye and Gemma are watching the Ward channel. Gemma admits to watching it every day, but she manages to say it in a wholly scientific and non-sexy way. May comes in to announce to them that there’s been an attack on the UN. Coulson figures out it’s Hydra immediately.

Coulson wants coffee and finds a grumpy cat mug. “Did someone bring this from home?” That’s a good question. How does a Grumpy Cat mug end up in a hidden SHIELD base. I thought everything was only allowed to have the SHIELD logo on it. I kind of wish that mug did have both Grumpy Cat and a SHIELD logo on it. Coulson tells Skye to put the alien writing deciphering on the back burner for now. Bobbie Morse, in a purple Star Wars t-shirt, shows up with some intel. I have never loved Star Wars more. She says Marcus Scarlotti is the name of guy I thought was Batroc. Coulson tells Bobbie to join Hunter and May to take on the developer of the obelisk weapon. Neither Hunter nor Bobbie are feeling good about this team-up. Coulson basically says get over it or get out.

Talbot is now in an arm sling. I’m guessing the disintegrater disc missed him. He meets with government honcho. Talbot tells him he thinks it wasn’t actually SHIELD. And then we find out that this government dude is Ward’s brother, Christian Ward. DUN DUN DUN!

Coulson and Skye watch Ward’s brother on TV announce he wants to dismantle SHIELD. He calls SHIELD terrorists. Coulson shows Skye a map of the remaining SHIELD operatives. There aren’t many dots on that map.

Coulson contacts Agent Walters int he Netherlands. He tells her to go dark. Hmmm…could this be Jen Walters? For those of you who don’t read comics, Jennifer Walters is the cousin of Bruce Banner, aka The Incredible Hulk. Because she desperately needed a blood transfusion to save her life, Bruce agreed to go against his better judgement and donate his blood. This blood transfusion transformed her into the sometimes savage, sometimes sensational She-Hulk. At one time, She-Hulk worked for SHIELD.

On the flight to Japan, Bobbie and Hunter try to have a civil conversation. Bobbie is slightly better at it than Hunter is. Bobbie is surprised that Hunter has stuck around. Once the conversation gets a little more passive aggressive, Bobbie goes to the cockpit to talk to May. She asks May if she’s ever been married and if she still talks to her ex. May answers her with silence to both questions.

Fitz is mumbling to himself in his lab. Simmons (the real one) visits him. I wonder if he was talking to fake Simmons just before this. He was definitely talking to himself, so maybe. Simmons asks Fitz for help figuring out something. Woo, FitzSimmons is back! Simmons sees just how bad Fitz’s condition is. It clearly gets to her.

Skye asks Ward about his older brother, the Senator. I wonder how the third Ward brother will one day play into the series. Ward tells her to stay away from him. The way Ward describes him, Christian is a worse guy than he is, and SHIELD/Hydra Ward is pretty bad.

In Japan, May, Bobbie and Hunter try to figure out how to take down Toshiro. Bobbie suggests going in under her Hydra cover. Hunter backs her up with some passive aggressiveness thrown in for old time’s sake. Toshiro’s men check Bobbie for weapons, as May and Hunter watch from the Van.

Bobbie and Toshiro meet. Bobbie speaks Japanese…and then starts making out with Toshiro. That must be fun for Hunter to watch. Toshiro then asks Bobbie if she is working for SHIELD. Bobbie deflects and asks about Scarlotti’s weapons. May and Hunter give running commentary. Toshiro calls them splinter bombs. Bobbie wants some, but he’s shipped them all out to Hydra.

Hunter intercepts an incoming message to Toshiro’s people. It’s alerting them at Bobbie is SHIELD. Hunter stops a gunman from shooting Bobbie in the back of the head. She’s pissed, claiming she totally knew about the guy walking directly behind her with a gun. Uh-huh. After taking out Toshiro’s men, they head to Belguim.

Fitz is looking at Blackbird files. He has a hard time getting his thoughts out and gets frustrated when Simmons tries to finish his sentences. Fitz lashes out at Simmons for leaving when she did. It doesn’t end well. Simmons leaves, just as Mac arrives.

