Daisy and Simmons have infiltrated the Framework to try to bring their friends home. But the world they discover is nowhere near the one they expected to find, and distinguishing friend from foe may prove harder than they had ever imagined.

The previous episode left us on several cliffhangers, not the least of which was who exactly Daisy was going to find herself sharing an apartment with in the version of her life existing in the Framework, and how exactly Simmons was going to appear in a world in which her Grave Marker seemed to already have been laid.

Answers to both queries come fairly rapidly, though neither is necessarily what you might expect. But then, as the pair of them explore this strange new reality which Holden has created, unexpected becomes the new norm. May standing inside an intact Triskellion with a Hydra logo on the side of it was shocking enough, but as we meet each member of the gang and have more of this world revealed to us, the shocks keep coming.

What’s clever here is that the writers have really committed to this alternative reality. This isn’t just a brief sojourn into the titular question of ‘what if?’, rather it’s a fully constructed alternative reality for our protagonists, leading from a surprising jumping off point for one character in particular which has a ripple effect changing absolutely everything that follows. What’s unsettling is the prescience and closeness to current reality of certain lines. It’s odd to see SHIELD be this on the nose, though whether that’s a conscious choice on the part of the writers or just the world we now live in, it’s difficult to be sure.

It also gives the actors a chance to really flex muscles they don’t normally get to use. Ian De Caestecker in particular seems to relish the challenge, and his ‘Doctor’ in this reality is suitably removed from anything we have seen from Fitz in the past. There’s even a face from the past thrown in there, and whereas it isn’t the biggest surprise, it’s a nice and welcome twist.

But it’s a bleak and unforgiving world this, and one can see that AIDA’s self-appointed mission is going awry, though whether due to the age-old cliché of giving people what they want being dangerous or simply because she’s gone completely rogue and is becoming a deliciously mental end of level boss for the gang to take on is left pleasingly vague, for now. There’s one significant player from the last episode not getting any screen time here, but given where we left them, it’s only a matter of time before they get their turn to shine I would imagine.

As the episode closes, it’s clear that this is no passing gimmick for the show either – this situation isn’t one that is going to be solved quickly – and nor should it be.

Verdict: The show has been going to some dark places lately, but this may be the grittiest phase of SHIELD yet. The alternate reality storyline gives rise to some truly unsettling possibilities, and from a series that started this season with a multiple-murdering skull-faced demon assassin, that’s saying something. 9/10

Greg D. Smith