Welcome to the Legion!

agents-of-shield-221-222-4Legion contributor Christina Janke is recapping and reviewing Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for us this season. Follow her on Twitter @IntrotoGeek!

Part one of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s “S.O.S.” picks up right where last week’s “Scars” left off. Jiaying is wounded, Gonzales is dead, and one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Quinjets was hijacked by Gordon and another Inhuman to make it look like S.H.I.E.L.D. has just declared war on the Inhumans. And yes, there will be a war. This is the season finale. Warning: major feels ahead. Oh, and a few spoilers too. I’ll try to leave out the really big ones.

Season 2 has vastly improved since Season 1. It’s not a relevant side-story for the MCU, having one impact the other while not requiring the viewer to feel obligated to watch both (although you really should). It’s a difficult thing to balance, especially during this second half of the season between the Inhumans (and Skye’s whole situation) and Hydra, plus Ward. I’m not even sure if that sentence was structured properly. That’s how complicated these last few episodes have been when you try to sum it all up in a line.

Jiaying is an interesting character. For over two seasons, she’s been shrouded in mystery. Cal, for all his anger issues, worships the ground on which she walks. When we finally meet her, she’s depicted as this caring motherly figure to an entire people. Hell, I hoped Jiaying would stay on as a recurring character to whom Skye can come to for mother-daughter guidance. I said in an earlier review that hero shows almost always have it out for the mother figure. They either die or become evil, and it’s almost always the father the hero bonds with/idolizes and gives us all the feels. I blame fairy tales; the (step)mothers were always evil.

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For a while Jiaying seemed like a person who could finally break that trend, But then she revealed herself to be a stoic, evil mastermind out for vengeance against not only S.H.I.E.L.D., but possibly the entire non-Inhuman race as well. Over the last three episodes of the season. Man…

Don’t get me wrong, the idea that Jiaying is truly a charismatic bad guy isn’t a bad one. However, it all happened too quickly. And Raina saw it all coming. She sets aside her ambitions to clear a path for Skye’s destiny — she’s come to terms that she will never be the one destined to lead the Inhumans. She warns Skye of Jiaying’s true intentions, and for that Jiaying kills her.

Skye witnesses her mother killing Raina and instantly realizes that everything that has transpired over the last 24 hours was Jiaying’s doing. She threatens to tell all of Afterlife about Jiaying’s transgression; however, one of the Inhumans knocks her out from behind.

Jiaying intends to unleash her modified Terrigen crystals upon the world starting with S.H.I.E.L.D. If successful, she would most definitely cause a simultaneous genocide and rise of more Inhumans. She and her group of Inhumans overtake S.H.I.E.L.D.’s ship with the intention to use their planes for mass distribution. Jiaying still has a grudge against S.H.I.E.L.D. for what they (Hydra) have done to her and she is driven to eradicate all of that’s left of the organization. She captures or kills everyone on the ship except Mack, who decided to stick around after hearing Gonzales was killed. Jiaying kills another one of Coulson’s advisors to prove she means serious business.

She almost gets away with it if it weren’t for those pesky…if it weren’t for Skye and Cal. Skye, who was taken prisoner and brought along on the ship, breaks from her chains (sort of speak) and goes after Jiaying. She knows the endgame meets her mother on the top deck to try and reason with her one final time. Jiaying is firm in convictions and determined to take out anyone who stands in her way, including Skye. During their brief confrontation, Skye manages to force push the plane carrying the entire load of manufactured Terrigran crystals into the ocean. Jiaying nearly kills Skye out of anger, but Cal (who finally sees reason) saves his daughter at the last second by breaking Jiaying’s neck and back.

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Dichen Lachman plays a gentle yet stoic character pretty well; however, when you’re in a show where playing up a character is acceptable I would have loved to see her emote more than she has as Jiaying. It would have been especially acceptable in her final scene with Cal. Kyle McLachlan does a bang up job as Cal. He’s one of those actors who makes it look incredibly easy to combine sadness and compassion while killing his on-screen love.

In the grand scheme of things, the Cal and Jiaying love story serves as an adequate multi-dimensional characterization for them both. In fact, one can argue that they’re more developed than any other villain in the MCU, including Loki. They are driven to impossible lengths while in search for their long-lost daughter, and have transformed into the people they are now as a consequence. We see them beyond the typical petty rivalries and grudges, we got to witness various sides arise as the story progressed, and we learned what they care about and what drives them to do what they do. We care deeply for these characters already. The fact that one had to kill the other to protect their daughter makes it all the more tragic.