Coulson is in Christian Ward’s office when Christian walks in. Christian won’t shake his hand. Maybe he’s just a germophobe. Coulson wants to clear the air regarding the UN attack, saying it wasn’t his team. Coulson basically gives up Ward to Christian.

Skye visits Ward again. She tells him no one is watching.

Coulson tells Christian that he knows about the well. Christian paints the picture that Ward is just a big fat liar.

Ward tells the same thing about Christian. That’s he’s worse than Ward is.

Christian tells Coulson a story about finding Grant standing over Thomas with s screw driver. Thomas is the third Ward brother we haven’t met yet. Christian basically paints Grant Ward to be a sociopath. He plays Coulson right into his hands, telling him that he’s spent too much of his life trying to unravel his lies and that he always finds someone to believe them. Coulson feels the same way about Ward.

Cut to Ward possibly lying to Skye. This show needs a Lying Cat. Lying Cat would be so helpful here.

Coulson offers Christian a deal.

Ward tells Skye about her dad. Ward sounds super creepy during this scene. He tells her that the people who died when Skye was found in the Hunan province were Hydra agents, not villagers. Hydra killed Skye’s mother. Skye’s father then killed all of the Hydra agents. Ward wants to go on the run with Skye. Skye thanks him for telling him everything he knows and that it’s time to get him out of there…because they’re giving him to his brother.

Mac and Fitz figure out these bombs go back to a design from the 1940s, designed by Vincent Beckers…the same Beckers May is going heading to? Is he another guy who doesn’t age? Simmons says we have to tell Coulson now!

Ward is pleading his case to Coulson. Coulson isn’t having it. Coulson has it out on Ward, telling him the laundry list of things he’s done: almost killing FitzSimmons, killing Victoria Hand and Ezra Koenig. Trip pulls Coulson out. Christian’s men are here for Ward. .

Vincent Beckers is Julian’s grandfather. Ah, got it. Coulson relaizes they’ve been played. In Belguim, Beckers is waiting for Agents Walters in the safe house. He’s killed the SHIELD agents in the house. Wait, how? Is he a superhuman. Oh, Beckers has a Hydra team with him. Scarlottie comes in with a knife. Walters headbutts him. He discs her in the stomach and she turns to dust. Okay, definitely not Jennifer Walters. False alarm. No She-Hulk here.

Hunter busts down the door, offering Scarlotti and his people beer. They’re justifiably confused. Bobbie and May burst in. Bobbie whips out her escrima sticks and goes to town. She and Hunter make a good team.

May and Scarlotti fight. He’s got a knife on a chain and knows how to use it. May dodges him well. It’s an exciting fight scene. Man, sometimes I’m watching Mingna Wen kick ass in these fight scenes, it occurs to me that this is the same woman who for the longest time I associated with The Joy Luck Club. Night and day. At some point, May ends up with Scarlotti’s knife.

Bobbie thanks hunter for saving her life three times today. Awww, are they getting back together?

May (mainly May’s knee) takes down Scarlotti. Unforuntatey, every SHIELD agent in the house other than she, Hunter and Bobbie, are dead.

Simmons thanks Mac for helping Fitz. Mac says Fitz doesn’t need any help. He says that Fitz is definitely a different man from the Fitz that Simmons knew, but Mac never knew the old Fitz. He says she needs to get used to the new Fitz. Simmons wants to tell Mac why she left, but Mac doesn’t want to hear it. He says that the only thing that makes Fitz worse is her. She agrees. That’s why she left.

Hunter is leaving the team. Bobbie wishes him well, and hints he should stay.

There’s a big squad of guys there to take Ward form the stronghold. Simmons stares Ward in the eyes while he’s marched out. Simmons tells Ward that she’ll kill him if she ever sees them again. I think she’s serious. Coulson can’t even look Ward in the face.

Talbot takes Scarlotti into custody.

Christian Ward gives a press conference separating SHIELD from Hydra, and stating bluntly that Hydra is the threat. He comes clean about his brother being in Hydra.

Ward says to Coulson,”Tell Skye this doesn’t change anything. I’ll keep my promise.” Yeah, I don’t see Coulson relaying that message. On the truck out of town, Ward dislocates his thumbs, frees himself and fights ALL the guards in the truck with him.

