#shield files

[goddess-of-birds]

Thanks to @thatone-midgardian for making this!!

[oh-my-damn]

Its here! My little nerd heart is going pitter patter 😫😍🥰

[theanglerfishmagazine]

SHIELD Files: Nothing Personal

SHIELD is still in shambles, Coulson's team is split up, so what are they to do but call on Maria Hill? Read on for the reviewcap of "Nothing Personal"!

Maria Hill finishes giving testimony at the Department of Justice and heads out onto the DC streets while being tailed. She updates Pepper on how the testifying went and name-drops both The Fridge and Man-Thing before noticing her tails go down, so she heads into an alley, draws her gun, and comes face to face with May, who wants to talk. They trade updated organization/team information: SHIELD's kaput and Stark's planning to privatize global security, while Coulson's at Providence. May wants to know more about the Project TAHITI, but Maria doesn't know who was in charge of it - Fury would, but he buried the information when he decided not to bury Coulson. Maria also mentions that Fury's dead, but the skeptical May doesn't believe it. By that time, the local cops arrive and May has vanished.

Back at the base, the remaining SHIELDies try to figure out what in the holy hell happened. They have security footage of May leaving the Bus before exiting the base and of Skye and Ward entering the cargo bay holding hands. Koenig is nowhere to be found, either. FitzSimmons head to get rations and they decide along the way to make pancakes, since pancakes cheer anyone up. The two split up, and Fitz notices a difference in day/night decorations in the bathroom while Simmons retrieves pancake ingredients. He pulls a screwdriver out of the bathroom panel to reveal "Ward is HYDRA" scratched into the rotating panel, and Simmons finds dried blood - and Koenig, too.

On the Bus, Ward sprays over the SHIELD logo on the SUV while Skye works on the hard drive, but she goes to find a SAT phone and is prevented from doing so by a curious and slightly impatient Ward who wants to get to the location to rendezvous with the team. The encrypted location is an apparently random diner in LA - also where Skye first met with Mike, so things have come full circle. He disarms her concealed gun and assures her that everything will be okay and that he won't let her out of his sight until this situation ends. They land in LA and hoof it to the diner and consider what to order, as it'll take at least an hour to decrypt. But the situation Ward started at Providence is still continuing, as the team (well, Simmons) examines Koenig in the kitchen. Based on the evidence (a crushed trachea and death by asphyxiation), it's clear that the killer was tall and strong, meaning that Ward did it. Fitz doesn't take it well.

Coulson rallies the team around focusing their anger and pain (mostly Fitz's) onto finding Skye, based on the assumption that she's playing Ward. Fitz goes to track the Bus at Coulson's orders while Coulson and Trip rehash everything they know about Ward, Garrett, and Hand, realizing that Hand is dead, Ward came back for Skye, and Ward has been working for Garrett. The plane is tracked to LA, but multiple inbound targets trigger the proximity alert, so the team arms up to face whoever is entering the base through the hanger. The targets turn out to be Special Forces troops and Colonel Talbot (Adrian Pasdar), who ask the SHIELDies to stand down. He's still not a huge fan of Coulson and his team, but he did see Fury's base in person, thanks to directions from Maria Hill, who joins everyone.

At the diner, the impatient Ward doesn't take the opportunity to head outside to call up the team. Hasn't he heard that a watched pot never boils? Anyway, the location coordinates aren't jiving with Skye's access attempts, but she continues to stall by bringing up Mike and how she sat across from a good man when she was last in that same booth. And she also casually drops that they're most likely on a Most Wanted list. Elsewhere, most likely in DC, an older black man finds May digging something out of Coulson's coffin - a flash drive with the final report on Project TAHITI, which she views on a laptop in her vehicle.

Back at Providence, the team tries to convince Talbot that they're not criminals or HYDRA and that they've got an urgent matter to deal with, but he's not buying anything unless they've got actionable information. Coulson and Hill have a tête-à-tête in what was Koenig's office, and Maria presses him to give Talbot some harmless tidbit of information, as Special Forces will be taking control of the base; it was part of Hill's deal with Talbot. Coulson's still peeved about not being kept in the loop regarding secrets, and he fills her in on what's been happening with Garrett and Ward, which perturbs Hill, who vetted Ward when he joined SHIELD. Talbot and two soldiers enter to turn the room over, but Coulson and Hill knock them out.

