Here we are at the penultimate episode of the first season of Agents of SHIELD and you’re supposed to get this feeling of tension and action ramping up to a climax. Well that’s what you get from most shows but last night Agents of SHIELD gave us the random slow jam on the mixtape to mess up the flow. For some reason they decided to give us the Origin of Agent Grant Ward and why he’s aligned with HYDRA through his mentor Garrett aka the Clairvoyant. What we got was an annoyingly disjointed episode that really leaves me less interested than ever in how this season will end.
So what does happen with this episode? It’s mostly in three parts, the Ward flashback parts, HYDRA stuff and Team Coulson stuff. Let’s cover the Ward Flashbacks first. We see Ward in juvie when he is visited by Garrett, he makes him an offer to go with him or rot here, meanwhile his family is planning on having him tried as adult for setting their house on fire and killing (?) his brother. He chooses to go with Garrett who breaks him out of juvie and then takes him somewhere in the woods. Garrett leaves Ward in the woods with his dog and tells him to survive until he gets back for a couple of months. Garrett returns six months later to find a more experienced Ward that now has a camp, food and guns. He basically survived by robbing people. He tells Garrett he plans on building a cabin and Garrett is pleased and begins to teach him how to shoot. 10 years later Ward, now older, Garrett tells him about his feelings on Shield and his allegiance to HYDRA. Then Garrett tells Ward that he’s been approved to enter SHIELD ops training but first Ward has to kill the dog. Here you think this is where they redeem Ward, nope he scares the dog and snipes him. So the big traumatic event to show Ward is bad is that he kills a dog…sigh.
Now for the Team Coulson storyline, while the team is in their new base aka motel 6 they plan on getting into Cybertek the company that makes the Deathlok technology along with other things that our team has been facing all season long (I find it lame that AIM is not used at all even though they were in Iron Man 3). Next Triplett comes in with a bunch of his granddad’s Howling Commando spy gear which cause both Coulson and Triplett to go into complete fanboy overdrive over. So with the old school spy tech and with Coulson and May dressed up like Gilbert and Lewis from Revenge of the Nerds they get into Cybertek. With coaching by FitzSimmons they get to the next level where they then proceed to beat up all the scientists they meet in Cybertek. Looking for a server room so that they can affix a dongle to the computers for Skye’s hacker program to started so it can destroy all the HYDRA network’s copy of their files they end up find an analogue room full of filing cabinets. They end up on the Deathlok cabinet with the folders on the project, Mike Peterson and who we find out Garrett the first Deathlok aka what I shall call that Betamax. May and Skye have a heart to heart (why do Coulson and May have to have these with her?) and Skye learns that May is very angry about Ward but just doesn’t pout and throw tantrums about it. May just plans on destroying him in person when she sees him again. Then she offers Skye to train with her in the morning.
So Team Coulson decides that they should split up with all the fighting people with Skye going to another HYDRA base Garrett is using to plant the dongle with FitzSimmons going to find the Bus and getting it back somehow. They can’t fight but they go after the place with the killer clairvoyant and killer Ward.
This show.
Also for some reason Fitz won’t accept the fact that Ward is a bad guy. The dead agent Koenig and the kidnapping of Skye along with shooting of Agent Hand apparently means he can’t be bad if he’s his friend. So let’s talk about HYDRA time. See Garrett sent Deathlok down to Bogota and had him punch off the head of the drug cartel leader as a show of force. Garrett and Ward constantly bicker while Garrett checks in on Reina about what they have learned from the hard drive. She’s learned enough to make one vile of the stuff that was in TAHITI. Garrett and Ward still argue, then something happens to Garrett which is the first time we see his old Betamax Deathlok parts that Ward knows how to fix. He ctrl+alt+del his gear and Garrett gets a little better and he tells Ward that he is dying. At this time Deathlok and Reina have a talk with him still being mad at his situation and Reina being disappointed that all Garrett wants is to not die (so basically she’s just as disappointed as I am in the motivations of this show) as she wants to learn more about Skye and other people with potential powers as she herself is one.
Next up we see Ian Quinn getting a haircut and shave from the HYDRA base front as he tells Garrett with SHIELD gone and it's reputation tarnished means that he’s all gravy in the states and can conduct business as usual there. Now he is headed to Washington to do some deals for the team. Reina takes Ward to the side and says she has some secrets about Ward and his thirst piques his interests. So remember when I told you they had FitzSimmons scoping out the plane well guess who found them? Our man Ward and took them right to Garrett. Fitz puffing his chest out at the evil Garrett when makes his appearance to be all big bad to those two. When being taken away Ward notices Fitz reaching in his pocket and takes what he was holding. Thinking it’s a joy buzzer he presses the button but BONG it’s an EMP and takes out part of the Bus and causes Garrett’s Betamax hardware to fail. With Garrett now on his deathbed he asks Ward to kill FitzSimmons which Ward complies with. After Ward leaves Garrett talks with Reina about his situation and has her inject his systems with the TAHITI concoction to save his life. Garrett then gains the glow and saves he sees the universe.
Meanwhile Ward gets to FitzSimmons with Fitz still unable to believe Ward is a bad guy he goes ahead and drops the container they are in into the sea. I still don’t know how the two nerds of the team got trapped and couldn’t take over the whole plane they were on for month with some crazy scientist hacking skills but alas. Now action side of Team Coulson proceeds to get into the HYDRA base. There they end up where they need to be but OH NOES they are surrounded by folks with red light eyes! Ah man that must mean a whole army of Deathloks. The episode ends with Ian Quinn in a meeting with two US Military higher up about them buying Deathloks.
Did You Know:
Most of the really good Easter eggs were in reference to Deathlok and specifically to the Dwayne McDuffie 1990 Michael Collins version. I thought that was pretty cool. There have been plenty of Deathloks to be honest and it’s a bit all over the place if you really want to jump down that whole do so at your own risk. It’s full of alternate futures, time travel and brain switching with some of this stuff I don’t totally follow. See you next week for the season finale.
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