At some tattoo shop, some guys is getting all that alien writing tattooed on himself. Silly guy. Carve that into walls. Wait, who is this guy?

September 24, 2014 by Billy Henehan

Agents of SHIELD – S2E1 – Shadows – Recap

Annnnnnd here we go! Agents of SHIELD is back and so our our recaps of the show. Lest you’ve forgotten, at the end of last season, SHIELD was in shambles. The fallout from Captain America: The Winter Soldier was severe. Hydra infiltration of SHIELD ran very deep. To the world at large, Hydra and SHIELD are one and the same. Coulson’s team isn’t faring much better. Ward was revealed to be a Hydra agent. Fitz has suffered brain trauma thanks to Ward dumping him and Simmons in the ocean. And Coulson is scribbling alien language on the walls of his bedroom. Which brings us to…now…well, actually World War II.

We’re given a sneak peak at the new Agent Carter TV series at the start of this episode. Agent Carter and her team are raiding a Hydra lab towards the tail end of World War II. Hey, that’s Dum Dum Dugan standing next to Agent Carter! It looks like the Agent Carter series will be Agent Carter and her Howling Commandos. I’m guessing that once the series launches, there will be many crossovers with Agents of SHIELD, with Agent Carter dealing with a Hydra threat in WWII that pops up in the present to plague Coulson’s team in Agents of SHIELD.

Case in point, Agent Carter and her team lock up some super-tech in WWII, whose location is for sale in a shady deal in the present. May and Skye are staking out the deal. Side note: Skye’s hair is really cute. Some girls disappear into a carton of Ben & Jerry’s when it’s revealed their boyfriend is a double agent. Not Skye, she got herself some post-Ward hair.

The deal goes bad when a third party shows up and makes off with the info. That third party being a bald man impervious to bullets. Who is he, you ask? None other Crusher Creel, The Absorbing Man. I’m pretty sure he’s played by Penny’s ex-boyfriend on Big Bang Theory. You know, the guy who dressed like Tarzan at the Halloween party, the one Leonard had to get Penny’s TV back from.

It turns out that the buyers in this deal were working for Coulson. May and Skye weren’t there to break up the deal. They were there as back up. We’ve got four new faces on Coulson’s team, SHIELD agents from a different group, and I swear I cannot remember their names at all. For now, they’re the four new guys to me.

Coulson and his team are living in one of Nick Fury’s secret bases. I was happy to see Patton Oswalt return as this base’s resident Koenig brother. Speaking of which, after this episode, I’m thinking that the Koenigs are life model decoys. Hear me out. There are at least three of them, and they all seem to be assigned to one of Fury’s secret bases. I think there are more than three Koenig brothers, that there’s one at every one of Fury’s bases. That’s just a hunch though.

Coulson’s team is being hunted by Brigadier General Talbot. Coulson arranges a meeting with him by sneakily kidnapping him in the middle of the day. Seriously, the army has nothing on SHIELD. Talbot is convinced that Coulson is not on the up and up, despite anything Coulson says or does. Coulson wants to help Talbot take down Creel and Hydra, but I get the feeling that Talbot would just as gladly take down Coulson and call it a day.

Is it me, or does it look like the special effects budget on the show took a major jump this season? The Absorbing Man looks fantastic is every scene he’s in, especially when he turns to glass in his prison break. Comparing the special effects in this episode to the those in the first episode last season is like comparing night and day. Costume design too. I felt that Deathlok looked pretty cheesy last year, but Absorbing Man looks cool. Yes, he’s basically just a shirtless bald man in pants, but they make his absorbing power look so cool!

Where’s everyone’s favorite SHIELD agent turned traitor? Ward is locked up in Coulson’s secret base. He’s sporting a nice prison beard, and looks pretty gaunt in the face. Coulson sends Skye down to his cell to get some much needed information. Skye’s not terribly happy about this. There is A LOT of tension between Ward and Skye. But Skye basically tells him that they’re never ever getting back together. Like ever. Skye leaves before Ward can tell her that he’s knows about her father (!!).