Returning to the diner, Ward's still nervous, as there are a few cops at the bar and since Skye's been working for half an hour. She presses him on undercover missions and what he'd say to Garrett if he had another minute with him as a way of making honest conversation. The cops take notice of the duo and Ward wants to be off, but Skye reveals she tipped off the police. Ward takes out several of the cops as Skye rushes outside and tries to get two cops to arrest her, but Ward shoots the cops and she starts to drive away, only to be stopped by Mike, who jumps on the cop car hood and punches through the windshield.

Mike takes them back to the Bus under Garrett's orders and gives Ward five minutes to get the location from Skye, even though he hasn't been successful yet. Skye roughs Ward up a little, but he cuffs her to the spiral staircase and they have another honest conversation, where he admits that his time on the team has been his mission and that his feelings for her are real, despite Skye's insistence that he's a Nazi because of the whole "I was following orders" deal. She doesn't care about the hard decisions he's had to make, and she realizes she doesn't like the real Ward.

In the situation room, Mike attempts to jack in to the hard drive but fails to decrypt it, and Garrett tells him to go to Plan B, which is get Skye to decrypt the hard drive the easy way (tell Ward) or the hard way (tell Mike). Skye tries to convince Mike that he's still Mike and a good man, but he brings up that Ace is under SHIELD protection, which is more or less moot, and he reminds her that the trigger in his eye will go off if he has any ideas about rescuing Ace. And instead of hurting her, he hurts Ward by stopping his heart with an electrocution disc akin to what Black Widow uses. As time is of the essence and since she doesn't want to become a murderer (albeit by proxy), Skye tells Mike that the hard drive can be unlocked at an altitude of 35,000 feet and he restarts Ward's heart, ordering Skye to start the hack and Ward to get the plane in the air. Unbeknownst to Ward, Mike, and Skye, Maria and Trip are waiting across the tarmac in another plane and they radio a surrender order to Ward, which he declines. Before taking off, he seriously disses Maria and her rise to power, but she laughs it off. And little does Ward know, but that conversation time was enough for Coulson to sneak aboard the Bus in a wheel well. He finds Skye in the Cage, and on the way down to the cargo bay, she admits she unlocked the hard drive for Mike and Ward ... and she also asks if Coulson stopped Mike. Yeah, nope ... Anyway, Coulson doesn't need Mike's permission to leave, so he and Skye drop out of the Bus in Lola under fire from Mike and Ward, and they manage to successfully land in front of a Marriot.

The team has nowhere else to go, so they hit up a motel. Maria informs Coulson that she's not bringing Fury in, nor is she bringing the band back together, since there's no SHIELD, but when Coulson's vendetta is done, his team will need to disband. She does mention that Stark would hire Coulson in a heartbeat, but there's the whole "Hey, I'm not really dead" thing to consider. Outside at the pool, FitzSimmons have a heart-to-heart about whether or not they're HYDRA. Relax - they both aren't in HYDRA.

Trip's still with them and since he's on vacation (until Coulson gives him orders), he's going to down on vending machine junk food, which he shares with FitzSimmons. Coulson joins Skye out on the pool deck, and she mentions that Ward and Mike were left with a little present on the hard drive as the two of them share some candy and comment on the weather. May finally reappears in Coulson's room after everyone calls it a night, and she reveals that she knows about Ward (through Hill) and she comes bearing the Project TAHITI file. She pulls it up on a laptop and plays the file for Coulson, which reveals that he was heading up the Project but warned that the cost was far too great, as memory erasure was the only way to stop any physical and mental effects of the Guest House drugs.

***

The Agents return tonight in "Ragtag" as Coulson and May go undercover to learn more about Cybertek and Ward's past is revealed.

(GIFs from marvelshieldagents + aos-gifs + fyeahskye)

[theanglerfishmagazine]

'SHIELD' Files: "The Only Light in the Darkness"

Following the breakout from the Fridge in "Providence", Coulson and the gang are going to be busy for a little while ... particularly when an escapee obsessed with a certain cellist is on the loose! Read on for the reviewcap of "The Only Light in the Darkness"!

Marcus Daniels (Patrick Brennan), an escapee from the Fridge glimpsed in "Providence", makes landfall in a harbor on the West Coast and walks to shore as the nearby lights start shutting off. He comes across a fisherman packing up his truck and asks for a ride to Portland, but the man doesn't want to go 200 miles out of his way, so Daniels shuts off the truck, kills the man with a touch, and restarts the truck to drive to Portland as more lights shut off around him. With that kind of power, I'd want to stay far far away from him ...

