Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 5 episode 18 review - All Roads Lead...

All roads lead to next week and I can’t f*cking wait, but first here’s this episode.

All Roads Lead...

So long Alex Von Strucker… I never cared who you were before, and I still don’t. I wish you’d had more to do and wasn’t playing second fiddle to someone or another in every single appearance I’ve seen of you.

I honestly don’t have a lot to say about this one… I thought the episode was fine but I was wowed by absolutely nothing from either a character or a story standpoint. Pretty much everything felt by the numbers.

Sadly, yes, this means I feel Talbot’s HYDRA programming subplot ultimately felt like wasted potential. He attempted to kidnap Robin for an unknown purpose that doesn’t matter because Hale was teaming up with S.H.I.E.L.D. for the latter half of the episode anyway. Deke gets his share of comic relief and I swear he needs to do something interesting, because him being boring has gone on long enough.

Agent May’s suddenly up and fighting, when did that happen? Either way it’s nice to see her and Daisy team up for most of the episode. It’s also the first episode that sold Daisy in a leadership role, and she’s actually really good, much in contrast to what she was like previously.

Then there’s Ruby, she’s been an interesting character this season but as a villain she’s not that intimidating, despite her early impressive showing she was later relying a lot on her mother and later Strucker as the brains of her operation. She’s impulsive and strong but not particularly smart, which means she doesn’t have what it takes to be the legitimate major threat.

Strucker and her partnership could’ve worked, but Strucker wasn’t threatening enough in his own right… he’s certainly got the brains, but for this to work he’d need more leadership qualities to bring his vision to fruition. I still don’t know what he wanted out of all of this, aside from sucking face with Ruby, that worked well for him.

Anyway, when Daisy said she could be a valuable S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, you pretty much knew her number was up. As for the way it happened, I think Yo-Yo should be smarter than this. She saw her power and immediately assumed she would be the destroyer, in spite of the warning from her future self and this having absolutely nothing to do with said warning. Still, I suppose given her power level and instability from the gravitonium injection made this a powerful enough moment.

Yup, that’s all I have to say… I wish I was more invested in Ruby, Hale or Strucker but I’m just not.

Rating 7/10