We also check in on FitzSimmons this episode. Fitz is not himself. The banter with Simmons is gone. He’s no longer happy go lucky. Instead he’s bitter about his impeded brain function. He wants to be better, but he’s having a hard go at it. His language center is messed up. He forgets words. More importantly, his scientific mind is not what it was. He’s tying to build a cloaking system for Coulson, but keeps coming up short. He lashes out a Simmons. Fitz, how could you? You two are FitzSimmons. But the big shock comes at the end of the episode, when it’s revealed that Simmons bolted a while back. The Simmons we’ve seen all episode is a figment of Fitz’s imagination. All episode, he’s just been talking to himself. As someone for whom FitzSimmons is the best part of Agents of SHIELD, this came as a major blow. I really hope Fitz recovers and reunites with Simmons.

Since Fitz can’t build Coulson a cloaking system, Coulson arranges for Skye and May to steal one, in the form of a Quinjet. In the comics, a Quinjet is the Avenger’s supersonic jet, designed by Henry Pym aka Ant Man (aka Giant Man aka Goliath aka Yellowjacket). That’s one in the win column for Coulson.

However, the team suffers a couple of big losses. First, when they hack into Hydra’s communication system, it’ becomes clear that Hydra isn’t broken, just hiding. Hydra cells are still EVERYWHERE. The whole global map is full of them.

The second big loss when three of the four new members are taken out by The Absorbing Man. The super-artifact they’re trying to keep from him is deadly to the touch. When the new woman on the team touches it, she can’t let go, and it turns her hand and arm to rot. They have to remove her arm to keep it from spreading to her whole body. Unfortunately, while they’re dealing with her situation, The Absorbing Man, in all his super-powered glory, takes out their car and steals the artifact. Things are looking good for the new guys. One episode in and one of the four new members is already dead. Suddenly, I don’t feel bad about not immediately learning their names.

Comic Book Connections:

The Absorbing Man first appeared in Journey into Mystery #114. He was initially a Thor villain, but has gone on to plague many heroes in the Marvel Universe. He’s often seen in the company of his girlfriend, the superstrong Titania. The Absorbing Man has the power to absorb the properties of anything he touches, so if he touches steel, he’ll turn into steel. This effect eventually wears off, and he turns back into flesh and bone. The show did a good job of showing this, having a shard of metal sheared from him turn back into rather bloody flesh in the lab. It was a nice nod to the fans having Creel get his hands on a ball and chain, his traditional weapon of choice.

Agent Carter is Peggy Carter, who was the World War 2 girlfriend of Captain America, and ~~sister~~ aunt (possibly grand-aunt now) of Sharon Carter, Captain America’s present day girlfriend. Cap really has a type. Why the change from sister to aunt? Well, the years since World War 2 keep passing, but Captain America and company barely age. When Sharon Carter first appeared, she could have had an older sister in World War 2. But now, not so much. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it looks like Peggy is taking Nick Fury’s place as the leader of the Howling Commandos.

The Quinjet is the invention of Hank Pym. It’s a super-fast jet capable of deep space travel. The Avengers are constantly making adjustments and improvements to them.

June 11, 2014 by Billy Henehan

Agents of SHIELD – S1E21 – Ragtag – Recap

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’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.

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.

April 17, 2014 by Billy Henehan

Agents of SHIELD – S1E18 – Providence – Recap

It was interesting watching this episode to see how much posturing SHIELD agent turned traitor Grant Ward was doing. Was this just overacting on Brett Dalton’s part? Is Ward really as callous as he was acting here? Or is Ward overdoing it in front of Hydra on purpose, in order to sell his betrayal of SHIELD to them when he’s actually playing Hydra?

Part of me wants Ward’s betrayal to be a long con to infiltrate Centipede and Hydra set up by Coulson and Victoria Hand that would make Danny Ocean proud. But I just can’t figure out a way that makes logical sense for that to be the case.

Here’s why I think Ward might still be on the side of the angels. Rewatching last week’s episode, Turn, Turn, Turn, I noticed that Ward shoots Hand in the gut on his first shot. His second and third shots into her are while she’s on the ground off-camera. Could these have been non-fatal shots too? That, combined with how over the top he was trying to prove himself as not a nice guy this week, made me think that maybe he’s still SHIELD.

