Daisy is confronted with some stark choices as she meets other Inhumans and learns Kasius’ true intentions. A task from Grill has Mack having an existential crisis, and May and Coulson make a startling discovery, partially thanks to Deke.

So already, there’s an awful lot going on in this season of SHIELD. The Earth is a fragment floating in space, but it seems there’s someone down there still. The Kree are trading in Inhumans for sport and profit. The humans suffering under their rule are a mixed bag to say the least, and the team need to try and work out what’s going on, save the day, rescue the goodies and beat the baddies, all the while being pulled further and further apart.

After Deke’s betrayal last week, Daisy finds herself Kasius’ latest prize. Being Daisy, she’s not really all that interested in playing along, but also being Daisy she’s not about to risk the life of a friend if she can help it. In the course of events, she meets another Inhuman with a very useful ability, and as the episode progresses, it’s fun to try to guess which way he will go – with Deke’s betrayal fresh in the mind and the general state of dog-eat-dog of the station as revealed so far, a new friend is never something the audience can take at face value.

Elsewhere, Grill has a job for Mack that he won’t like – acting as a debt collector for someone who’s cheated him out of money. YoYo’s accompanying him doesn’t cheer him up any, as he worries about all of them losing themselves in the horror of the life in which they currently live. Despite YoYo’s assurances, Mack remains unconvinced, and the showdown with their mark leads to results that are surprising across the board.

At least one of those surprises ties in with a revelation made to Phil and May as they investigate an off-limits floor of the station with Deke’s assistance, hoping to find some Kree tech that might help them out of their current predicament. What they discover sheds whole new light on the grimness of the station and life on board it, and is followed by another revelation from Deke which might shed even further light on the character, or just be another lie. Deke is the standout new character in this season so far, elegantly representing the whole motif that permeates proceedings – that we the audience can never quite be certain of any one character, their motivations or allegiance. It may not even be of any lasting consequence.

As the episode closes, however, the team have some real problems to face, with exposure for certain characters an almost certainty. A further revelation leaves some very stark choices to made very quickly.

It’s clear that this will be another season split into several ‘themes’ and the writers are wasting no time with getting to the meat of this opening one. A definite countdown is beginning from the final shot of this episode, which provides another surprise in and of itself, and I can only hope that they do justice to whatever the denouement is before moving along. On evidence so far, I’m not worried.

Verdict: Still committing hard to its theme and looking like a show operating on a decent movie budget, this is shaping up to be one of the slickest and most interesting seasons of SHIELD yet. 9/10

Greg D. Smith