shield-4-7With three members down, the rest of the team tries to absorb and deal with the loss in their own individual ways. Simmons’ secret mission gets weird, and Mack’s darker side comes out to say hello.

SHIELD these days tends to swing between episodes of balls out action with explosions and strange creatures with fantastic powers aplenty, and quiet, contemplative episodes which remind us that, at base, it’s a series about a covert intelligence organisation. Which makes the change of pace of this episode so much the more refreshing as we get treated to a little slice of weirdness which can only happen in comic book-based sci-fi.

So Eli is very much a worse guy than we had imagined, and at the end of the last episode he vanished having absorbed some mysterious new power. Where he is and what he might be doing take somewhat of a back seat as the team is confronted with the loss of three of their own. This being the MCU, you sort of expect that might not be all there is to it, and there’s a knowing sense of irony when certain team members point out that it wouldn’t be the first time that one of their number had cheated an apparent certain death.

It’s difficult to say more without really spoiling the whole premise of the episode, but suffice it to say that weird and wonderful sci-fi explanations abound, all perfectly nuts but perfectly fitting within the setting of the show.

What it does give us is some decent moments for some characters who don’t usually get all that much. Mack’s five minutes to shine allow us to see him really kick some backside in a way that even he doesn’t normally manage, and which give Henry Simmons an opportunity to show some serious range beyond his usual mix of quiet brooding and weary wisecracking. There’s one scene in particular that suggests much deeper things lurking beneath that placid exterior, and hopefully we will get to see more going forward.

Mallory Jansen also gets some decent screen time as AIDA steps up front and centre to save the day. It’s an interesting use of the character, and the first hint that maybe she’s going to be a little more than Holden’s pet science project. The main question is how everyone around her will react to the news that she’s not actually human (spoiler alert – not necessarily how you might expect).

Elsewhere, Jemma gets some up close time with a familiar (of sorts) face on her top secret mission so secret even Director Mace can’t get hold of her again when he wants her to. Using her own brand of scientific brilliance mixed with human empathy, she manages a breakthrough, but she doesn’t exactly get to enjoy the feeling for too long.

As the episode gets its exciting climax out of the way, we fall into a familiar episode close of tying up various ends, and some of them tie up more neatly than others. Mack has a new friend and a new mission to drive him. AIDA might have learned a little too much when tasked with trying to save the day, and Holden is feeling so pleased with himself that you can’t help but imagine something is gonna happen to puncture that bubble for him soon.

Verdict: A genuine curve ball. This represents an infrequent but oh so welcome dose of the truly weird, where we get proper, edge of the envelope sci-fi instead of what is rapidly becoming the ‘usual’ magic and robots from the MCU. Highly engaging stuff. 8/10

Greg D. Smith