My Ward still being a good guy theory is completely blown apart by a few things. One, I’m pretty sure that before he shoots Victoria Hand, he shoots the two other agents of SHIELD on the plane in the face. And once inside the Fridge, Ward goes out of his way to unearth the hidden gravitonium, which even Garrett didn’t know was there.

It was interesting listening to Ward explain how deliberately he conned everyone. Pretty much everything he did this season he claims was to further infiltrate SHIELD and keep suspicion off himself, going back to his recruitment by Coulson. Even his sexual relationship with May was a way to keep May, who his considered the most dangerous member of the team (with good reason), from suspicious of him. Ward told people what they wanted to hear from him, whether they realized that’s what they wanted to hear or not. Clearly, thinking of Ward as just the guns and muscle of Coulson’s crew has been a mistake. He’s a serpent. And to drive it home, he even carries a new expression on his face now that he’s a villain.

Evil Ward, complete with bad guy scar.

The other most interesting part of this week’s episode for me was seeing Raina’s reaction to meeting The Clairvoyant and finding out that he wasn’t the mystic she thought he was. Garrett seemed to revel in having tricked her. Ward too. There was just something so classic movie villain about the way Garrett and Ward acted this episode that it slightly irked me. I half expected them to say “Mwa-ha-ha” after each of their lines.

agents of shield all the bad guys providence

Garrett gets the whole gang back together. This is the SHIELD equivalent of the Iron Sheikh, Nicholai Volkoff and Ted Dibiase teaming up.

I really liked seeing Patton Oswalt as Agent Eric Koenig, the head of Fury’s secret base, in this episode. As he was giving the tour of his very isolated base, I couldn’t help but think that he was the Desmond of Agents of SHIELD. I kind of wish his first scene showed him working out to the sweet sounds of Mama Cass’s “Make Your Kind of Music.”

“Lanyards for everyone!”

The past few episodes of Agents of SHIELD have been great. I’m really enjoying this series, and really like how the creators of the show intertwined it with the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I can’t wait to see how this season turns out, especially now that Ward is reunited with Coulson’s team, and they have no idea who they’re dealing with.

April 8, 2014 by Billy Henehan

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

April 8, 2014 by Billy Henehan

Captain America: The Winter Soldier – Review

When it was announced that the follow up to Captain America: The First Avenger would be Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the comic book fanboy in me was beyond excited. The Winter Soldier is one of my favorite characters of the last 10 years, and as long as Marvel Studios didn’t drop the ball, this had the making of an awesome movie. They didn’t drop the ball. Captain America: The Winter Soldier rocks.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the Captain America movie we deserve. Captain America: The First Avenger was decent, but I would put it at the bottom of the list of Marvel Studios’s movies thus far. Winter Soldier, on the other hand, rockets to the top, with maybe Iron Man 1 and Avengers ahead of it.

I’m a huge fan of Ed Brubaker’s decade long run on Captain America. It was in this run that Brubaker debuted the mysterious Winter Soldier, whose identity remained hidden for awhile. Comic book fans are aware of the revolving door between death and resurrection among heroes and villains. Remember when Superman died, only to came back less than a year later? But there were two characters who seemed to be the exceptions to the revolving door rule: Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben and Captain America’s partner Bucky. Not only did Brubaker bring back Bucky, in the form of new Cap villain Winter Soldier, but he did it in a masterful story that seemed 100% plausible ( in a world inhabited by mutants and gods).

The movie is handled perfectly. Besides superhero fans, I’d recommend Captain America: The Winter Soldier to anyone who loves thrillers, espionage and movies like The Bourne Identity and Taken.

The opening hostage scene seemed to echo the opening of the PS2 video game Metal Gear Solid 2. The way Cap sneaks onto the boat, the ways he silently takes out the terrorists, I couldn’t help but feel like I was watching what could have been the opening of Metal Gear Solid: The Movie. And I loved it. I like that this movie from the start was more Bourne and Bond and less Superman and Thor.

