Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5 episodes 19-20 review - Option 2/The One who will save us all

Option Two

So, if that opening proved anything it’s that the team really still needs Coulson.

So, it’s time for some fallout over the actions of the previous episodes. You remember the Candyman? No? Me neither but hey, he was here and he’s found a piece of Deathlok technology,

the centipede serum. You remember that from series 1? Damn, it’s been a long time.

Of course having Daisy off doing that mission also factors as an excuse not to have her present for the bulk of the episode, so she can’t be p*ssy at Fitz, just those 5 minutes. But props once again to Natalia Cordova-Buckley for holding her own dramatically as Yo-Yo. She’s still struggling with the decisions she made and is being judged harshly for them, both by Daisy and, more concerning, Mack.

Yeah, about Mack, I’ve begun to get sick of calling out Mack’s moral grandstanding and it’s a big problem in this episode. In one moment, he’s telling Yo-Yo that killing is wrong, the next he’s giving Coulson his shotgun axe. Look, I get what he’s saying, but I wish he’d phrase it differently than trying to spin the ‘killing is wrong’ from a series that has killed all its main villains, whether intentionally or otherwise.

So, the aliens are the scavengers and boy do they look kinda sh*t, they’re blokes in body armour with some knives. Fortunately, to save on the effects budget, they’re magic and can make their surroundings darker. Despite my jokes about how they look, they do have a scary presence about them for this reason, and that they kill off several of the extras.

Yo-Yo also reveals that trying to keep Coulson alive might set off a chain reaction of events that lead to the world being destroyed. Which is why you should’ve known that Ruby isn’t the destroyer but I digress. May seems to take that badly and unsurprisingly isn’t turning back on that goal.

So, the scavengers invade the base, kill a load of extras who’ve appeared suddenly, and Coulson accidentally puts the base on lock-down for 15 years. Pity the scavengers have teleporters. The scavengers have them outnumbered and without Daisy, they’re overpowered. But there is one man who can save us all, Glenn Talbot.

Glenn Talbot has had quite the journey. He’s largely been portrayed as an ass-hole, but he’s mellowed as the seasons have progressed and it’s revealed he puts on a fair bit of the bravado since he’s in the public eye. He truly didn’t give up on S.H.I.E.L.D. and openly supported their return. Then season 4 happened, the new appointed leader of S.H.I.E.L.D. was killed and he was severely wounded by an LMD daisy, and whilst Coulson and Co were in the future, he spent months being tortured and brainwashed by Hale

What that actually meant becomes quite clear early on, he’s the one who told the scavengers where they are. Adrian Pasdar has been at his best this season, and it only continues into this episode, his constant murmurings make it unclear whether what he did was of his own accord or whether he was another backup for Hale’s destroyer of worlds project.

Also, we finally have a character they’ve been foreshadowing for years, or at least a version of him. In the comics, Franklin Hall is Graviton, I guess Talbot is Graviton in this version and I’m looking forward to what they do with him. Could he be involved with quaking the Earth apart, or is it another loose end as things start to come to a head? We shall indeed see.

Rating 8/10

The one who will save us all

Am I the only one siding with Fitz? No? I totally side with Fitz.

Yay, more of Mack being a complete idiot, this season has done nothing for him. He’s supposed to be, I think, the heart of the team, the moral centrepiece but he seems to be completely unaware of what S.H.I.E.L.D. actually does. He’s not the moral centrepiece of the team, he’s a complete hypocrite. I’d argue May is a better moral centrepiece for the team. She broke up the fight between Yo-Yo and Daisy with one shot.

I’m not saying that Mack is necessarily wrong, but this is not the show for that debate to work, or at the very least it should come from an outside source. Had Skye been questioning it when she was introduced into their world in season 1, I might’ve bought it. As it is, no, Mack is a hypocrite of the highest order and recycle everything I’ve said about his development this entire f*cking season. And the strangest thing is, one Fitz was let out of his box, he hasn’t acted particularly differently as far as I can tell. I’m not convinced he wouldn’t have sided with Yo-Yo without the framework Fitz being in his head.

Speaking of Yo-Yo, she’s rightfully anxious about what May and Skye are up to, she’s also kind of annoyed at Daisy in a subplot that really jumps out of no-where, although it makes a degree of sense. It’s a decent fight, but the action’s been good for most of the season. Also, one of the marauders took the opium, and May is right, everything has a silly name.

So, let’s cut to the meat of the episode shall we, Talbot wants to show who’s boss and has taken Coulson along for the ride. At first, Talbot seems reasonably well balanced considering he has 2 guys arguing in his head and he wasn’t exactly with his faculties before, but as the episode continues he becomes more and more unstable.

Turns out I actually got a prediction right

The warships we’re talking about are indeed from Thanos, which means this story is tying directly into Infinity War. That does comes with its downsides though, they’re gonna have to deal with the consequences of Infinity War first hand, and infinity war came with significant casualties… OK, don’t read further if you don’t want this spoiled.

OK? Half the population of the universe is wiped out at random. The team needs to be affected in some way. Considering all the non-main agents of the group make easy canon fodder, and Robin’s mother could also be going to dust, they have a degree of freedom in keeping the main agents, especially since we’ve seen most of them at some point in the future. That said, it would feel convenient.

So, The Confederacy have been lying the entire time, sneaking away gravitonium and inhumans for the purposes of reasons, knowing that Earth would likely not survive Thanos (the Earth is very much still in tact at the end of Infinity War, so maybe they miscalculated on that front) but among them is the very devious Cassius sr. Yay?

He’s a manipulator and a deceiver, and I can see why Cassius Jr held him in high regard, even despite their differences. I can’t wait to see where this leads.

The stuff on Earth was largely frustrating, but the real action happened in space and oh yeah, I completely forgot about Hale. She was clearly broken and doing whatever she could to find purpose again and survive. She failed.

Rating 7.5/10