Agents of SHIELD: A Most Wanted (Inhu)Man Review

Agents of SHIELD gets back on track this week with three different story arcs.

This Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD review contains spoilers.

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD: Season 3, Episode 3

I was a bit hard on Agents of SHIELD last week what with the castle silliness and the angst, but it did manage to get a nice nerdy fist pump from me when I saw that dear Simmons was safe. Well, this week was a nice step back on the path of coolness as Agents of SHIELD held it together with three different arcs with three different effective tones.

First off, we had the A story, the Inhumans stuff with Lincoln being hunted by that new team of government sanctioned metahuman hunters led by Rosalind Price as well as being hunted by Coulson’s own crew of specialists. This week’s episode really gave viewers a reason to care about Lincoln. Last season, he was just kind of a way to get information to Skye (and by extension, the viewer) regarding the history of the Inhumans. This week, Lincoln was so much more than just a way to dump info; he was a living, breathing, microview of what it is like to be an Inhuman in the Marvel Universe right now.

Here is a dude that really just wants to devote his life to helping people, a skilled doctor who is devoted to his craft, but circumstances dictated that he is being hunted and hounded and the episode really did a great job in making the viewer care about this poor guy. Plus, the fine creative folks behind Agents of SHIELD did more with Lincoln’s electric based powers in a few scenes that the folks behind Amazing Spider-Man 2 did with Electro’s powers over the entirety of that cinematic hiccup — but I digress.

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Lincoln was the prize in the power struggle between Coulson and Price, a struggle that Price seemingly won when she threatened to take in Daisy instead of Lincoln. Coulson would never allow anything to happen to Daisy, so he relented and allowed Price to take Lincoln. The electric powered Inhuman was having none of it, and got his ass out of dodge. Now, Coulson had a decision to make, work at loggerheads with Price and combine forces so Inhumans like Lincoln could be brought in more humanely or continue to clash with Price’s team. So it seems we won’t have a faction-versus-faction S.H.I.E.L.D. war this season and thank Kirby, because that little conflict has been done to death in both previous seasons of the series.

As for Lincoln, yeah, it is all analogous to the X-Men, and the betrayal by Lincoln’s tubby friend was an almost blow-by-blow homage to Bobby Drake being betrayed by his family in X2 (and God, that movie holds up) but it all works and makes the few Inhumans we know seem like a increasingly important part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Our second story, and just as effective, was the continuing drama with HYDRA. This week, Hunter and May had to become part of a bloodsport fight club in order to infiltrate this Ward-led neo-HYDRA. First off, seeing Melinda May kick ass while wearing a sleeveless Blondie t-shirt is beyond cool, but it was Hunter’s dedication to the mission that made this particular arc truly memorable.

The whole ordeal was set up by an old friend of Hunter’s and it was that thuggish old mate that Hunter had to fight. The whole storyline was seedy, surprisingly brutal and allowed us to get a welcome peek into what kind of man and agent Hunter truly is. While Bobbi Morse recovered from her knee injury, Hunter got to step out of Mockingbird’s shadow and it worked. Hunter won his brawl and we will have to wait till next week to see where this takes us, but this week, we got to see just how far Hunter would go to take down Ward, the man who injured his Bobbi.

Speaking of love and dedication, we come to our third and final story line this week. Last week, we saw the seemingly anti-climactic rescue of Simmons by Fitz. This week, Agents of SHIELD did a bang-up job of showing the mental and physical toll that being on an alien world took on Simmons. First off, she had crazy symptoms of isolation and was suffering from a major case of PTSD, which was certainly understandable. The episode gave us a very realistic portrayal of the price someone’s body and mind would pay if they were trapped on an alien world for who knows how long.

Compared to the action packed Inhumans stuff and breakneck paced brutality of the HYDRA sequences, the Simmons and Fitz scenes were a welcome slowdown as two dear friends got to acclimate with each other after so much trauma. Remember, it wasn’t very long ago that Fitz was recovering from a traumatic brain injury. The whole thing was very sweet as Simmons got to bond once again with Daisy and go out a long-delayed date with Fitz. I’m man enough to admit I got misty eyed when it was revealed that Fitz held a restaurant reservation the whole time Simmons was away. It seemed like all of Simmons’ pals were going to help her back into the fold, until she dropped the bomb that she needed to go back to the alien world. Yipes.

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Perhaps, I was a little premature last week in calling Simmons’ exit from that world anticlimactic. Maybe, with this revelation, we have some hope in seeing some old school Captain Marvel villains after all.

A nerd can dream.

Marvel moments

None really, but the focus on the Inhumans inspires me to discuss the recent rumors regarding the cancelation of the 2019 Inhumans film. Guys, the movie is over four years away. There are literally ten films between right now and the release of Inhumans. Don’t fall for that click-bait BS; a lot can happen in five years, enjoy the ride.

That being said, I better be seeing a teleporting giant bulldog sometime in the next few years. 

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Rating:

3.5 out of 5