The action scenes in Winter Soldier were fantastic all around. I really felt like I was on the edge of my seat as I watched the movie, or at least as close to being on the edge of your seat you can be in one of big recliners at the AMC on 86th and Broadway. The fight between Winter Soldier and Cap on the Helicarrier seemed reminiscent of Cap’s scenes on the mothership in The Avengers, but it didn’t seem repetitive at all. That’s a nice balance to strike.

I thought Marvel did a great job with keeping the identity of the Winter Soldier a mystery leading up to the debut of this movie. Yes, if you read the comic books, you knew it was Bucky, but for anyone new to the story, Marvel did a good job of keeping the cat inside the bag.

The big stand out in the movie for me is Anthony Mackie as The Falcon. Mackie is just perfect in this role. He makes The Falcon so likable and cool that I hope we see Falcon in Avengers: Age of Ultron and don’t have to wait for Captain America 3 for his return.

If you saw the movie, hopefully you stayed for both end credits scenes. How many Marvel movies have to come out before everyone realizes that you do not get up until the very end of the credits? I’ve already talked to a few people who missed one or both of the end credits scenes. Stay in your seats!

The first end credits scene involved Baron Von Strucker, a compatriot of the Red Skull. The two twins he has imprisoned are Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Flash Fact: They’re Magneto’s kids. Though you probably won’t hear that mentioned in any Marvel Studios movie until the X-Men franchise rights return to Marvel. In the comics, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch started out as X-Men villains, but reformed and became early members of the Avengers. Because of this, they’re in the interesting place of being used by both Marvel Studios for their Avengers franchise and Fox for their X-Men franchise. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch will both appear in the upcoming X-Men: Days of Futures Past, but played by different actors than they’re played by in Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Also in that scene, Baron Von Strucker is in possession of Loki’s staff, which is powered by a glowing blue ball of energy. Like the Tesseract and the Aether, I believe this ball of energy is another of Marvel’s Infinity Gems. I’m guessing this one is the Mind Gem, since Loki used that staff to control people’s minds in Avengers. In the excellent comic book series, Infinity Gauntlet, villan Thanos (purple dude from the end of The Avengers movie) gathers the 6 Infinity Gems and gains power over pretty much everything. I think Avengers 3 will be based on Infinity Gauntlet. You should give it a read. It’s a great series.

In the second scene after the credits, Bucky is reading about himself at the Captain America Smithsonian exhibit. I’m already excited for Captain America 3, and more Cap/Black Widow/Agent 13/Falcon action. I’m guessing the four of them will team up to track down Bucky and rehabilitate him, with Crossbones and someone else as the big bad guys.

More Comic Book Connections:

Brock Rumlow, played by Frank Grillo, is the Hydra agent in charge of taking down Captain America. At the end of the movie, he’s recovered from the Helicarrier crash, badly burned and barely alive, and put into the back of an ambulance. Brock Rumlow is the alter ego of longtime Captain America villain Crossbones. In the comics, Crossbones was the Red Skull’s right hand man and later was involved with the Skull’s daughter, Sin. I expect we’ll see Grillo return as Crossbones in Captain America 3.

Agent 13, played by Emily VanCamp, is a huge part of Captain America’s life. She’s been his partner in the field and his lover. She is Captain America’s Lois Lane; if he ends up with one woman, you can expect it to be her. She’s also the grandniece of Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers’s best gal from the 1940s, the old woman Stever Rogers visits in the hospital in Captain America: Winter Soldier.

Sam Wilson/Falcon, played by Anthony Mackie, is another huge part of Captain America’s life. Falcon even shared the title on the cover of Captain America’s comic in the 1970s, when it was rebranded Captain America and the Falcon. Like many of the heroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Falcon in this movie derives his costume and origin more from Falcon in The Ultimates than from the main Marvel Universe.

Overall, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is one of the best, if the not the best, movies to come out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and one of the best superhero movies of all time. I cannot recommend seeing this movie enough.

For more on Captain America: The Winter Soldier, be sure to listen to this week’s episode of the Tuesday Night Comics podcast, where Dave and I discuss the movie in depth.