Elsewhere! Mack, Fitz and Coulson go up against Gordon. The other half of Jiaying’s plan was to release a batch of Terrigran crystals into the ship’s ventilation system to kill as many S.H.I.E.L.D. agents as she can. Gordon is tasked to set off the crystals but Mack is already in the room waiting with a giant axe. Mack holds Gordon off long enough for Coulson and Fitz to join in on taking down the teleporter. Fitz has a fancy doo-dad that disrupts Gordon’s ability to teleport out of the room. Gordon is still able to teleport, but now his movements are super restricted. Gordon accidentally teleports into Fitz’s weapon and drops a crystal. Coulson catches it just in time, but the Diviner pieces are already turning him to stone. To stop it from spreading any farther, Mack makes a split decision to chop off his arm. OUCH!

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Going back to the subject of tragic love stories, Bobbi and Hunter. As tumultuous as their history is according to…everyone, we can’t help but root for these two to be together forever anyway. That’s going to be a problem if Ward and Kara get their way. Last week, Kara disguised herself as Agent May to kidnap Bobbi and take her to Ward for another exercise in closure. While Bobbi was in deep cover at Hydra, there was a time when she had to make a hard call to prove her loyalty: either give Hydra the location of a possibly empty S.H.I.E.L.D. safe house or guarantee the deaths of many S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Bobbi gave up the safe house. Unfortunately, Kara was in there when Hydra came. To ease the pain Bobbi had caused Kara, Ward tortures Bobbi.

If you didn’t love Bobbi before, these scenes between her and Ward will surely convince you how much of a badass she really is. Ward is one sadistic son of a bitch. He gives her a paralytic and an anesthetic and pushes needles underneath her fingernails. He does this is so when the pain killers wear off, Bobbi can feel the horrible pain all at once. Just as the anesthetic begins to wear off, Bobbi feels the pain, but she focuses all of her energy into hulking out of her restraints and attacking Ward and Kara. BAD. ASS!

Unfortunately, Ward and Kara prove to be too much for the injured and exhausted Bobbi. She’s recaptured and bound and gagged to a chair. He rigs a gun behind her and sets a remote trigger on the door. Anyone who walks through that door (ideally Hunter) will be shot immediately. If Ward can’t get Bobbi to be sorry for what she’s done to Kara, he’ll make her feel sorry for something else.

Ward attracts Hunter and May’s to his location by turning on Bobbi’s cell phone. They infiltrate the hideout with a rescue team. Kara and Ward kill nearly every redshirt agent except one, but they don’t know that, and May uses that to her advantage. She does something clever and radios to her “team” to converge at one point in the building. “Don’t do anything until you see my face,” is her order. Kara overhears this and gets the “clever” idea to disguise herself as May and get to that location before the real one does. This ultimately gets her killed. Ward, thinking Kara was May, attacks and shoots Kara several times in the chest. Now Ward is pissed and escapes to regroup elsewhere.

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Meanwhile, Bobbi knows Hunter is looking for her and tries to get herself loose before that door opens. Her efforts are unsuccessful and instead resolves to take the bullet before Hunter fully opens the door. She just barely survives, but now she doesn’t have the heart to continue being an agent anymore.

EVERYTHING is changed now: Mack is staying with S.H.I.E.L.D. and overlooking all the alien tech they have. Hydra is fragmented and vulnerable for anyone to just take over — enter Ward. Skye is now responsible for leading a new initiative, which I hope will be her gathering Inhumans and training them to use their powers for good. The crystals in the ocean dissolve, get absorbed by fish which are then caught and mass produced into fish oil supplements for everyone on Earth to consume. And that last scene with Fitz-Simmons… HOLY WHAT THE FRAK!!!

By next season, the board will have been wiped clean, and the new set pieces are set. Yes, I’m mostly talking about the influx of new Inhumans the world is about to discover. I can already tell where this is headed. I’ve said it numerous times before, and I’ll say it again: CIVIL WAR!

FINAL THOUGHTS:

I’m rather disappointed by Raina’s clairvoyance. The power in any story serves as a sort of “get out of jail free” card for writers who don’t want to spend too much time building up to something larger. Raina’s position in the show shifts from an ambitious rogue to scared killer to someone who just moves the story along quicker. Lord forbid we actually have to flesh out Jiaying and Skye’s relationship before revealing that the former is really a spiteful villain. I would have also liked to see more of Raina’s undermining Jiaying’s command like she tried to do in “Scars.” Oh well.

Mack: “And I thought my mom was bad when she started watching FOX News.”

Fitz: “Science, biatch.”

S.H.I.E.L.D. sets Cal free, but not before wiping his memory. Now he’s a vet.

So I guess Fitz’s brain got better?

I wouldn’t be surprised if Fitz outfitted Coulson with an Iron Man hand.

Turns out that Jiaying’s can only heal if she sucks the life out of someone else. That’s what happened with the Chinese village all those years ago. After Cal put her body back together, she needed multiple sacrifices to heal.

THAT ENDING, THOUGH!

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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.