Since this episode seemed to focus so much on Ward as the central villain for Coulson's team to combat, I thought it would be prudent to examine his evolution over the course of the show's run for a bit. By now, regular viewers of the show are aware of how it worked with him: He was one of the good guys, the square-jawed, classically handsome spy who might have had some romantic chemistry with the ladies that fill out the cast. Until the big shift that occurred with the HYDRA reveal and the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. changed that whole tack. Ward became a more insidious kind of character, one that was easy folly for the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. team to focus on. It culminated with this season giving Ward the task of rebuilding HYDRA and then seeking out or seeing what the organization's ultimate goal would be. 

That goal ended up being the release of an ancient malevolent alien force that was stranded on another planet. We've already seen the kind of havoc this monster could create from Simmons' long stay with Will in "4,722 Hours" earlier this season. It ties somewhat neatly with the creation of the Inhumans arc that the show wants to advance away from the ties of the MCU. It now becomes a race to gather Inhumans on both sides to engage in a war (that might be capped off by the coming Inhumans film). So this episode feels like a prelude to that plot development. It runs through the standard kind of motions that the show is known for with little tweaks here and there. I was a little wary of revisiting the blue planet again just because they might have to rehash what happened to Simmons and Will and lay it on Fitz, Ward, and Coulson. Instead, the episode defies expectations by keeping tensions first on the antagonism between Ward and Fitz (with Coulson the unseen complicating wild-card in the scenario), then adding Will's presence to the mix as a way to connect audiences to the previous story. 


In the back of my mind, there still was that doubt that Will was actually the person we followed through "4,722 Hours" but the camaraderie between him and Fitz kept all that at bay. They are both desperate to get to the extraction point and do work together to undermine Ward's purpose on the mission. Nothing seemed altogether off about it. That said, it wasn't too much of a surprise to me when Will revealed his true colors at the episode's climax. Will did die at the end of "4,722 Hours" and the malevolent ancient alien took his form in case Simmons or Fitz or some kind of rescue came through the portal again. Now it's only a question of who will get to the rising Inhumans first, this new alien force or the S.H.I.E.L.D. team.

The episode nicely intercuts between what's happening on the blue planet and what's happening back here on Earth, with Mack heading S.H.I.E.L.D. in Coulson's absence. He proved himself a very capable leader. Mack is a likable presence and if Coulson were to ever go away from his duties as S.H.I.E.L.D. director again, there is a leader within the team that can step up to do the job. The team decides to raid the castle headquarters that Malick has set up for HYDRA in order to secure the return of Fitz and Coulson and also to prevent the alien being from being unleashed onto the world. It isn't really anything we've seen before on this show, as they've set to a mission with all of the various subplots brewing throughout the season coming to a head. 


Simmons is trapped in the castle with Andrew/Lash and so she makes the rather bold decision to release him in order to allow her time to escape. Lash is now uncontained and once again becomes another unpredictable wild card to be dealt with in the future. There was the implication that May would have had to deal with an Inhuman taking the face and form of her former lover, but that never came to pass. It was rather creepy to show her seeing all of the carnage that Lash did in the castle, but the substance of that subplot was lost in the shuffle of dealing with every other subplot.





Since the happenings on Earth did have a general familiarity about them, there were some instances during the viewing of this episode where I wanted just to stay on the blue planet. The big development there pays off Coulson's personal quest to avenge (no pun intended) Rosalind's death at the hands of Ward. Since she died so recently, the vendetta does have a feeling of being rushed (plus I don't like how the show cut a group hatred of Ward down to just Coulson). And yet, I thought Coulson's action of crushing Ward with his robot hand had a sort of finality to it. 


Of course that was undermined by Ward's "resurrection" to being possessed by the alien force, but that whole sequence from Ward's "death" to the reunion of heroes was very well-done. The score swells and continues on for a seemingly indeterminable amount of time, with (nearly) all things being corrected and the world safe again. That sequence more than made up for the few times where this episode felt rather disjointed.