Meanwhile, Simmons tends to Ward's assorted scrapes and injuries as Ward recounts to the SHIELDies what went down at the Fridge - including that he put two bullets in Garrett's skull (one for him and one for Trip) after taking a beating (a couple of cracked ribs and a hairline cheekbone fracture being the worst of it). He did manage to save the hard drive, though. Coulson is concerned, as the Fridge prisoners are no longer prisoners, so he puts Skye on threat assessment. Marcus Daniels turns up on the list, which is cross-referenced with recent criminal activity, so Coulson makes the decision to pull together a splinter team to head off Daniels. This could be a distraction on HYDRA's part, but Coulson is insistent on doing the right thing - until Eric reminds him of the security issues and brings up the mandatory orientation procedure: THE top-of-the-line wired-up-with-every-kind-of-sensor-imaginable Lie Detector that Fury designed. No word if Widow beat it or not.

Everyone goes through with it, starting with May, who is followed shortly by Fitz, Trip, Skye, and Simmons. May didn't know about Project Insight and only met with Pierce once, but Trip heard Garrett talk with Pierce via phone a few times. It's also revealed that Trip is a Legacy, since his grandfather was a Howling Commando. A deserted island question comes up, and Fitz would want Simmons to appear in his mystery box. As for Simmons ...

Ward's the last to go, and he manages to fool the sensors and Eric until the final follow-up questions ("Are you associated with HYDRA?" and "Why are you really here?" accompanied by a drawn pistol) because his answer and repeated answer to "Why are you here?" didn't satisfy Eric. He gives satisfactory answers ("We all are." and "Skye."), which pacify Eric and fool the system - thanks in part to a pin hidden in the nail bed of his left thumb - which earns him his lanyard. Ward runs into Fitz, who's on his way to a mission briefing, and suggests that he talk to Simmons before he misses the opportunity, as Fitz is still crushed about Simmons potentially having a thing for Trip.

Elsewhere in the base, Coulson briefs his crack team (FitzSimmons and Trip) on Daniels. He was an assistant at a lab trying to harness the electrical power and potential of darkforce (pure negative cosmic energy), but he was exposed to it and developed the ability to absorb conventional energy. The last time Coulson went toe-to-toe with him, he beat Daniels by overloading him with light, so FitzSimmons will need to engineer some way to stop him on the fly. Coulson leaves them to prep, only to be confronted by May, who isn't happy about not flying the mission, and Coulson gives her an ultimatum - follow his orders to leave. En route, Coulson gives Fitz a little more background on Daniels - namely that Daniels is obsessed with a woman he calls the only light in the darkness. And this woman happens to be Audrey Nathan (Amy Acker), a cellist and member of the PDX Philharmonic. Audrey's out for a late night jog, but Marcus slowly follows her and she runs, only to be rescued by Simmons and Trip in an SUV, who claim they're CIA. A separate car drives up as the SUV bolts, and Coulson and Fitz exit with some of Fitz's little drones, which light up Daniels. However, all the testing in the Fridge made Daniels stronger, so he blasts them with darkness and vanishes.

Meanwhile, things are going slowly in Providence, since there's no satellite access. In Eric's office, Skye discovers that the lanyards also double as tracking devices, as he's got an active map of the facility on his tablet. So she comes up with the brilliant idea to hack the NSA's satellites to keep an eye on the Fridge escapees and maybe find footage of the breakout, and she tries to get Ward to help convince Eric to "grab his shield". Ward suggests maybe uploading the hard drive to get weapons specs, but the only issue there is that the hard drive encryption is location-based. This impresses Eric enough to let Skye start hacking, as it'll take about an hour to get the footage into the system.

In Portland, Simmons and Trip continue with the CIA lie in a temporary safe house of sorts (all while Fitz and Coulson are listening from an adjacent bare apartment), but Audrey sees right through it and knows they're SHIELD. She trusts them and doesn't believe the negative reporting about SHIELD, as her reason to trust SHIELD is Phil. Before Daniels was captured, he started stalking her performances and her place of residence (even blacking out her entire block), and then Coulson showed up, stopped Daniels, and grew close to her. The two were prepping a trip up the West Coast until he was called out to New York - and then the dreaded call came in. Fitz suggests that Coulson pop over and say hi, but Coulson's content to let her be, as she's still healing and getting on with her life, and he doesn't want to emotionally hurt her again. He also has an idea to use Audrey as bait to catch and stop Daniels, but Coulson isn't too keen on it.

