It was great fun watching Phil kick ass solo. And the interrogation scenes with the original team were great. I was hoping that we’d get some indication that Thomas Ward was the most evil member of the family, instead of being a 10 minute cameo.
So next episode is the winter finale, then Agent Carter starts up in January, so no more AoS until March or April? They’d better wrap stuff up then - because apart from the fate of the ATCU, this was the most ironically named episode ever.
[ul]
[li]Killing Rosiland - A big surprise, a catalyzing move, provides motivation for Coulson[/li][li]Mack in Charge - This character is the best thing on the show, he is growing and evolving, and a great sounding board for sanity in a universe with wacky things going on all the time[/li][li]Creating the Inhuman Team - Finally, let’s use these guys like the other side is[/li][li]Coulson losing his cool - Nice to see this side of him[/li][li]Hunter showing his worth - This is what he’s good at, loose cannon operations. [/li][li]Deeper understanding on Ward - Not my favorite character, but we get some decent backstory and some slight character movement[/li][li]Coulson sky diving through the portal - That’s just badass[/li][/ul]
Things I didn’t like:
[ul]
[li]Killing Rosiland - She was a great character and I loved what was going on between her and Coulson[/li][li]Killing Banks - He would have been a fun addition to SHIELD, a fish out of water[/li][li]Hydra going to the same castle to open a new portal - If the building’s frequency is so important, you’d think Hydra would build a handful of them in secret bases [/li][li]The ambush capturing Fitz and Simmons - Sloppy writing, too many people getting captured, tired of people getting tortured [/li][li]Ward going through the Portal - I just didn’t by Malick’s job of convincing Ward to go, seems out of character[/li][li]Knocking Coulson out on the other side - Seemed too much of a coincidence, a well placed rock?[/li][/ul]
I can’t even freakin’ remember - how did Gemma and Will reopen the portal on their side? I want to say that she found a statistical model which showed where it would be opening?
Gemma had used Will’s computer to calculate the frequency of the portal openings and predict when the next portal would open. They were trying to launch a message through, but missed, mostly.
So, Hydra has been sending through people as… sacrifices? to the evil whatever there. And from the flashback to the castle’s history, it seems they used to be true believers who were being sent through. Probably means that Will was Hydra, and that his recounting of his teammates “going mad” was maybe a lie. Especially since Powers Boothe made sure to manipulate psychopath Ward into leading the new expedition, just as Will lead his expedition…
And it seems pretty clear that the evil whatever will be returning back through the portal, probably possessing one of the name characters on its planet (Coulson, Ward, Fitz, Will). I’m thinking it’ll end up being a powerup for Ward’s character, and Will will go out in a sacrificial redemption arc. But it’ll probably be cliffhangered until after the midseason break.
They used the old NASA computer, powered by Gemma’s mobile phone, to predict the next scheduled opening, but missed it due to a canyon being a few hundred meters across instead of a few meters.
Then a few weeks later, they were sitting outside to see the once-every-many-year sunrise, and saw the flare that Fitz shot through the portal when they forced it open at the castle, and ran towards it. So it was pretty much just coincidence that they found it.
Of course, the secret that Fitz & Simmons are protecting is that Daisy has the power to keep the portal open indefinitely.
Last year’s mid-season finale was Skye’s Inhuman transformation. They’ll have to work really hard to match that.
Ward: I’m tired of being manipulated - I won’t stand for it anymore - I’m my own man.
Malick: <long manipulative speech, density, you, etc>
Ward: I’m in
And for that matter, none of this stuff makes sense. Hydra may be villains, but they wouldn’t keep sending people through the portal unless they got SOME data back. You know, camera on a stick, that kind of thing. They must at least know the portal goes somewhere habitable.
And you’d think that if they could get photos of the other side each time they open the portal, they would notice it is in a different place each time…
This is why whenever they send people through, they can’t get em back because the next time they stick a camera on a stick through, they are nowhere near where the portal opened last.
If the “Previously on SHIELD” bit at the start of the next episode includes the scene where Simmons told Ward “The next time I see you, I’ll kill you”, then that’ll probably be a major tipoff.
Coulson came through the portal at terminal velocity. If momentum is conserved while passing through wormholes* - and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t - it’s a wonder he survived at all.
In layman’s terms: speedy-thing goes in, speedy-thing comes out.
Not really. If the portal was facing upwards, he would have hurtled up into the sky, and then he could open the parachute he was wearing. Presumably, that was his plan.
Apparently, the wormholes do not preserve velocity or they cap it. I would suggest that what we saw on screen suggests a velocity cap - he came hurtling through at a speed greater than the previous party that came through, enough to injure him, but not the speed he entered at.
If you’re willing to accept a wormhole that works because you shake some special rocks…a literal magical wormhole (remember, Simmons analyzed the rock and it’s ordinary rock under his available analysis tools), you can easily assume whoever created it could cap the velocity of exiting objects.
That flying car Coulson has is a classic car and both the car itself and the flight hardware were manufactured in the 1960s. How, precisely, practical flying cars - using some kind of antigravity like tech - have been available since the 1960s but only to elite members of SHIELD (their helicarrier and their aircraft for getting around don’t appear to use antigravity) is…how it is in comic book universes.
Maybe antigravity is the wrong word, but it’s those reactionless “repulsor” engines that emit a blue glow and don’t appear to consume jet fuel or require air intakes. Actually, an engine like that is less plausible than antigravity…
I meant the statement she made before, something about he makes a girl want to do something, was it “swing left” or something like that? I can’t remember the exact words.
