This week the original six are back together to go on a rescue mission. Will bygones be bygones or are wounds too deep to have healed yet?
This is my review of episode 2×19 – the Dirty Half Dozen
### SPOILERS ahead for both the episode and Age of Ultron (since I’ve seen it and can make some deductions) ###
I haven’t had the chance to write a review for last week’s episode but then again that’s mostly because I didn’t have much to say about it, the most exciting thing about it was Skye finding out her full name is Daisy Johnson. But in the end Lincoln and Deathlok both get captured by Hydra and Coulson gave himself up to Gonzales’ team so this week we go on a rescue mission.
Let’s start with the Inhumans.
Raina realises her dreams aren’t just dreams but visions of what’s to come. In that regard she suggests Skye needs to go rescue Lincoln as she has foreseen it. But we don’t know how forthright she is, certainly Jiaying has her doubts and Cal knows she can be deceitful. I suspect her character will be a central point of the upcoming conflict with S.H.I.E.L.D. but what her fate will be is unclear given that Ruth Negga has been cast in a major role for the upcoming Sandman series along with Dominic Cooper.
I also thought Cal got off easy given that he was clearly not happy at the idea of being dumped and got a bit loud on his return to Afterlife. It’s as if the suspicion is shifting away from him and onto Raina. So far the potential divisions that were supposed to arise from his staying at Afterlife haven’t manifested themselves in the Inhuman society but we may see tension yet. I suspect Raina might be the source of potential schism.
And how they worked out Hydra was tracking Gordon, I’m not sure. Even Lincoln had worked it out somehow, I wonder if “quantum entanglement” was too much of a tongue twister for the cast 😉
But that didn’t stop Gordon from dropping Skye back at the bus thus being the 6th member to rejoin the original team.
Let’s shift back to the Playground
Coulson is pretty confident, and later on we find out why but Gonzales isn’t convinced he should be trusted. And you get the feeling even Bobbi and Mack are rethinking their position and who is more trustworthy. We still don’t know squat about what’s hidden in the Cargo of the Iliad, whether it’s the Brood, the Abomination, or heck, even the Man-Thing. What’s for sure is that it’s probably not a pile of precious metals or phase 2 weaponry.
However having Ward back on the team doesn’t sit well with everyone but it’s becoming clearer and clearer that he doesn’t have a hidden nefarious agenda. His plan seem to have been to get Keira back with S.H.I.E.L.D. so she can be “deprogrammed” and recover her memory so she can serve S.H.I.E.L.D. once more or at least be herself again. Still not everyone sees it that way and Simmons is hell-bent on fulfilling her promise using any means necessary. That said, it seems we’re heading back to the old FitzSimmons dynamic albeit with more mature personalities.
The whole putting missions to a vote is a little unrealistic I have to say. I’m not a fan of the military but if they were acting this way nothing would ever get done. Hierarchies have their shortcomings but it helps to keep the work efficient. Coulson agrees wholeheartedly it seems.
Moving on to the heart of the action their tactic to land undetected at the Hydra arctic base is to have the bus blown-up. That’s right S.H.I.E.L.D. 616 is no more and I am actually quite sad about that. Remember Fury’s bout of anger in episode 1×02 when they blew a hole in the cockpit? Makes you wonder what he’d say now…
The rescue mission scene was pretty well timed and choreographed. I was particularly excited to see Skye use her powers in a controlled manner at last, and does she kick ass or what? May has trained her really well. In the comics Daisy Johnson is an accomplished marksman and she’s showing more and more talent and this is great news. Your hardly even see May, not until the end when she tries to find Coulson.
On Ward’s team, Simmons is making her move and tries to kill him with one of those hydra weapons that vaporizes you. But Bakshi who actually was well and truly brainwashed intervenes and gets killed instead. I guess he’d reached the last of his usefulness. There’s a tense moment where you wonder whether Ward will put a bullet in Simmons’ head but instead walks off like a disappointed Daddy or something.
But Coulson is getting ready to deliver on a mission he must have been on for quite some time. He’s revealed to be at the base for more than just a rescue. Very much harking back to Black Widow’s secret mission in Captain America – The Winter Soldier, Coulson is also after intel, specifically the location of Strucker’s base and Loki’s staff.
And now that he has the intel he’s ready to deliver it to Maria Hill but not before opening the toolbox and handing it to Gonzales “But Fury might want it back, oops, spoiler alert!” How awesome was that line coming out of Clark Gregg’s mouth? Seriously?
And Theta protocol: on a day unlike any other, there comes the need for a team unlike any other, to fight the battles that we never could, the time to summon the Avengers is at hand!
And so there we have it folks: Coulson has been working for Fury (and Hill) all this time to gather intel for the Avengers and if you’ve seen the movie you’ll remember the new Avengers facility in New York State at the end, something that will presumably require lots of bunk beds and a good psychologist. The Avengers Initiative may have been shelved by the council when S.H.I.E.L.D. was still run by those bureaucrats but back under Fury’s supervision it has been reactivated and the facility is very likely a school of sorts.
Which means the spin-off is getting very very likely to be a form of Avengers Academy. In the years leading to the battle with Thanos there will be a need for as many Avengers as possible. And if they call it that, I think it would make a lot of people very happy.
What do you guys think? Is this the road we’re heading towards? Are you excited to see more powered people?
