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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.Our Christina Janke recaps Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.! Check out what happened this week in Season 2, episode 3 ‘Making Friends and Influencing People.’ Follow Christina on Twitter @IntrotoGeek!

Hey we finally know what happened to Simmons. She’s working with Hydra! Wait, what?

Meanwhile, Reed Diamond as Daniel Whitehall going all ‘A Clockwork Orange’ on Agent 33 (Maya Stojan), a former S.H.I.E.L.D. operative.

Back to Simmons. Why is she working for Hydra?!?! As it turns out, she’s working undercover for Coulson, and she knows who their next target is: Donnie Gill, aka “The Blizzard.” Apparently, Gill was recruited by Hydra sometime after the weather disaster he caused last season, but went rogue. Now Hydra is looking to recover him. Coulson encourages Simmons to make friends at her work. Not to make her day slightly more pleasant, but to gain the right people’s trust so she can advance higher up the food chain. A dangerous spy, Simmons is not. But she is likable and unsuspecting; just what S.H.I.E.L.D. needs in this particular assignment.

MING-NA WEN, HENRY SIMMONS, NICK BLOOD, CHLOE BENNET

Donnie, meanwhile, is hiding out somewhere in Marrakech. Hydra agents catch up to him. They prove to be completely useless because somebody has new powers. When the weather device from last season malfunctioned, the event somehow infused his body with freezing powers.

Agents May, Triplett, Hunter, and Skye get ready to retrieve Gill for themselves before Hydra does, leaving Mack-Fitz behind. Fitz is still frustrated that he can no longer be part of their missions like old times and storms off when Mack tries to get him to see his situation in a more positive light. In his storming off, Fitz enters Wards holding cell. This triggers a near panic attack within Fitz. The situation doesn’t get better when he calms down, however. Fitz angrily tries to tell Ward what he’s done to him, but the words just can’t come out. Instead, Fitz tries to show Ward how badly he was hurt by sucking out the oxygen in Ward’s cell.

Whoa, dude. Whoa.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The thing that finally stopped Fitz from completely suffocating Ward was when the latter warned about Donnie Gill’s brainwashing; that he can be reactivated as a lethal Hydra agent at any time.

Just before this happens, Simmons is summoned to meet with Sunil Bakshi (Simon Kassianides), one of the top brass in Hydra. He found out that Simmons worked for S.H.I.E.L.D., a fact she conveniently left out in her resume. Simmons manages to sweetly talk her way out of it. Not fully convinced, Bakshi puts her on a fire team set to retrieve Gill who managed to infiltrate a Hydra boat earlier.

On the boat, Simmons is sent in alone to draw Gill out. She tries to reason with a very pissed off Gill. She manages to calm him down by repeating some very specific words fed to her by Bakshi via her ear piece. We know this to be a trigger used in the brainwashing process we saw earlier. Gill was brainwashed by Hydra to come over to their side! Sinister.

May and Hunter interrupt Simmons and a chase ensues. Apparently only May and Coulson are aware of Simmons’ undercover assignment because Hunter nearly shoots her. Luckily, May shot him. Don’t worry, she aimed for the part that was protected by a vest. This was partly her way of getting back at him for shooting her in last week’s episode.

Simmons meets back up with Bakshi’s team, luring Gill to their position. As soon as Gill arrives, Bakshi recites the trigger and gets Gill back on their side. They make it to the top of the boat, but Skye is waiting for them and shoots Gill with a sniper rifle, apparently killing him. She sees Simmons, immediately figures something is amiss and feigns to shoot at them again, giving Simmons the opportunity to fake-save Bakshi and earn his trust.

The bad guys leave with nothing while S.H.I.E.L.D. seizes whatever Hydra had stored in the boat.

Back on the boat, Coulson lets Fitz in on the fact that Simmons is working an assignment, that’s why she left him. Skye visits Ward, somehow hoping that he was brainwashed by Garrett like Gill was. He was not. That means every action made against S.H.I.E.L.D. was a conscious decision. Oof, hit our feels right in the guts, why don’t ya.

CHLOE BENNET, MING-NA WEN

Ward then mentions that Skye’s father is alive and looking for her. He doesn’t say why or what he’s up to, just that he exists and that he can take Skye to him when she’s ready. This riles up Skye more than she wanted it to; not even killing Gill got her as worked up as this revelation did.

A couple things of note: Skye is steadily upping her game from annoying hacker girl to woman of action (thanks to May’s tutelage). I personally could not stand her character all through Season One. Now she’s growing on me. Also, using Simmons for undercover is definitely an intriguing move. It’s definitely one that we never would have been able to see her do last season. Lastly: Fitz! The scene where he gets to confront Ward for the first time was by far the most intense. Fitz proved that even though he was mentally broken, he can still think of creative ways to hurt others. In this case, Ward.

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Christina E. Janke

Christina is the co-host of “Intro to Geek” on Shauncastic and Editor-in-Chief at Agents of Geek. Her love of all things Mass Effect knows no bounds. She also carries an obsession with comic books, video games, and quirky television shows. Her heroes are Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Gail Simone. She hopes to be just like them when she grows up.

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