Back at Providence, May's getting ready to head out, but she runs into Ward and tells him that the range on the Bus is under 10,000 miles, since he asks. And she tells Coulson to tell him whatever he wants about her departure, as Coulson doesn't want her there. Ward makes his way to Eric's office to find that Skye got access to the satellite feeds, but the images are still clearing up. As a precaution, Ward quietly closes the door behind him with Eric still inside the office. Hopping back to Portland, Fitz and Coulson get the tech set up in the lighting booth - a device from the jet's power reserves will be able to modify the frequency and wavelength of individual stage lights, similar to gamma rays. However, there's an unlikely chance that Daniels will absorb the energy; I'll give you one guess who designed the tech.

While the set-up progresses there, Skye heads to Eric's office in the base to find no Eric and a cleared-up image feed. Ward enters, telling her that Eric's gone to send the images to NATO and that May left, so they finally share a drink and have a heart-to-heart about whether or not there's an "us". He admits that he still has skeletons and isn't always a good person, as his older brother made him beat up his younger brother when they were younger, among other things. Still convinced he's a good man, she kisses him, but pulls a hand back from his head to find blood, so he goes to clean it up. The ever-so-curious Skye pulls out Eric's tablet to track Eric and Ward, who cleans up and cleans off his garrote. He returns to find Skye gone, but she's tracked Eric's signal to a security/supply closet, and she notices a falling penny when she opens the door. Inside, she doesn't find Eric until some blood drips from a ceiling grate, and a distraught Skye locks herself in a nearby bathroom as Ward approaches.

The trap is ready for Daniels, who takes the bait as Audrey plays her cello and the SHIELDies lay in wait with their tricked-out stage lights. He approaches the stage, and FitzSimmons and Trip attempt to overload him with the lights, but he blasts them away and continues toward the stage. In a last-ditch effort, Coulson lights him up from the orchestra and gets some help from Trip, which causes Daniels to go to pieces and briefly knocks out Audrey. Coulson quickly checks her vitals, promises he's still with her, and gets out of the way in time for the team to surround her as she comes to.

Still on the hunt, Ward heads to the same security/supply closet and opens the door to catch the penny. Skye shows up behind him and lies that she got a little scared regarding the whole "us" discussion, but she's not scared anymore. Instead, she wants what they have and to stay in the base, but Ward's got word that Fitz and the team need their help outside the base. The Bus is fueled up, they've got the Okay from Eric, and they need to leave ASAP, which they do, and Skye gets to choose the coordinates once they're in the air.

En route back to Providence, Fitz checks on Coulson's emotional well-being, and he's coping, even though he lied to Audrey; he'll tell her the truth someday, in the hopes she'll understand. Coulson's even feeling well enough to make things up with May. He heads to the cockpit to check with Trip, and Simmons pops into the passenger area to talk about Trip with Fitz, who admits that he hates change instead of coming clean about his feelings. The quartet arrives back at the base to find no Bus and no team.

Further down in Canada, May's hoofing it along a highway in Ontario when an older Asian woman pulls over to give her a lift. Lo and behold, it's Mama May, who drive 500 miles out of her way to pick her up - and all because May trusts her mom. Since her agency hasn't fallen apart, Mama May managed to get some necessary paperwork for her daughter, who is looking for one person who isn't hard to find. Thankfully, Melinda doesn't want to take this person out - just to talk - and Mama May is pleased about this as they continue down the highway.

***

"The Only Light in the Darkness" felt a little on the light side, maybe because Marcus Daniels/Blackout wasn't as intimidating or as developed as other villains. His defeat wasn't drawn out, but it was too short, much like the boss battles in the first two 'Iron Man' movies. Maybe it's just me. It was finally nice to put a name and face to the title of The Cellist, though. 'Agents of SHIELD' returns tonight with "Nothing Personal", as Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) steps up to help Coulson and the team.

(GIFs from marvelshieldagents)

[theanglerfishmagazine]

'SHIELD' Files: "Providence"

With SHIELD in disarray after HYDRA's reemergence, what are the SHIELDies to do but seek shelter from allies in "Providence"? Read on for a reviewcap before digging into tonight's "The Only Light in the Darkness".

