The plot thickens on Agents of SHIELD. Actually, with a two-part season denouement teed up, it is reasonable to assert that, were the plot any thicker, you could probably drive a medium-size tank across it.
What's most impressive about the evolving storyline is that it has allowed SHIELD to carve out a distinctive space in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with the show this week even brushing off all that potentially distracting hoopla regarding its tie-in with Avengers: Age of Ultron.
That's a relief as, frankly, there were justifiable fears Ultron would overshadow an underdog spin-off that keeps getting better. Rather than allow this to happen, the Ultron baggage was dispensed with calmly and clinically - there were several references to the Avengers saving the world in the week just past plus the revelation that Coulson's 'Theta Protocol' was a secret plan to patch up the helicarrier in which Nick Fury duly rode to the rescue at the end of the movie. And that was that: safeguarding mankind from robot-assisted extinction was, we were given to understand, well and good - SHIELD, however, had bigger things to worry about.
Such as: what to do with the Inhuman threat? Threat? Well, that's how Gonzales views Skye and her kind; and Coulson, though not in absolute agreement, is content to go along. Do not adjust your critical faculties: these former enemies are unmistakably chummy now - the former appreciating Coulson's off-the-books jiggery pokery was for the greater good; the latter understanding that a single, unified SHIELD trumps a pair of squabbling factions. "This way," Coulson points out. "We'll have a cool underground base AND a boat."
Several such quips are scattered through 'Scars', the glimmers of humour welcome in a dispatch otherwise heavy on sturm und drang. Most of the angst, which feels absolutely appropriate considering the stakes at play, is sloshing around Afterlife, where Raina's future visions are exerting ever greater influence - with the porcupine seer having predicted Ultron's attack on Eastern Europe, even Jiaying is inclined to take her mutterings seriously.
In her latest trippy visitation Raina gleans details of the alien protoplasm Gonzales has stashed aboard the SHIELD aircraft carrier. It is from the Kree, intergalactic tinkerers who created the Inhumans and, having copped to their 'mistake', vowed to wipe them off the face of humankind.
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To ensure this doesn't happen, Jiaying dispatches an away team of Gordon and - yes, they're finally letting her off the leash - Raina. Cue endless tiptoeing down narrow corridors until Hunter stumbles across the intruders and they hoof it back to Afterlife.
Gonzales and Coulson, whose grumpy codger double act is persuasively evoked, are NOT cool with the attempted infiltration and don't buy Skye's insistence that her kin-folk have a strict 'we come in peace' worldview. They press Skye into quizzing Lincoln, who just happens to have snapped out of his concussion. As far as he is concerned, SHIELD are merely another group of heavily armed hostiles ready to misunderstand the Inhumans - Skye pushes back but visibly is conflicted.
In Afterlife, there's an equally fascinating interplay between Jiaying and an ever cockier Raina - Lady Pincushion all of a sudden inclined to address her captor as an equal rather than the person holding the keys to her freedom. That's okay for the moment because the visions are coming thick and fast. Next up, says the spiky one, will be a SHIELD incursion - the men in black are going to try to take Afterlife.
The news is received calmly by Jiaying. Which is probably as well because Cal (Kyle Maclachlan, as winningly overwrought as always) is angry enough for two. Still he isn't completely irrational, cooling down long enough to reveal privately to Jiaying that, for all her usefulness, Raina is not be trusted.
Can the same be said of Skye? She is to be dispatched to Afterlife to plead for a meeting between the two sides. But whither lie her loyalties? She tells Coulson she's still a SHIELD agent - but Jiaying is her mother, the Inhumans her people. The human drama is absorbing as the clearly torn Skye, with Lincoln in tow, travels to the happy valley to propose a tete-a-tete.
Also on the agenda is the delicate matter of who will represent SHIELD at the looming natter-fest. Coulson, being Coulson, thinks the best person is…Agent Coulson. However, Gonazles's pesky belief in democracy brings the matter to a vote. Shockingly, not everyone is inclined to trust the guy who kept a flying aircraft carrier secret the past several months and Gonzales is selected.
The entire gang heads to Afterlife. Actually make that the entire gang plus one stowaway. Agent 33 disguises herself as May and, in a great action sequence onboard a pitching, yawing Quinjet, takes down Bobbi. What's going on? Darned if Bobbi knows - and she is further nonplussed as Agent 33 touches down to be greeting by a beaming Ward.
The sound of the best-laid plans coming violently unstuck grows louder when Gonazles swaggers in for a meeting with Jiaying. In a scene girded with tension, he displays a tin ear towards her suffering at the hands of Hydra, clumsily comparing his scars to her life-changing injuries. Big mistake. Okay so Gonzales was biffed up a bit. Jiaying was dissected on a table, her insides scooped out. The last thing she needs is to be condescended to by a gruff government shill who doubles down on the insult by presenting her with the recovered medallion she had intended on giving to Skye. As if mere jewellery could make up for all the hurt and loss.
It's a case of ashes to ashes, Gonzales to dust as Jiaying gets quietly, coldly mad and zaps the SHIELD boss with a Terrigen Crystal, its mist exceedingly lethal to humans. Quicker than you can say, 'Whoa, gross-out moment', the stunned agent is transformed to dark charcoal (let us pause to mourn the exit of the transcendentally morose Edward James Olmos). This is a rare cartoonish interlude in an episode that largely plays it grim and grown-up - a flourish of grotesque silliness that contrasts nicely with the otherwise all-pervasive seriousness.
Speaking of serious, the future is not looking peachy for Bobbi. She's stretched on the floor of her Quinjet, her bad day growing substantially worse when Ward appears to shoot her dead. He can't have, surely? Especially not in the same hour of television in which co-conspirator Mack quits SHIELD, unable to reconcile himself to Coulson's return to command (lie once and you'll lie again is his hard-to-argue-with logic).
Guns are going off at Afterlife too. Jiaying, her impassivity replaced by something that looks suspiciously like hard-boiled fury, blasts herself with Gonzales's pistol, then staggers into the daylight screaming she's been attacked. We already know what's coming next - Jiaying spells it out anyway. "SHIELD tried to kill me," she snarls. "This is war."
Her anger is genuinely startling, as is the way Agents of SHIELD appears to have suddenly lurched into a full-fledged smack-down. All season, the show has played its cards close to its chest. Now, the final showdown has been revealed - SHIELD versus the Inhumans. It's been a giddy, gleeful ride, with lots of surprises but a sense, too, that the series always knew where it was headed. With just one episode (albeit a feature length one) to go, many loose ends have yet to be tied up. Considering the assured hand it has played all year, there is every reason to believe SHIELD will pull off a gripping conclusion.
