Welcome to the Legion!

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Legion contributor Christina Janke is recapping and reviewing Agents of  S.H.I.E.L.D. for us this season. Follow them on Twitter @IntrotoGeek!

The race for the mysterious underground city is on! Hydra has the key, and S.H.I.E.L.D. has the map. Who will get there first? Who will survive? Yes, there will be spoilers ahead.

We start off with Skye having one of those prophetic fever dreams. Wearing a sun dress that does *not* suit her current look (at least tie your hair back), Skye is wandering around an empty HQ. She hears a music box playing in the distance and finds herself in the workshop with Coulson clutching a Chinese newspaper. They’re both looking at the box wondering what it is. Coulson reaches out to touch the box, but Skye pushes it off the table. We then smash into another scene. Skye wakes up next to the fallen music box. Behind her are May and Coulson in suburban Mom and Dad outfits holding a baby. May reassures a seemingly broken hearted Coulson that leaving the baby is the only way, “Poison tree, poison fruit.” They start to walk away. Skye tries to yell for them, but her pleas fall on deaf ears. She’s holding the music box now, and it starts turning her into stone like the Obelisk does. Then she wakes up.

In reality, everyone is back at S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ. Coulson holds a briefing about what they know: The Obelisk is possibly a box with something more powerful inside (Side note: I bet it’s a protective case for another Infinity Stone) which is needs to unlock/unleash a great power inside the temple within the ancient alien city. The city is underground somewhere beneath Puerto Rico.

I know, right? We were all hoping for something weirder like the Bermuda Triangle or the lost city of Atlantis. Oh, the fantastic banality of it all.

There are several old air shafts that would serve as access points into the city, but almost all of them is deep under water, except one located in San Juan. The plan: send a survey team to locate the temple, test its structural integrity, and blow it all to hell. Clearly Coulson is not interested in finding out what’s down there, just that Hydra never gets there.

In Vancouver, we find where Raina has run off to. Apparently she’s shacking up with some rich guy who shares a fondness for wanderlust. Raina spots someone familiar spying on her in the coffee shop, but when she approaches the agent… Surprise! It’s the indoctrinated Agent 33 still wearing May’s face. Well, sort of. The real Agent May burned her face to hell, possibly melting the digital mask to 33’s real face. She also now has a robot voice.

Do you think I'm pretty?

Do you think I’m pretty?

33 tells Raina that Whitehall would like to speak with her. Yeah, no. Raina rushes out of the coffee shop only to run in to more Hydra agents waiting for her outside. Just when her options seem to be running out, Patton Oswald as Agent Koenig appears and hides her under an umbrella cloak of invisibility.

Getting word of the whole Raina situation, Coulson decides to split the party. Agents May, Hunter, and Skye are sent to retrieve Raina for questioning while everyone else (except for Trip who’s still out of commission) goes to San Juan to check out the city.

In the more quieter moments of this episode, Fitz-Simmons is still trying to find a safe ground to coexist without deafening awkward silence while Mack has concerns over Bobbi and Hunter getting back together. Having seen their fallout before one can guess that when the couple inevitably clash, it won’t be a pretty sight. For as big of a deal as their making it, this could potentially spell trouble for the team. Maybe. Another thought is that whatever Mack knows and won’t say will likely go down with him. But I’m getting way ahead here.

In Vancouver, May’s team meet up with the Billy and Sam Koenig, both played by Patton. Hunter takes out the Hydra tail behind Sam, May ices two more holed up in a van doing surveillance, and Skye retrieves Raina and Billy. Agent 33 catches up to them and attacks. Sam and Raina run for it while Skye brawls with her SO’s creepy doppelgänger. After settling the fight, the team go off to find May and get the hell out of Canada.

In San Juan, Bobbi and Coulson have a conversation about their real objective, assuming there is one. She’s a little suspicious of the decision to just destroy an underground city and not keep the alien weapon for themselves. After all, keeping a dangerous object is exactly what Nick Fury would have done. But Coulson’s different, and Fury knew it when he handed over S.H.I.E.L.D. Coulson isn’t just concerned with protecting the world, he’s wants to keep the hidden dangers from ever disrupting people’s way of life, to keep their general peace of mind intact.That’s quite idealistic for a director of a secret organization, isn’t it? The man’s a dreamer.

Thanks to Bobbie’s politician friend, they’re able to find the location of the entrance into the ancient alien city underneath a sentry tower at the lowest point of an old fort.

Back in Vancouver, Hunter, Skye, and Raina are trying to leave when they spot another Hydra team waiting for them. They haven’t been seen yet so Hunter sneaks off to look for May. In the meantime, Raina and Skye discuss a few things. One conclusion Raina comes up with is that Whitehall needs her to continue his plans rather than kill her. If you remember, she can touch the Diviner/Obelisk without getting turned to stone. She also posits a theory Skye’s father has: that Skye has the ability to hold the object without dying as well.

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Just how many Koenigs are there???

In Puerto Rico, Bobbi’s politician friend drops out as soon as he hears that they want to explore the ruins inside the sentry tower. Apparently there’s a creepy ghost story behind it: most of the guards stationed there simply vanished from their post without a trace. Silly locals and their folklore. Coulson’s team proceed with their operation. Fitz’s drone dwarves begin to survey the big dark hole Mack uncovered, but they run into some electrical interference the closer they got to the bottom. There’s only one other way to know what’s down there, and Mack’s just the guy to take a look. He drew the proverbial short straw.

On the bus from Vancouver to San Juan, Skye is interrogating Raina. Raina started talking about her past, about how she met the Doctor. Raina was a petty con artist in Thailand who used to roll with a gang of “freaks” until the Doctor found them, took them in and cleaned them up. This fortunate meeting essentially changed Raina’s perspective of her lot in life, hence her current devotion to him.

She then gets on the subject of the Diviner. She says that she and Skye aren’t really alien, per se. They’re humans with the “potential to be more.” Some of her beliefs come from the Doctor, but the majority of her fascination with the fantastic stems from stories passed down by her ancestors. Stop me if you’ve heard this one: blue angels descended upon Earth from the heavens and left something that would essentially give the Earth to those few humans they deemed worthy. Raina then adds another precious factoid we haven’t heard before. These blue angels were known as the Kree. Confirmation!

There’s a hitch to entering the temple, though. Only those who are “worthy” can step inside. Meaning, something terri-bad will happen to everyone else who sets foot inside. That’s Mack’s cue! He’s already making his way down. You guessed correctly, he’s right inside the temple. He finds some symbols etched on the floor. A mere touch activates something and a searing pain reaches into his body. The team pulls him back up. After the pain subsides, Mack gets taken over by something and turns into a hulking rage monster. He nearly kills the whole team but Fitz manages to stall him, giving Bobbi the chance to electrocute Mack. He falls back down the whole and possibly dies. Noooooooo!

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Meanwhile, Whitehall locates the cloaked bus by following Raina’s tracker. He sends Ward to board the plane and retrieve Raina. Raina goes willingly, but Ward wants someone else: Skye. May reluctantly agrees to the terms and watches her subordinate leave with the enemy.

Elsewhere, Agent 33 apprises Whitehall of the developments. He takes interest in Ward’s taking a hostage because it was not part of their plan. As long as he shot down the S.H.I.E.L.D. plane, he doesn’t care. Oh right…he didn’t. This ticks him off, and has 33 give the kill order herself.

The end. No really, that’s literally the end of the episode. The fates of our favorite S.H.I.E.L.D. are left unknown until the next episode. Rawr! I want to know what happens next NOW!

So…how ’bout them Kree, eh?

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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.