What’s Inside Your Gravitonium?
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Air Date April 6, 2018, ABC Fridays 9pm
Created by Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen
Production Company ABC Studios & Marvel Television
What You Should Know:
Previously on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. How General Hale rose up through the ranks of Hydra was told in flashbacks. A mysterious machine was given to Hydra that could teleport them to The Confederacy, a group of alien races. Coulson was taken there and The Man in the Shadows showed him a vision of a great space battle cruiser headed toward Earth.
What You’ll Find Out:
(SPOILERS AHEAD!)
Coulson commiserates in his empty room while General Hale offers Carl Creel a chance to be a hero…by absorbing Gravitonium. She says “No one ever understood Gravitonium except for Ian Quinn and he’s been in hiding for years”.
Creel sticks his hand in the container of Gravitonium but before he can touch it, the Gravitonium reaches up and grabs hold of his arm.
Suddenly Creel’s mind is flooded with images of Gravitonium and flashes of…a man! Creel yells out to General Hale “It’s alive!”
Elena is having a heavy workout with a punching bag back at the Lighthouse. Mack tries to get her to go a little easier as her mechanical arms have just recently been attached.
From his cell, Fitz expresses his disappointment that Deke is his grandson…to Deke. Deke walks out and runs right into grandma who wants to question him about the future — specifically her and Fitz but all he can tell her is that they made it to the Lighthouse.
Daisy’s plan is to find Robin Hinton and see if they can get any useful information from The Seer. Again, she turns down Jemma’s request to free Fitz. Daisy says Mack will be in charge while she’s gone and Fitz stays locked up. Jemma later confides in Elena. The two of them, along with Fitz, believe they are invincible. Jemma and Fitz think General Hale may be after a weapon powered by Gravitonium that is in a location given to S.H.I.E.L.D. by Gideon Malik. But the first order of business is freeing Fitz.
Carl Creel is tormented by the images he saw when he made contact with the Gravitonium. Hale tells him they’ll be conducting another test soon.
Dave gets Daisy, Robin and Mrs. Hinton situated aboard the plane. Robin’s mom says the girl hasn’t been doing well. She isn’t speaking, isn’t drawing…whatever she is seeing is overwhelming her.
Werner von Strucker is trying to decipher his father’s notes on the infusion chamber. Ruby enters sounding distrustful of her mom. She wants the Gravitonium for herself. She wants to be “The Destroyer of Worlds”.
Mack is finishing diagnostics on Elena. She tells Mack she wants him to let Fitz out. Mack refuses. He says Fitz is staying where he is and so is Elena. Maybe the reason she is alive in the future is that Mack protected her in the present.
In his tangled thoughts, Carl hears someone say “I see the future, Mr. Coulson”. Creel gets out of bed and goes to the locked door and absorbs steel into his hand and breaks the lock on the door and then takes out the mechanical guard.
Then Creel goes to Coulson’s room and breaks in. He throws Coulson up against a wall and tells him “The Gravitonium hates you! It wants you dead!” Creel thinks Hale and S.H.I.E.L.D. are both guilty of experimentation without thought of consequences. Coulson tells Carl what General Hale has done to Carl’s friend, Talbot. For the time being, Creel decides to go with Coulson and see if his story checks out.
As the Zephyr heads back, Robin walks up to May calling her “mommy”. “I told you Flint would get you back,” she says.
Coulson and Creel make their way to Talbot’s room where he’s rambling nonsense to himself. The three men head off down the corridors.
Elena takes Mack to Fitz’s cell. Jemma has a test set up to prove she can’t be killed. Jemma pours 4 glasses with one of them containing a toxic liquid. Elena mixes the glasses up. Jemma drinks three to prove she wouldn’t pick the toxic one. Then she starts to go into convulsions. They get Mack to let Fitz out to save her and then Yo-Yo gets Mack into the cell and locks it. Jemma reassures Fitz, who wasn’t in on the experiment, that they are invincible by pouring out the last glass which sizzles when it hits the table. Fitz says “Great performance”. Then Elena, not yet accustomed to her hands, accidentally fires off a gun just barely missing Jemma.
Robin is drawing again. May tells Robin they are going to try to make sure the future in her drawings never happens. But to do that they need…”Philip J Coulson” Robin finishes May’s sentence. She also says he’s going to die. May brings Daisy Robin’s latest drawing which shows Coulson and another man with some mountains in the background.
