Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 3 Episodes 6-7 review - Among us Hide/Chaos Theory

Well, I certainly suck at theory debunking.

Among us Hide

So yes, to make up for last week’s ultimate one-line focus, this week we get a lot of stuff thrown at us. We get Coulson and Rosiland flirting, the ATCU prison; Ward hunting down Werner von Strucker (that guy who’s been such a tool this season I haven’t even bothered mentioning him), Bobby joining up with May to hunt down Werner von Strucker, a stakeout with Daisy, Mack and Hunter, the fallout from Andrew’s near death, a tiny hint of Fitz helping Simmons and the reveal of the identity of Lash.

OK, let’s break these down. OK, the fallout from Andrew’s near death. May is mad at Hunter because he was reckless. Being honest, I thought he made the only viable option. It’s almost a sure bet that Andrew would’ve been killed anyway if they stood down, their only chance is to fight. Still, May’s anger is not unwarranted, the whole mission was sloppily handled and Coulson was right to take him off. Of course May wants on and she recruits Bobby to the task, who is still having doubts about herself after Ward’s last attack, resorting to violence as a last resort and clearly is not yet as a good a fighter as she once was.

We also have the flirting between Coulson and Rosiland, who they humanise a bit with a dead husband who died of cancer (she’s still shifty as heck Coulson) and they see the inhuman prison which is like a Mr Freeze testing lab. Keeping inhumans suspended alive until they can find a cure, which they’re apparently close to doing.

Hunter teams up with Skye who is, like I was to be honest, convinced Lash is within the ATCU. Here’s where Hunter gets reckless beyond belief. What part of tail isn’t clear? YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SEEN!

Ward seems to recovered very quickly from the bullet grazing his back, and now gets the call from a HYDRA head warning him that Werner is a loose end (the same guy that promised to keep Werner safe, HYDRA in a nutshell for you) which he already knew anyway, and sends his goon to kill Werner, which he does, I think. Goodbye Werner, your death was as meaningful as your father’s and you contributed maybe 2 things to the overall plot, one of which is his existence.

So, yeah the identity of Lash. Spoiler alert! It’s Andrew. I’m told he works under some divine system, those he deems worthy survive in the comics and it’d certainly explain his hesitance with Daisy, his leaving of May and why he is stopping the recruitment of inhumans going forward. Of course this this does make him the fourth inside agent in SHIELD (I’m counting Bobby and Mack) and given that they have ways of detecting inhuman blood as demonstrated in this episode, they should be able to find out quickly, especially since May already has an inkling of an idea because of Werner’s last words to her.

This show has a lot of strands now, and they need to start forming together as we’re only 4 episodes away from the finale.

Rating 7.5/10

Chaos Theory

They don’t keep secrets for long now, do they?

Agents of SHIELD: action drama wrapped up into a series completely devoid of secret identity, sappy melodrama and, clearly learning lessons from the first season, exceptionally paced. SHIELD is better than the Flash and Arrow, Gotham (not that it was hard to be), Constantine and… well, not quite Daredevil, but all the DC stuff I’ve watched

Why, because they have characters on different running threads. At this point there are 4 major plotlines going on at the same time and unlike Gotham they address all of them in most episodes rather than selectively, the end result, the pacing is fantastic in SHIELD whilst Flash and Arrow go for the slow-burn approach, trickling details for the eventual payoff.

I talk about this now because the strands are beginning to come together and the end result will hopefully be glorious. I’ll cover each plot individually.

First we have Lash, I’m glad the secret’s out already, too many shows go for the slow option with secrets and it’s often more frustrating than entertaining. Plus, there’s the emotional payoff of May having to confront Andrew over him being Lash with a certain plot-hole of his blood results closed. They gave us a bit of background over how he underwent terragenesis, and this isn’t a loose plot thread because this is what Lincoln (welcome to the fold) uses to reveal the truth to everyone

Second, we have the ATCU and we’re getting interesting with this one. After her introduction as a sort of shady character, they do seem to be going out of their way to try and make her seem like a good person, or at least someone with the right intentions and doing the Nick Fury thing of seeing the world how it is, not how she wants it to be, providing a nice contrast with Daisy’s still very optimistic view of the world. So, when it’s revealed she was a HYDRA agent in the closing seconds of the episode, I was shocked.

Speaking of which, we have HYDRA, there’s one major thing HYDRA’s been lacking this season. Threat, Ward hasn’t really acted on his personal vendetta, there hasn’t been much of an agenda to HYDRA at all, but worst of all in terms of raw power, HYDRA is over-matched. Daisy could take them alone (which is why they’ve kept her out of the HYDRA sub-plot thus far) I’ve said before that Ward needs some inhuman allies in order to become a threat and I stand by that, given Rosiland’s ties to HYDRA that would be the best means for Ward to become an actual threat to the team

The fourth major plotline is of course the portal. Fitz discovers some quite interesting things from the photo recovered from Simmons phone. The symbol of a secret order was on Will’s astronaut shirt, a symbol that was also in the house they eventually used to open the portal. It did remind me that the only information we know about Will was straight from him, he could well have been deceived or just plain lying and we would not know. Does the secret order have ties to HYDRA? I dunno, I think it’d be a good way to tie some more strings together

And of course, everything comes out, again, next week, looking forward to it

Rating 9/10

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