*SPOILERS ASSEMBLE!*
Last week's episode of Marvel's Agents Of SHIELD was an important one, and though it served to be rather generic on the structure of the plot - infiltrating an evil villain's evil lair during his evil lair party - it introduced to us not only 'gravitonium' but teased the introduction of one of Marvel Comics' many villains - Graviton. Also, Skye stepped up from an '8' to a '9'.
"Eye Spy"
This week sees Agents Coulson and his team go after a certain master thief, only to realise that this master thief has certain connections to Coulson that could ruin his life. Here's your recap.
Eyes Wide SHIT!
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In what seemed like a scene from Eyes Wide Shut, a group of red mask wearing gentleman with briefcase handcuffed to their hands are on a subway before a female passenger hits the emergency stop and steals the briefcases, killing all the red masks. The briefcases look to contain diamonds, and our thief has no problem obtaining their shiny goodness.
SHIELD are on the case now, and reckon our thief managed to hack the subway train with her eyes closed, channelling some form of telepathy, maybe. Well that's Skye's take. What's more, Skye takes to Instagram to discover people had uploaded pics of the scary red masked men. Social networking saving the day again. "It's amazing, every year this part of our job gets easier. Between Facebook, Instagram and Flickr, people were surveilling themselves."
Her name's Akela Amador...
The thief's name is revealed by Coulson, and is also revealed to be a former SHIELD agent, and a protégé of sorts to Coulson. According to Coulson, "she didn't play well with others", which is unfortunate considering she seems to have some pretty neat abilities whenever she closes her eyes.
Akela now meets up with a buyer for the stolen diamonds, who's stereotypically Russian, and makes a transaction worth around $30 million. Not too bad that. The team now set off in suitably suspicious white Mercedes van to find Ms. Amador, with Skye, Fitz and Simmons remaining in the van to search "electronically". You would think after all this time they would at least have some weapons and combat training, you know?
Coulson and Ward search the town for Akela, and find one woman who says the thief used her "gift" to save her. So it's fair to guess Akela uses her gift to not only steal diamonds but to help the helpless. So she's like a rogue SHIELD agent, who steals from the rich and helps the poor, then?
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What did I say about that combat training?!
And sure enough, Skye, Fitz and Simmons are promptly rammed in their van by Akela as she makes a getaway. She also managed to hack Fitz-Simmons' techy search bots.
As it turns out, Akela doesn't channel telepathy, but has some sort of super-tech eye, in the mould of the late "Mad Eye" Moody of Harry Potter fame. While Coulson stresses that she is "one of our own", Ward disagrees, "with all due respect". Coulson may have been on the money though, as it appears Akela is being controlled through this robo-eye, so off we go.
Agent May has now tracked Amador's location and confronts her. Akela stresses that "they" have built in a fail safe. "Either I kill you, or they kill me". Cue epic hotel room fight, where Akela unfairly turns out the lights and aims a shot at May, but not before Coulson bursts in to debilitate her. SHIELD take her in.
Coulson explains to an emotional Akela that they've managed to replicate her point of view onto Ward, so they're no longer monitoring her. She can finally make eye contact with Coulson, "where's the 'I told you so'?". "That's not me anymore, I'm just glad you're alive."
The bad guy's an Englishman, go figure...
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Coulson now knows that the man that was controlling Akela is an Englishman and promptly heads off in pursuit. With Ward on site pretending he's Akela, our born again thief gets an operation to remove her magic eye.
Ward, after taking out a security guard, enters what seems to be a maths class, prompting his eye gadget to display "MISSION COMPLETE. GOOD LUCK" when he spots some form of algorithm. Cue alarm and Ward being chased from the building.
With the operation to remove Akela's eye an apparent success, and just in the nick of time before the kill switch activates, Coulson tracks down the Englishman. But oh dear, this former MI6 operative's eye's kill switch activates when Coulson announces he's with SHIELD. So there's a bigger picture here anyway. Akela is free, but is worried about Coulson. "What did they do to him?," she asks May, referring to what we already know, that Coulson died in New York. It's as if they forgot that we know that from episode two. She's off to prison anyway.
Verdict:
Slightly better than last week, with the opening being very different than what we're used to so far in this series, in terms of being that dark. Continuing on from last week though, more loose ends have appeared, with the origin of Graviton last week, and this week their Englishman wasn't the mastermind behind all the mind control that they thought. Will this all come to a head by the end of the season? We'll see.
8/10
