Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2 Episodes 8-9 review - The things we bury/Ye who enter here

It's been a while, but let's take a look at Agents of SHIELD as it's full steam ahead toward the mid-season finale.

Episode 8 - The things we bury

The title is definitely more relating to Ward’s story than the S.H.I.E.L.D.’s although it plays relevance to both. I’ll talk about Ward first, I’ve said before redemptions not gonna come easily for him. Step 1 appears to be relieving himself of old guilt. I get the suspicion that perhaps Ward still felt guilt for what happened with his brother, and needed to hear that confession, and make sure the world knew as well.

Then he proceeds to burn down the house and… join up with Whitehall and his team? OK…

Moving on, we have S.H.I.E.L.D. attempting to find the lost city as HYDRA begins to piece it together as well. The show has really nailed the prospect of moving the pieces carefully without anything feeling extraneous. It’s something that a great many shows have struggled with.

We have character moments. Fitz on his first field op since the accident, Bobby and Hunter arguing, Mack worrying about Coulson, May knowing about some files, Simmonds using her HYDRA connections to work out who the villain is (admittedly, this is obvious to the audience, which is why it isn’t the big twist), Coulson leading a field op, Skye commencing hacking and Tripplett… Gets shot? *sigh* work out what to do with him already. Mack has only had screen this series, and he’s already a more interesting character

In the mean time we have Skye’s father revealing his secrets, the obelisk is a key to the city of judgement or whatever. Aliens came to end the Earth and… something happened

We also see a bit more of Peggy Carter as we reveal some of the origin of our main villain, and his connection, ironically to Skye’s father and what remains of her mother, the inevitable double-crosses within the HYDRA ranks are coming

Another excellent instalment in the series, and I hope they continue to build on this momentum

Rating 8.5/10

Episode 9 – Ye who enter here

So begins the penultimate episode this side of Christmas. And it’s another great one

So SHIELD are approaching the city with no idea that HYDRA are as close as they are, but HYDRA need one more piece to complete their plan, Raina. With SHIELD working to protect her, whilst making the first steps of discovery, Skye fears that something terrible is about to happen.

And she’s right. This episode moved at an eerily slow pace for the first 2/3, there’s always a sense that things are about to go drastically wrong, but you’re just waiting for moment where the sh*t hits the fan.

Oddly it’s Fitz-Simmons that gets the bulk of the development this episode, as both try and confess their feelings towards how things have happened between them. It’s somewhat sad to hear that Simmons never really loved Fitz the way he loved her. Although we are starting to see her become a bit more like the Simmons Fitz was hallucinating about near the beginning.

Mack is the centrepiece because he’s always been the guy at Fitz’s side, and here we see him trying to get the two to reconcile before it’s all too late. Leaving them alone to talk was clearly intentional, and not just coincidence, but it’s interesting that Fitz decided to leave the labs to work with Mack, not able to work with Simmons (although more comfortable working for him) I’m glad they’re not skipping over Fitz’s recovery, it does give quite a dramatic weight of things to come.

Then there’s agent 33, last seen in an op a few weeks back, she returns, still with May’s face and fights mostly against Skye, it’s amazing how far her skills have come, she really held her own in that fight, despite having to be saved at the end.

The end scene with May, Hunter and Skye involves HYDRA coming down on them. With Ward taking the lead, they manage to take both Raina and Skye, before under the orders of Whitehall blowing up the plane (although we haven’t yet seen that, so maybe it escapes)

We also see another payoff which involves Mack going nuts, and Fitz and Bobbi having to face up against him. Clearly they both have personal stakes in it (although we really don’t have any knowledge of what Bobbi’s stakes are, only that there’s something she’s keeping secret from Hunter) he falls into the abyss and we don’t know if he’ll survive to the next episode.

All-in-all another great episode in a long-running string of great episodes.

Rating: 8.7/10

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