In some SHIELD prison, Raina is passing the time folding origami flowers when she hears fighting and gunfire outside of her room, so she has a seat on her bed to wait. To her surprise, Ward enters and removes a gift box from his backpack, presenting Raina with a red silk flower dress, courtesy of the Clairvoyant. Back at the Hub, Coulson watches on the situation room screen as multiple news channels talk about the blame being foisted on SHIELD and who should be held accountable. He asks a lower-ranking agent to open a back-channel to a UN representative before Skye comes in with a list of the secure SHIELD bases - the Hub and two others. Things aren't looking good. Down in Havana, Ward takes Raina to an old haunt - a barbershop - to meet the Clairvoyant/John Garrett, who is getting a trim and a shave. Raina exchanges pleasantries, but isn't pleased to hear that Garrett didn't have any actual gifts. Still, Garrett ensures her loyalty to the cause of changing the world as she takes a seat in the barber's chair, which starts sinking into an underground chamber. Meanwhile, FitzSimmons works on repairs to the cargo bay electronics, and Trip offers to assist, but he isn't much help. Skye brings word to Coulson that the Cube has been retaken from HYDRA agents, and May brings word that the Bus's flight system is online, which is all well and good until Colonel Glenn Talbot (Adrian Pasdar) calls up on the situation room screen to inform Coulson that he's sending in a peacekeeping force to take control of the SHIELD mess and ask a few questions.

Coulson wants wheels up ASAP rather than face months of subpoenas and other red tape, so he activates the Odyssey Protocol and the Bus departs the Hub with fumes for fuel (cutting the flight time from eight hours down to four) and a jerry-rigged cargo ramp - and Trip, too, at Simmons' insistence. The team has a few days of rations and plenty of medical supplies, along with a busted fuel line that can be fixed when they land, but the situation is still looking grim. In an effort to disappear and stay off the radar, Coulson orders Skye to erase all of the team's IDs and files ... and to check with Ward and collect everyone's badges. Skye reaches Ward, and they banter, as he tells her that Hand took the long way to the Fridge and as she tells him he no longer exists. After he hangs up, Ward turns to Garrett, angry that Garrett had Skye shot. It comes out in their heated talk that Ward was in on it all along, provided a handy tip about the Cellist, and could have killed Coulson when the team was first assembled if Garrett had given the order. Raina enters, and Garrett brings her into a room with dead bodies and medical equipment, as her next project is to restart Phase 3 of the Centipede project using the various chemical vials he pilfered from the Guest House - but based on how all the dead bodies look, his testing isn't going so well. Ward provides the backed-up external hard drive he nabbed from Skye, since it has all the information from the blood panels. And then Ward and Garrett are off to prep for a raid the Fridge for assorted weaponry ... after Raina chats up Ward, who goes into detail on how he gained the trust of all the SHIELDies.

On the Bus, Skye brings everyone's badges to Coulson's office, and does her best to express her sympathies, even though SHIELD has been everything for Coulson - at least everything since ten days after his high school graduation when he was recruited. Coulson goes to lock the badges in his wall safe, but Skye notices that Coulson's badge flashes orange, so he pulls it out to find coordinates, which were sent by Fury and Fury alone. Convinced this will lead them somewhere, Coulson has May redirect the Bus to the coordinates, which put them down in the Canadian wilderness. En route, May comes to Coulson to confiscate his gun, but he doesn't hand it over, even if she tries to convince him that HYDRA could be controlling his actions. She does let slip that Fury wasn't behind the TAHITI project, but she doesn't know who. Down in the lab, Trip suggests to FitzSimmons that Coulson's gone Ahab on them.

At the Fridge, Ward and a handcuffed Garrett manage to let the rooftop guards let them inside with help from their HYDRA allies in a helicopter before killing the two guards on the way down in the elevator. They don gas masks and the whole Fridge is Night-Nighted. Once the air is clear, they head to a large storage portion of the base to find all the dangerous/alien things that were supposedly sent up on the Slingshot - including the 084, which Garrett uses to blast a hole in a wall leading to the secure containment area of the facility. As all the prisoners make a break for it, Ward borrows the 084 to blast a hole in the floor to find something that Coulson mentioned in prior weeks. Up in Canada, the Bus lands and Coulson peps everyone up before they start their seven-mile hike to the coordinates. On the way, Fitz confides in Simmons that he doesn't want things to change, but she admits that they already have, and May talks to Skye about Coulson's stability and Fury's concern. When the whole team reaches the coordinates, they find nothing there, and Coulson goes off on a rant after admitting that taking the nearly-empty Bus to the coordinates was the right play.

