shield-4-12Everyone’s favourite SHIELD brothers are back in the middle of things as the team and Holden’s Russian friends race to grab the Darkhold. Fitz makes a disturbing discovery about Holden’s LMD, and is Phillinda about to become a thing?

It’s been a while since we saw Patton Oswalt’s Koenig brothers appear in Agents of SHIELD, but what better place to reintroduce the identical brothers than in a season based around Life Model Doubles? Billy and Sam get jumped by the Superior’s men, leaving Sam to reconnect with the team while Billy’s gone who knows where.

Fitz is still trying to work out where Holden is and what he’s up to by interrogating the LMD – something which is made more difficult by the twin factors of the apparent quantum lap of technology represented by its programming and the fact that it has an irritating amount of knowledge about just how to push Fitz’s buttons. The answer, when it comes, explains an awful lot about both the form and function of the LMDs which Holden is creating, while giving us a little more background on the life of the young Fitz. As with most things in this show, one suspects that these tidbits will get fleshed out further later on down the road.

Holden meanwhile, has managed to work out the convoluted trail to retrieve the Darkhold, meaning all he has to do is go and retrieve it. The team, for their part, have the help of the oldest and best of the Koenig siblings, who unfortunately comes as a package deal with the least of them – the only Koenig to not become an Agent of Shield and a real black sheep – ironic given his preference for describing literally everyone else he encounters as ‘sheep’. When the showdown occurs, the end result is perhaps a little predictable, though no less heartbreaking for one member of the gang especially. That heartbreak is complex, and will require some intensive sorting out once things have settled down again (if they ever do)

It’s difficult to believe that not that long ago, Agents of SHIELD was all about a walking fire demon and a mad scientist trying to create matter from nothing. That first half of the season, with all of its pseudo-religious gods-and-monsters imagery, couldn’t feel further removed on one level from this current, technology focused dystopian nightmare. And yet cleverly, both are linked by the Darkhold – a book which literally seems to be as much magic as science, and which bends the boundaries of the possible in a variety of interesting ways.

There’s no doubt though, that if Robbie Reyes was the star turn in those early episodes, all the plaudits now go to John Hannah’s deliciously twisted Holden Radcliffe. At every turn, just when you think you have the measure of the man, he provides another surprise. More complex by far than practically any villain seen in the show to date (with the possible exception of Grant Ward), Radcliffe keeps the viewer guessing at every turn. Much as he seems to have made himself completely irredeemable one moment, he’ll do something the next that suggests he isn’t so much bad as simply not all good. Special mention should also go to Mallory Jansen as Aida, who plays a sentient android as capable of murder as kindness absolutely perfectly.

The sting, when it comes, is slightly unexpected – turns out that it isn’t just inhumans that the Superior is gunning for.

Verdict: Though the return of Oswalt usually suggests a lighter tone (and certainly there are some fun moments) this is another fairly dark episode of SHIELD, and the tension just keeps ratcheting up. Not quite as stellar as the previous episode, but rollicking good stuff nonetheless. 8/10

Greg D. Smith