The episode was more or less divided into three separate story lines. We had the blackouts occurring across the world that “were caused by the Inhumans.” There was May’s illness, and finally we had Ghost Rider and Daisy. The biggest thing that tied these three together were the blackouts. Everyone was affected these blackouts in one way or another, but otherwise everything was kept separate.
We’ll start with the weakest point of the episode, which was the Ghost Rider and Daisy stuff. It was nice to learn they’re sticking fairly closely to Robbie’s origin, which involved his uncle and his work at the energy plant. The issue came with Daisy leaving. Why bring these characters together if by the end of the next episode you’ll have them separated again? It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. It feels like a poor way of delaying the story a few more episodes so things don’t finish so quickly.
The second weakest link was the storyline involving May. Her illness was getting worse and one of the other people “touched by the ghost” had died. So the clock was ticking to save May. Of course, at that point there was little to no tension. I keep waiting for the Life Model Decoys to become important, but that hasn’t really gone anywhere yet. But the fact that we were expected to think May was going to die was a bit much. She obviously wasn’t going anywhere and in the end we didn’t really learn a whole lot about what caused her problem. Yes, we figured out the brain stuff, but why did the ghost cause that stuff? That’s the real meat of the question, and we didn’t really get any of it.
The better stuff this week was Coulson’s mission to stop the blackouts. We also got the identity of the new director: Jeffrey Mace. It wasn’t that much a stretch, and people figured it out pretty quickly, but I’m glad nonetheless that the show didn’t try to keep the mystery going. It was also nice to see a more serious side of the Director. We still got a ridiculous slogan that feels like it belongs on a propaganda poster, but aside from that we saw a different side of the Director.
We knew all along that the villains of the episodes weren’t actually Inhumans. The idea that it was really the Watchdogs didn’t seem too far-fetched either. We also got introduced to another villain for this part of the season in the form of the Senator. She’s set to appear in a bunch of episodes of seasons, so she might be the figurehead SHIELD is fighting against.
The ending of the episode saw something very important in the MCU, and that’s SHIELD being brought back to life in the public eye. This is something I imagine the movies will address at some point. It’s too big to ignore. It will also be interesting to see how this affects the show going forward, as they were in the shadows for over two seasons. But it’s a change the show needed. SHIELD couldn’t stay hidden forever and I look forward to seeing how this affects the show going forward.
Written by Peter Freeman, AGENTS OF SHIELD Beat Writer -- Click here to read Peter's posts
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