He takes a breather, apologizes, and tosses his badge, only to be surprised when a turret pops up and shoots his badge. Everyone takes cover, and then Coulson walks out in front of the turret and identifies himself as "Phil Coulson, agent of SHIELD". To his surprise yet again, the turret welcomes him and a nearby rock wall opens to reveal a hidden facility. Inside, they're greeted by Agent Eric Koenig (Patton Oswalt), who tells them that they're inside Providence (he named it), one of Fury's secret bases. He gives them a little tour, promises that they'll be given lanyards on a case-by-case basis, and tells them that Fury didn't make it out of DC and that the Fridge fell to HYDRA. A worried Skye heads to call Ward, who plays on her sympathy, as only she can unlock the encrypted hard drive, lest the data be erased. Koenig takes Coulson into his office and admits that he's been there since the events of 'The Avengers' and that Fury isn't dead, but the knowledge is only on a need-to-know basis, so no telling the team. Also, the Bus can be brought into a hidden hanger to avoid being spotted by a NATO satellite. Ward, meanwhile, has the new mission of getting to Providence to play off of Skye's weakness for him to unlock the hard drive.

As Garrett dresses, Ward notices a metal plate on his torso, and Ward receives his marching orders: bring Skye to him within 24 hours and cross off the SHIELDies. Oh, and to make things look convincing, Garrett lays a beating on Ward. At Providence, Skye waits for Ward at the blast doors and welcomes him in to get patched up by Simmons - and maybe to get that promised drink, too.

And to wrap things up, Quinn joins Garrett and Raina in the underground base. He's not too happy about his prison situation, nor the fact that Garrett isn't really clairvoyant. Garrett, however, has a gift because he's just that nice: the Gravitonium that Quinn used to possess. And little do they know what's inside it.

***

Tonight, Blackout, an escapee from the Fridge, goes after the Cellist (Amy Acker), prompting Coulson and the SHIELDies to stop him without letting her know that Coulson is still alive.

(GIFs from marvelshieldagents)

[theanglerfishmagazine]

'SHIELD' Files: "End of the Beginning" & "Turn Turn Turn"

The "Uprising" arc is in full swing ... and seeing as "End of the Beginning" leads into the events of 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier' and "Turn Turn Turn" follows up 'Winter Soldier', it might as well be a good idea to get you readers caught up. it goes without saying that spoilers for both episodes AND 'Winter Soldier' are under the cut, so read at your own risk!

With Deathlok still on the loose, the hunt is on as the SHIELDies turn their sights on him and the Clairvoyant. After Agents Garrett (Bill Paxton) and Triplett (BJ Britt) are attacked by Deathlok in a SHIELD safe house in Sydney, they join up with Agents Hand (Saffron Burrows), Sitwell (Maximiliano Hernandez), and Blake (Titus Welliver) on the Bus at Coulson's request as a precaution against the Clairvoyant. Coulson wants to even the playing field, and he thinks they may be getting close to the Clairvoyant, as Mike went after Garrett and Triplett for a reason. So it's up to SHIELD to get an investigation going, split the available agents up into pairs, and compartmentalize the investigation - with Skye heading everything up.

Meanwhile, Mike is recovering in a decrepit apartment and examines a scratch left by the Icer slug, noticing some metal underneath the skin. The Clairvoyant messages him, and there's a knock on the door. It's a gift of a weaponized armband for his left wrist! And the Clairvoyant leaves Mike with a parting message that they should meet, as the SHIELDies are coming for him.

Sitwell is off to the Lemurian Star, a SHIELD ship, and Hand is off to coordinate with tactical teams from the Hub, so Skye preps everyone on the phones (a double blind, wherein one half of the pair gets the ID of their target on their phone when they're within a mile of the location) and Fitz fills May in on the micro-receiver tracking rounds. Simmons, however, lets slip about the blood samples when May is present, and May lets them know to let her know if Skye or Coulson exhibit any side effects or strange behavior in the future because she can help.

