Fitz arrives in 2091 to save his fellow Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Quake, Destroyer of Worlds, faces a battle to the death!
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Airdate January 5, 2018
Created by Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen
Production Company ABC Studios & Marvel Television
What You Should Know:
Before the week off, a Fitz-centric episode focused on Leopold Fitz, ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Lance Hunter and an alien recorder named Enoch and the six months of events that lead to Fitz entering a cryo-pod and going into orbit around the Earth to be greeted by Enoch 74 years later at the Lighthouse station. The other Agents, Phil, May, Mack, Jemma, Yo-Yo, and Sky-Daisy, with help from Deke and Tess, contend with the alien race The Kree whose leader, Kasius, has been breeding Inhumans to fight in gladiator matches and sold to the highest bidder. Phil, May, Mack, and Yo-Yo try to blend with the other humans in the Lighthouse while they search for a way home. Jemma serves Kasius as his personal servant and Quake, Destroyer of Worlds, is finally captured. She befriends an Inhuman telepathic male who helps keep her secrets but the hour draws near for Quake, Destroyer of Worlds, to face battle.
What You’ll Find Out:
(SPOILERS AHEAD!) Flint, a teenage scavenger on the Lighthouse, is peddling his finds when a Kree apprehends him. Enoch fills Fitz in on the backstory of his alias, Boshtok, “a vile space marauder of unlimited wealth”, as they mingle with the other arriving bidders. Jemma enters and Fitz comes up behind her and pours his heart out and proposes to her not knowing her hearing has been turned off by Kasius.
Tess returns after sitting out the last couple of episodes. She takes Phil, Mack, and Yo-Yo to a Terrigenesis ceremony where we see Flint among 3 others waiting for the mist. When the mist is released, Flint turns to stone then explodes. He’s not dead, Yo-Yo had rushed in and moved him.
Kasius sits at a banquet table bantering with a robed man from Xandar named Ponarian. Standing to the side are Sky-Daisy and the telepath. Bad-Ass Boshtok-Fitz mouths off all tough guy. Kasius, Fitz, and Ponarian move to the balcony as the games begin. First up is the telepath (who we finally find out is named “Ben”) and, from “one of the most despised organizations in the galaxy”, Melinda May, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Tess goes off to search for a trailer for her and the others to hide out in. At the games, May is escorted off to be sent to the Earth’s surface. Tess runs into the Kree alien looking for Flint. Elsewhere, Flint wonders what his powers will be and Yo-Yo tells him her story which is overheard by Grill when he wanders into the scene.
Pontarian wants to buy Ben but Kasius won’t sell. Kasius says Ben lied to him which makes Ben less valuable. At Kasius’ word, the Freaky Blue Bitch Sinara murders Ben with her two death spheres.
Meanwhile, Phil tries to talk Grill out of turning them in. Grill, however, is greedy and a fight breaks out where we see Flint has acquired some type of gravity or telekinetic ability–it’s uncertain just what–but he pulls a bunch of the ore rocks together into a giant boulder and uses it to crush Grill to death.
Fitz gets word that Kasius’ brother, Faulak, has arrived at the station to bid on Quake, Destroyer of Worlds. Faulak demands that Quake, Destroyer of Worlds, not fight another Inhuman but rather a Kree warrior, the Freaky Blue Bitch Sinara.
Mack and Phil go in search of Tess, only to find her strung up hanging by the neck with a sign reading “Bring me the Inhuman” (Flint).
Quake’s (Destroyer of Worlds) plan was to go after Kasius once her power inhibitor was turned off but Kasius sets up a force field around the balcony. Sinara and her balls attack. Quake (Destroyer of Worlds) gets an upper hand, separating Sinara from her balls. But instead of destroying the spheres, she turns her back on Sinara who attacks again. Quake (Destroyer of Worlds) finally knocks her out and Fitz and Jemma turn on the Kree and their guests. Jemma takes a knife and slits Kasius’ throat while Fitz shoots most of the others in the head.
Jemma and Fitz leap off the balcony and pause to kiss and make goo-goo eyes in the middle of the fight and Jemma proposes to Fitz who accepts and then swirls around to put a bullet in Sinara’s head.Then the two escape with Sky-Daisy whose inhibitor has been turned back on. In another part of the Lighthouse, Enoch, in Kree blue face, shoots a guard and boards an elevator, presumably headed for the surface where the Vrellexians roam.
What This Means For The Future:
With most of the main bad guys now dead, hopefully, all that remains is getting the gang back home as this S.H.I.E.L.D. in Space arc is beginning to wear thin.
Final Thought: An overly violent episode. Interesting characters who’ve been introduced like Ben and Tess are brutally murdered having served their purpose. The transformation of lovable science geek Fitz into a swashbuckling bad ass killer is pretty well complete now. He can take over the role Ward played on the team. How in the world did he overcome brain damage to become this? And watching Jemma slit Kasius’s throat just felt so jarring. Fitz-Simmons were once the quieter, gentler part of the team who contributed through their genius and science. There are enough action/fighters on the team already. And on the topic of Fitz, if he was drifting in orbit around the Earth when it was destroyed, how did his pod avoid destruction? Then there’s the Xandarian, Ponarian. The writers did what they have done since the show started…dropping names as little tidbits for the people following the Marvel Cinematic Universe continuity. Instead of just mentioning “Xandarian” how hard would it have been to put Ponarian in an actual uniform from Xandar as seen in the Guardians of the Galaxy films?
On a similar note, why do most all of the aliens at Kasius’ auction look like generic humanoid types when Marvel has such a vast library of alien races? Did they run out of their make up effects budget buying blue paint?
The writers are truly the worst enemy of this show. The writing team seems comprised of people who are used to writing formulaic police procedurals at best. At worse, the scripts feel like they are coming from the infamous Drunken Chimpanzee Writers Guild! Case in point: remember last season’s LMD arc where we saw the creation of the famous Life Model Decoys? Surely you haven’t forgotten the scene in Iron Man, which preceded it by quite a bit, where Tony answers his phone and tries to disguise himself as an LMD? And just how did S.H.I.E.L.D. become one of the most despised organizations in the galaxy? Aside from the current storyline they’ve barely touched space.
It isn’t that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is a terrible show. At times it’s quite fun…even good. But it could be so much better if the writing wasn’t so sloppy; if they got writers who knew a little bit about the source material instead of people who write a generic story and fill in the characters and show later (this does happen in Hollywood a lot). It would be really great if they would bring in some elements of S.H.I.E.L.D. from the comic. I don’t subscribe to the idea that because it’s a tv show it’s in its own universe and doesn’t have to pay any attention to the comics. It was the comic books and their rich history of characters and storytelling that made Marvel such a hot property, to begin with. To throw that all away and simply leech off the names is a terrible injustice.
Rating: 7/10
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. airs Fridays on ABC. Check your local listings for times and channels.
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