Having brought almost everyone back from the hell that was the Framework, Daisy and Gemma now have to face a whole new challenge as the full extent of AIDA’s new capabilities are revealed. Hunted and mistrusted by the government and up against an all-powerful adversary, can the SHIELD team pull off the seemingly impossible yet again?

It’s more of a relief than you might imagine seeing the normal Agents of SHIELD title card return, after a whole series in which it’s variously been rendered as fiery, LMD robotic and HYDRA. But this being SHIELD, there isn’t much time to savour that feeling of normality before everything starts getting a little exciting again.

Having rescued Coulson and May from the Framework, now Gemma and Daisy have to rescue them from their underwater prison. First, they just have to avoid being shot out of the sky and explain to a distraught YoYo why Mack didn’t come back with them.

Meanwhile, May and Coulson find themselves fighting a whole army single-handed, while trying to protect the inert form of Mack. Between fisticuffs, there’s a sense of awkwardness between the two of them:  it’s easy to forget among all the events of the last dozen or so episodes but May has been out of the loop for a long time, and all of the stuff that took place between Coulson and her LMD has left him feeling just as off kilter as she now does. It’s an interesting dynamic, and one that Gregg and Wen play well together and basically, it’s good to have them back.

Elsewhere, Fitz has to cope with not just the memories of everything he did in the Framework but also the amorous intentions of a newly mortal AIDA. Having an android be in love with you is hard enough – having what AIDA seems to have become fall in love with you, hugely harder. Mallory Jansen gets the lion’s share of the acting in this one – portraying the whole gamut of emotions experienced by the newly alive AIDA, from joy and delight, through love and passion to heartbreak and rage. It’s an enormous range in the tight space of an hour long episode, but to her credit, she commits to it and it always feels compelling rather than hammy.

Between tense standoffs, explosive set pieces and quiet, introspective moments of emotion, Jansen’s performance might well be a metaphor for the entire episode. This run does everything, and by the end, the audience feels as exhausted as the gang they’re watching. And we aren’t even at the finale yet.

The sting lets us know that the stakes for that finale are going to raise again.

Verdict: The HYDRA run has been the strongest yet from what has been a consistently strong season, and this caps it off nicely. If anything, I’m concerned that they won’t have time left in this season to do full justice to the scale of threat the team now faces, but I’m damned excited to see them try. 9/10

Greg D. Smith