And the hunt begins with Ward and Triplett heading to a UK prison, May and Blake heading to an assisted living facility in Macon, GA, and Coulson and Garrett head to Muncie, IN. Ward, Trip, Coulson, and Garrett hit dead ends (no guards on duty and a roadblock, respectively), but May and Blake encounter Deathlok, who roughs up Blake (with a stomp to the rib cage) and takes several tracer rounds before running. May calls in to the Hub and Hand calls everyone in before the team splits up again - Simmons sticks around the Hub to debrief SHIELD on the Deathlok program (and to use the comprehensive lab facilities to run further diagnostics on the blood samples), and Triplett's keeping her company. Everyone discovers that Blake's gun had the tracking rounds and he was able to hit Deathlok, so they track him to an abandoned racetrack in Pensacola, FL. Skye runs tactical from one of the vans while everyone else goes in. One of Fitz's Retrievers finds Mike and shows via an infrared camera that Mike has had a lot more than some cosmetic work.

Coulson, Garrett, Ward, and a strike team come across Mike, and he fires at them before running off. May gives chase as Mike jumps a few stories down a stairwell, and Coulson joins in the chase as he heads down to the subbasement with a Retriever. Garrett catches up with Coulson, and they take fire from Mike, who vanishes. They're left with two options: head down 40 feet to a sewer or follow the Retriever, which has found someone else down with them. They follow the Retriever to find a quadriplegic man in a chair hooked up to medical machines and watching countless monitors. The man, Thomas Nash, is one of the Index rejects they were searching for, and he reveals to them that he's the Clairvoyant (a name that Mr. Po gave him), and that he'll join Raina in the Fridge. However, he taunts Coulson and the other team members who arrived in the subbasement room with knowledge of Skye's shooting ... and then Ward shoots Nash in the heart.

Ward gets locked up in the Cage, and the still shocked team takes him back to the Hub to face a SHIELD review board while Garrett heads off to hunt down Deathlok - and Ward doesn't regret shooting Nash. Down in Avionics, Fitz tries to hook up an encrypted satellite phone to reach Simmons at the Hub, but the signals cuts in and out - and Fitz digs around back to find that someone tapped the line. After hearing that there's something big happening at the Hub, he follows the cable up to find that it leads to May's encrypted cable box in the cockpit. Meanwhile, Coulson is convinced that because the investigation wrapped up so neatly, the Clairvoyant must be a SHIELD agent because of the security clearance necessary to access SHIELD employee files with surveillance.

He doesn't get a straight answer from Ward about whether or not he was under orders to shoot Nash, either. Fitz awkwardly exits the cockpit when May shows up, runs into Skye in the lounge, and cuts the line from Avionics at Skye's advice, while Skye grabs Coulson from the Cage. May sweeps the lab and the cargo bay, only to be surprised by Fitz locking himself in the lab and Coulson and Skye entering the bay with guns drawn. She offers to explain everything (just not there) when Coulson demands answers about the phone line and things related to the Clairvoyant, but someone remotely takes control of the Bus and redirects it ... to the Hub, where Hand is waiting with strike team orders to take out everyone onboard except Coulson, who she claims.

(In the interlude between "End of the Beginning" and "Turn Turn Turn", the events of 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier' occurred, during which time Nick Fury faked his death, Agent Sitwell met his untimely death in freeway traffic, HYDRA unveiled itself from the shadows of SHIELD, and three more SHIELD helicarriers crashed in DC.)

"Turn Turn Turn" begins with Garrett listening to some Blue Oyster Cult on his plane while reading over a manual on strategy when two drones surface through the clouds. He tries to raise them on comms but hears an encrypted buzzing and takes targeted missile fire. Thinking quickly, Garrett does a loop de loop and evades the missiles, only to see the SHIELD insignia on the drones. Back on the Bus, the standoff ends as May kicks her gun over to Coulson at his orders while admitting that HQ most likely remotely rerouted the Bus and that her encrypted line was directly to Director Fury. She can't reveal any more, as she's under orders. And Fitz lets slip about about trying to reach Simmons regarding the blood samples ... and speaking of Simmons, she's working on analyzing the samples a Hub lab when an inquiring Trip visits, bringing word that things at the Hub are on the noisy side because of a Level 8 operation. As Simmons can't lie her way out of a paper bag (but she's getting better at it), Trip learns of her research status and her aim to reach Agent Weaver at the SHIELD Academy, so he offers to get a holobox with his Level 6 clearance so they can call Weaver.