September 26, 2013 by Billy Henehan

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD S1E1: "Pilot" – Review

Without a doubt, the new series that I was most excited for this fall was Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. In September, I was counting down the days until the show premiered. I pre-ordered the SHIELD agent badge and ID for New York Comic Con. September 24 could not get here soon enough.

My expectations were high. I started to worry that they might be too high. What if this Agents of SHIELD series turned out to be a train wreck like the 1999 David Hasselhoff Nick Fury made-for-TV movie?

Never forget.

On second thought, forget. For the love of all that is good, forget!

Tuesday, 9/24, 20:00 hours arrived. I was bolted to my seat at 19:57.

This was the pilot episode? Aren’t pilot episodes supposed to suck? This was awesome! Marvel/Disney is definitely giving them the budget they need. Thanks to the budget, the show fits into the Marvel Cinematic Universe not just in story, but in style too.

While the SHIELD agents don’t have superpowers, I’m very happy that the show will feature people with powers. I’m sure I’m not the only one who hoped that the super strong character that turned out to be Michael Peterson was in fact Luke Cage. Michael Peterson on the show and Luke Cage in the comics come to their powers through similar means. Maybe since Skye wiped Michael from every database we’ll see him reemerge with Luke Cage as his new alias.

Not Luke Cage…yet.

Let’s talk about Coulson for a minute. There’s definitely more to his return from death than it being all a set up by Fury to fool the Avengers into forming and that Coulson was cooling his jets in Tahiti. Dr. Streiten (Ron Glass! Shepherd! Yes!) and Maria Hill basically say as much when Coulson leaves them. Streiten is surprised Coulson still believes the Tahiti story and Hill counters that Coulson can never find out the truth. I think Coulson has definitely been completely lied to. I don’t think his death in Avengers was planned in advance. Life Model Decoys were mentioned in the Avengers movie, making me believe that this Coulson we’re seeing today is a Life Model Decoy that’s been programmed with the original Phil Coulson’s brain patterns. For those of you unfamiliar with the Marvel comics from which Agents of SHIELD is based, a Life Model Decoy, or LMD for short, is basically a very advanced android that looks, sounds and feels like the real person, but is in fact a robot. Think of it as half clone-half robotic decoy. For you Battlestar Galactica fans, Coulson is basically a toaster now. Or at least, that’s my theory. Whatever the explanation turns out to be, I’m glad Clark Gregg is a part of this show.

Everyone who is still human, take a seat. Not so fast, Coulson!

One quick thought on Maria Hill: With How I Met Your Mother wrapping up this season, I wonder if Cobie Smulders will have a much bigger role on Agents of SHIELD starting in season 2.

Cobie Smulders stars in How I Met Your Hydra

The pilot episode’s script had the right amount of both suspense, action and humor that you’d expect from a Joss Whedon show. I loved the porcupine/poop-with-knives-sticking-out-of-it bit, as well as Agent Ward’s “Gramsy” line when he’s being interrogated by Skye. The best though might have been Simmons announcing that she’s not Hermione. Aw yeah, Harry Potter reference.

Agents of SHIELD tied very well into both Iron Man 3 and Avengers. I like that Extremis heavily factored into this episode and that gamma rays played a part in powering Michael. I also like that SHIELD has been given a shadowy enemy to hunt down with this new power broker business. I just hope the show doesn’t turn into a “monster of the week” show like the first season Smallville.

I think Joss Whedon has done a great job of making a show that is accessible to both long time Marvel fans, fans of the Marvel movies, and people who are just walking in cold and who want a dose of sci-fi with their police procedural.

Other random thoughts on the episode: I think they’re setting us up for Skye-Agent Ward romance, but I’m more interested in Fitz and Simmons. Having Lola’s wheels turn down and fly at the end was the best form of fan service imaginable, though using the phrase “journey into mystery” in a line of dialog was a close second.

Flying car! Okay, this is SHIELD!

I loved the first episode of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. I’m in for the long haul. Expect to see a review here for every new episode. Next week we find out the answer to the question of just what is an Oh-8-4.

Tuesday Night Movies

Movie reviews, Comics & General Geekery

Tag Archives: Hydra