Agents of Shield The Dirty Half Dozen Review

This week opens up once again with Afterlife. We are getting more and more of Raina’s gifts as we see her foreshadow the return of Gordon and Skye after the incident in Milwaukee. However, this week’s trips to the Afterlife seem more of a side trip than anything. The biggest part of this is Raina telling Skye she is the only one that can save Lincoln, so I am mainly going to stay out of the afterlife for this episode.

The center this week was around the “reuniting” of the original team. Skye returns to the chagrin of her mother to the SHIELD base. Coulson is given freedom by Gonzalez and his voting council to go after the specials in the Hydra base. In doing so, he brings Ward as Bakshi’s main contact as well as Fitz to disable the inner security networks of the base. Simmons convinces her way onto the team as a doctor for Deathlock. May is there as well as the enforcer of course. So, in this one episode we have the return of the entire original team to take out the Hydra base.

The coolest part of the show was the base takeover. They destroy a SHIELD plane in order to escape in as debris, Skye has one of the best fight scenes in the history of the show to get to Lincoln, and the May-Coulson fight continues to heat up. This all happens in the course of two segments of the show and was some of the best firepower of the season. Definitely worth a watch.

Ward being on the bus definitely causes some mistrust on the plane, but having Simmons be the one to actually try and take out Ward seemed a little forced and definitely screams that the producers aren’t sure what to do with her at the moment. However, the bomb used to kill Bakshi was pretty good CGI for a television show. I was very impressed there.

Finally, after a successful mission retrieving Deathlock and Lincoln, we learn the true reason that Coulson needed to get on the base. He needed information. Back at the base, he gives Gonzalez the toolbox along with the information that Fury is still alive – delivered in a pretty amusing way. However, the “bombshell” moment comes in the knowledge that we find out when Coulson is talking to Maria Hill, the very attractive Colbie Smulders, that Hydra knows where Loki’s sceptre is and is planning to use it. We also learn what Theta Protocol is…wait for it…the Avengers.

This was actually the best part – they didn’t overtie this time and just brought up the Avengers for a moment. It wasn’t like season one where it took forever for the show to ramp up waiting on Captain America 2 – it was just a casual tie in. That is until we had the kind of cheesy moment with Raini talking about the army of metal men. There was just too much cheese in that scene for me.

Overall, I thought it was a very good episode. It tied together a bunch of things back to the main overarching plot, setup the Inhumans to be a bigger player, and actually came with a few surprises. Plus, I never dislike a Colbie Smulders cameo, but I digress. Definitely one of the better episodes of the season so far and I am looking forward to the final two episodes.