When Agents of SHIELD returned in the second season, it had clearly kicked the plot up a notch.  Being the main ground upon which the disintegration of the former SHIELD and the war with Hydra would play out gave the writers a lot to work with, and knowing that it was time to finally pay off all the hints about Skye simply added to that.  With the stealthy introduction of the Inhumans now out in the open, where does the show go from here?

Thankfully, it doesn’t gloss over the consequences, nor does it rush matters.  As the title suggests, this is about dealing with the fallout of Tripp’s death and the events at the Temple on several fronts.  The episode also seemed to be designed to give the audience a chance to catch back up on what had happened and what had been revealed, so when the hammer falls, the audience is fully aware of it.  And the character’s choices about what to say, to whom, and when will all become part of the grist for the drama mill.



It makes sense for Fitz to be the one to discover Skye’s new nature and keep it to himself.  He knows better than anyone how a person can be changed and treated differently, and how much that can hurt, when the person is still fundamentally who they’ve always been.  That empathy is something that the rest of the team can’t access right now, because even Simmons is ready to kill every potential alien threat, and it’s not at all clear if she cares that it might include Skye.  (Would she already consider Coulson and Skye a threat because of the Kree medical treatment?  Even without knowing that Skye had latent Inhuman DNA?)  Not to mention that Fitz’s statements could be applied to anyone who feels like an outcast because of factors out of their control.

Meanwhile, because the team can never catch a damn break, it seems that Bobbi and Mack are running a secret operation to get their hands on Fury’s “toolbox”.  It would be too easy for them to be Hydra, and Ward is already enough of a wild card for them to dip back into that well.  My suspicion is that there are some SHIELD agents that might not agree with Fury’s decision to hand over the directorship to Coulson, especially with Coulson’s issues coming to the fore.  Bobbi, of course, is now a regular on the series, so who knows what that will mean as the season continues?


The recap is somewhat misleading, because the idea that the war with Hydra is over is ludicrous.  Unless Avengers: Age of Ultron is meant to be the final blow against Hydra (remember the connection between Strucker and Quicksilver/Scarlet Witch), the whole point of Hydra as an enemy is that they always come back.  This episode may have been the most brutal and extra-legal takedown of SHIELD’s enemy yet, but I can’t imagine it’s anything less than a pause in a much longer game.





It would be remiss of me to end my review without a comment on Raina.  Acting through the makeup is going to be tough, but talk about a stark contrast between former stunning beauty and Inhuman appearance!  All of which makes the notion that this form is “beautiful” to her fellow Inhumans all the more interesting.  It’s clear, based on the end of the episode, that the Inhumans (and superpowers) are going to be a huge presence for the rest of the season, and what that means for Skye and SHIELD is intriguing, to say the least.