As anticipated, this episode folds in the return of Nick Fury and other events in Age of Ultron into the story, largely as a way of proving that Coulson has been keeping an eye on the big picture since the moment Fury handed him the job.  One would think that the goodwill fostered by SHIELD’s involvement in the resolution of the Ultron problem might have inspired trust.  If anything, the exact opposite is true, and that realization makes this a frustrating episode to watch. 

Coulson’s hidden work on Theta Protocol only gives his detractors that much more to use against him, and the extent of that damage is personified in Agent May’s betrayal.  May’s turnabout in the past couple episodes has been maddening, as it seems to go against the grain of her pragmatism and trust in Coulson as a whole.  Is Coulson making the kind of mistakes Fury was infamous for making?  Quite possibly, and the positive result doesn’t entirely vindicate that mindset.  The thing is, May has not only been a part of that culture, but has openly fostered it.  There’s a layer of hypocrisy that the writers haven’t been able to hurdle yet.



There’s a good chance that this “war” with the Inhumans will force SHIELD to rally behind Coulson, especially since Gonsalez is dead and it’s all too easy to believe that it was his strident prejudice against powered individuals that triggered the conflict.  As one would expect, this puts Skye in the middle, which makes sense.  But they didn’t need to weaken the loyalties within SHIELD to foster Skye’s internal struggle; that was already inherent between her actual parents and her father figure.

Meanwhile, I’m going to assume that this whole “unfinished business” that Kira has with Bobbi, and subplot it represents, is related to setting up the spinoff, because otherwise, it seems extraneous.  I could easily see Ward and Kira becoming the recurring villains in the first season of the Bobbi/Hunter show, but for the purposes of this series and the season finale, it would be nice to see how it pertains to the current crisis, other than taking a talented asset off the board when Coulson can least afford it.



The bigger question is how this will pan out for both Agents of SHIELD and the MCU as a whole.  Jiaying has an agenda, and it’s hard to see how the Inhuman genie can be put back in the bottle for several years, until the film hits theaters.  One has to ask: is she acting on orders or acting on her own?  Is fighting here at Afterlife a means to an end, to convince SHIELD (and others) that this is the only enclave of Inhumans?  Or has the experience with Hydra led Jiaying to form a splinter group within the Inhumans that is willing to fight back and even eliminate humanity for the sake of Inhuman survival?







It’s not a simple question, and it could and probably should spill over into the third season, if only to allow the story time to breathe.  I’m not sure Skye’s loyalty dilemma is one that should be tackled in the space of a two-hour finale.  That said, it can’t dominate the first half of the third season, because that would be extending it to ridiculous lengths.  With Captain America: Civil War looming on the Spring 2016 horizon, one might see the resolution of the Afterlife crisis evolve into that larger question of The Index and registration of powered individuals as a whole.