Coulson, Creel, and Talbot sneak through the corridors trying not to get caught. Creel continues to have flashes and hear voices in his head. They don’t know Hale has caught on to their escape and that she is sending Ruby to capture them (alive). Elsewhere, Fitz, Jemma, and Elena steal an aircraft.
Guards have caught up to the trio of escapees and Creel tries to take them on his own. One of the Mechs punches Coulson in the chest, sending him flying back. Talbot is unable to get a pulse on Phil. He’s dead. Creel absorbs electricity from one of the fallen Mechs and uses it to jump-start Phil’s heart. Talbot tells Phil “You die more than anybody I’ve ever met!”.
As the trio continues down the corridor, Ruby and some Mech-Guards confront them and open fire.
Robin’s mom says she’s seen Robin’s drawings and she knows she’s not in them. She asks May to take care of Robin.
Carl offers to hold off Ruby while Coulson and Talbot get away. Inside the room holding the alien machine, Phil and Talbot grab a hold of the machine and teleport away.
Rather than absorb something, say, like lead, and just taking down Ruby, Carl just fights her without protection. Just as Ruby is about to take the kill shot with her circle blade, General Hale arrives and stops her. But only briefly as Ruby throws her blade anyway. Lucky for Carl, he suddenly remembers he’s the Absorb — he can take on the properties of the wood sticks he holding so when the circle blade hits him square in the middle of his chest he survives. Hale asks Ruby “Who do you think you are?” angrily to which Ruby says “I’m the Destroyer of Worlds”. “Then go get them” mother replies.
Phil and Talbot appear in a snow-covered woods with mountains in the background.
Epilogue: 4 YEARS AGO: A van is traveling down the road at night. Inside it are Raina and Ian Quinn and a covered container. Quinn says he never wanted Hydra. All he wanted was the Gravitonium. Raina says “Oh, no. You misunderstand… It wanted you!” Then she opens the container and the Gravitonium reaches out and absorbs Quinn and goes back inside the container.
What This Means For The Future:
Next: When an agent’s life hangs in the balance Fitz, Simmons and Yo-Yo attempt to neutralize a weapon that could play a role in Earth’s destruction in “The Honeymoon”.
Final Thought: Back in season one when we first were dealing with Gravitonium, I thought “wouldn’t it be great if S.H.I.E.L.D. did Graviton? Then they’d have their own big ass super villain!” As we saw, that moment got passed by. Now that we’re heavily back into the Gravitonium, people are again thinking about Graviton. It ain’t gonna happen. Given the history of the show and the overall aversion to supervillains (and slightly less, superheroes) Marvel has with its TV shows, I think the possibility of someone possessing all the power of the Gravitonium and calling himself “Graviton” are zero.
Perhaps a robot or machine called Graviton maybe. But I still highly doubt it. We shall see if I’m right or wrong.
The mountain off in the distance from Coulson and Talbot in the snow….wouldn’t it be great if it were Mount Olympus? Then again, not gonna happen.
Did Coulson’s death this episode fulfill the prophecy of his death? Technically it should have but more likely it was a goof by the writers. Why be building up to his death and then kill him just so they can bring him back and kill him again? Makes no sense but then, as Talbot said, Coulson does die a lot.
What is very likely to happen, however, is one of the “Invincibles” — Elena, Jemma, and Fitz — is probably going to die. The complete cockiness Elena and Jemma are going on with about being invincible “we can’t die because we’re in the future, we’re going to have a grandson named Deke” is like a huge foreshadowing clobbering us on the head. The only question is who will it be? Would they dare kill off the one Hispanic character on the show? Possibly, since that would also rid them of those pesky superpowers. As I’ve stated in the past, Joss Whedon has a history of raining tragedy down on couples but how much he’s actually involved in the story writing is unknown. I think if he had much say, it would be a much better show. The logical choice to me would be Fitz. What he did to Daisy was horrible and their relationship probably cannot be salvaged. And Fitz must somehow atone for his crimes.
I’ll just leave this little tidbit for you to ponder as the season begins to wrap up over the next month. The title of the season 5 finale is “The End”.
Rating: 8/10
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. airs Fridays at 9:00 on most ABC stations. Check your local listings.
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