Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 3 episode 11 review - Bouncing Back

Agent Carter is gone but Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has returned, let's take a look at its comeback episode

Bouncing Back

Well, police suck!

Agents of SHIELD is back for the next 12 weeks, so let’s get started

I said before that I was kinda disappointed with the finale, not so much that it’s bad because it wasn’t, more because it was rushed. I stand by that complaint. This episode doesn’t suffer from such a problem as it begins to deal with the fallout from that episode as well as setting up a few things to come.

The secret warriors plot took a bit of a back seat during the first half of the season, what with the ATCU, HYDRA, Ward, Simmons’ visit to another planet, Hunter’s quest for vengeance and of course, Lash. So this episode brings it to the forefront again.

The plot goeth thusly, an inhuman named Slingshot/Yo-yo is attributed to stealing a mass of weaponry for the police force and it’s up to the SHIELD team to her down but in the process they discover the situation may be more complex than they originally intended. Meanwhile, Coulson decides to use Werner Von Struker to find out about Malick’s secret headquarters and shut them down. Also Fitz is feeling a bit guilty about having to kill Will and Coulson is still feeling awkward about killing Ward

Honestly, I don’t think they need to focus too much on Coulson killing Ward. There’s a lot of people acting like it’s a line he’d never cross, except he has killed people, he’s sent other people out to kill people and he’s acted not always in self-defence (case-in point, when he shot Daniel Whitehall, from behind) still the one argument you could make that’s valid is that there’s a difference between calmly pulling a trigger and crushing someone’s neck in a violent rage. All true

It is worth saying that Coulson is crossing lines he wouldn’t have crossed before becoming director, and this could be just the straw that breaks the camel’s back if it amounts to more than it seems. Which is why Lincoln serves as an interesting moral ground for the team, and I say interesting in the most vague of ways since they’ve yet to do anything interesting with his character arc. The guy shoots lightning from his fingertips, you’ve got to be able to do something with it.

Mallick is far from defeated, even with the loss of all his inhumans thanks to stupidly bring the guy known for killing inhumans along with him (yeah, who thought that would’ve turned out badly) and in this episode Coulson cripples him further. But Coulson does not know about Ward, who is now aka the super-villain Hive. I’ve never heard of him but I’m relatively new to the Marvel Universe. He demands raw meet to build up his strength as they’re beginning to have doubts he is who he says he is. Guys, you ever seen Ward eat a tonne of raw meat? No? Then it’s probably not him.

And it’s nice that SHIELD is getting some government backing, whilst they’re strictly black ops, because people aren’t going to forget that SHIELD was branded a terrorist organisation 3 years ago. They’ll be partnered with the ATCU, who will be headed by our old friend Talbot. Well, at least he’s not HYDRA.

Yeah, I’ve not talked a lot about the main plot and the reason is it’s fairly standard, nothing too wrong with it but nothing to write home about. Also Fitz and Simmons are ready to start anew, let’s hope this goes somewhere this time.

Rating 8/10

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