Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4 (LMD finale) episode 15 review - Self-control

Self-Control

Jed Whedon is one of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s show-runners, he has written a fair few episodes of the series but before now, he hasn’t directed any of them, and honestly he hasn’t directed anything. Until now and I’m pleased to report this episode is one of the best episodes of the show.

OK, so a heads up, when I reviewed the last best episode of this show, the mid-season finale of season 2, I was deliberately lighter on spoilers than I usually was, here I’m not doing that. So watch the episode! WATCH IT! I’ll give you a bit of blank space to just so you don’t accidentally read past this.

Watched it yet?

OK, so it turns out it the 4 LMDs weren’t who we thought they were. Sure, Coulson was obvious from the last episode, Mace was blatently obvious and Mack… yeah, he’s an LMD, it turns out it wasn’t Daisy that’s the 4^th LMD, instead it Fitz, who knows when this happened. Was that who Aida was referring to when she said about the second LMD? We all thought she meant the Radcliffe one but who knows now. When was Fitz replaced?

Anyway, they try and capture the fear and paranoia that the tried in the season 3 finale, and do it much better. I wasn’t sure who to trust, or I wouldn’t have been had I not read spoilers prior to watching it. Look, I work on a Wednesday, the earliest I can watch an episode, give me a break.

Anyway, Fitz being replaced with an LMD gives us some great scenes between him and Simmons as she realises what’s going on, forcing him to cut his wrists which he does willingly, given that it’s still Fitz’s brainwaves it shows how far he was willing to go but at breaking point, Simmons repeatedly stabs him, and eventually shuts him down. That was brutal and very tragic

But the power couple of this episode have to be Daisy and Simmons, and the fact S.H.I.E.L.D. currently has an army of Daisy LMDs ready to kill all inhumans. How the heck did those get shipped in so quickly? It’s one of 2 questions I have with this episode that just keep it from achieving that miracle 10 that I’ve never given to anything ever.

Simmons and Daisy make a good team with strategic planning, forethought and Daisy providing Simmons the comfort she needs after the ordeal with LMD Fitz. Daisy kicks ass in this episode, with and without her powers.

The have a plan to find their friends and rescue them, to hack into the framework, the cliffhanger ending of this season shows what the framework is like. Coulson is an anti-inhuman teacher, May is the head of HYDRA which now runs the world. Fitz has some other girlfriend, Simmons is ‘dead,’ Mack has his daughter that was foreshadowed a few weeks back and we see the return of a familiar face. Grant Ward is back, and they have a clean slate to do something with him that might be interesting, one can only hope. That’s a hell of an exciting cliffhanger.

There are some other great moments too, Ivanov’s threat level is increased as Aida has him controlling a robot body. She stashes Radcliffe into the framework after slitting his wrists, presumably so he’d bleed out and die in the physical world and of course LMD May gets her time to show what she truly is, although second question, how did all the red-shirts get past her with Coulson there?

A truly great finale to the second arc of the season, looking forward to what’s coming next when it returns in April.

Rating 9.8/10

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