Back on the Bus, May still doesn't know what's going on, but the team gets a distress call from Garrett, who is inbound with SHIELD drones on his tail, so Coulson ices May, has Fitz manually wire the Bus's gun turrets, and drops May off at the Cage with Ward, telling him that she's a sleeper - in both senses. Garrett evades the drones and docks with the Bus, so Hand declares that they'll take care of him when the Bus arrives at the Hub after being tractor-beamed in. And she also mentions to the select group of agents around her that they've sworn allegiance to each other since an encoded message went out over SHIELD frequencies. Meanwhile, Garrett shoots down the possibility of Hand being the Clairvoyant, and Skye manages to decode the transmission - "Out of the Shadows/Into the Light/HYDRA". She rationalizes that it must have been an activation signal to sleeper HYDRA agents in SHIELD, and the team tries to hash together how HYDRA came back. They're faced with a decision - blow a hole in the plane and parachute out or free May and Ward, break into the Hub, and free Trip and Simmons.

In the lab, Simmons and Trip manage to reach a frantic and worried Weaver, who tells them to get somewhere safe, lock the door, and not trust anyone, so Trip locks the lab door, hands his knife to Simmons as an act of trust, and tries to raise the Bus on the holobox. Things aren't going too well on the Bus, as it is tractor-beamed into the Hub. May tries to reach Director Fury on her phone line at Coulson's orders, but she receives word that he's dead. The entire team heads down to munitions, as they're taking fire, and as Coulson's patching up May, she reveals that Fury asked her to report back to him on Coulson's physical and mental well-being ... oh, and she also evaluated what sort of team Coulson would need, and Fury gave Coulson the parameters based on this info.

The last-minute rush begins as a strike team is getting ready to board the Bus. All the information about the SHIELDies cases is backed up onto an external hard drive and the on-board computers are wiped. The strike team blows open the cargo bay, meets a small explosion, and continues searching for the SHIELDies, not noticing a hole in the bottom of the fuselage. Everyone splits up - Ward and Skye head to take out the Hub's nerve center to disable the tractor beam while the rest of the team heads to find Simmons and Trip, who are surrounded in the lab by Hand and her personal strike team. Hand reveals that it's HYDRA's "coming-out party" and gives them a choice: swear allegiance to HYDRA or suffer the fate of Director Fury and other Level 9 and 10 Agents (among others) who resisted. Trip disarms one of the strike team, and Hand informs them that it was a ruse to see if they were trustworthy or not. Also, she's convinced that Coulson is a HYDRA member.

Downstairs, Garrett and Fitz walk Coulson and May into a security room, and they take out the men there. Elsewhere, Hand tells Simmons and Trip that Blake had a theory that Coulson was HYDRA because Coulson wasn't entirely forthcoming with recent mission debriefings (namely the now-dead Professor Hall, the eye tech that was implanted in Akeela found its way into Mike, etc.). And down near the nerve center, Ward gets ready to take out a dozen SHIELD strike team members, and Skye accepts his offer of a drink if they make it out alive (but she kisses him for good luck). A fist-fight or two and a short beating later, Ward lets Skye out of the maintenance closet so she can get to the nerve center and hack it.

While the quartet has a minute to breathe, Garrett suggests a plan to get to the situation room via the ventilation system and put two bullets in Hand's heart, which Coulson thinks is a TAD extreme. Garrett reminds him that it's a battle for SHIELD's soul and recounts details of what Coulson has been through lately, letting slip that Raina had been inside the machine. Coulson, realizing that the info about Raina wasn't in his mission notes, has a lightbulb moment - that Garrett is the Clairvoyant, which he confirms as a strike team bursts in. He tells them to take Garrett, as he's the Clairvoyant, but Garrett plays his trump card that Sitwell filled the ranks of the team, so those HYDRA members in the team kill the rest of their team. Garrett lines up the now trio, offering them the opportunity to join HYDRA, as he changed direction when he saw the tide turning. May declines, Coulson recognizes that Garrett is being a psychopath, and Fitz bravely says that he'll stick with SHIELD, as Garrett will suffer for what he's done. The emergency lights kick on (as Ward and Skye successfully took out the nerve center), so Coulson, May, and Fitz use this opportunity to take down Garrett and the HYDRA members of the strike team. Just as this fight wraps up, Hand, Simmons, Trip, and their crew show up, revealing that they heard everything. An irate Trip is restrained and Coulson takes Ward aside as Garrett is lead to a SHIELD plane heading for the Fridge.

As Hand gets ready to depart with two of her trusted agents and Garrett, she updates Coulson on the HYDRA situation, namely that HYDRA has been taking over SHIELD facilities around the world and that Cap took care of things in DC. She hands him a secure communicator (as they might be the highest ranking SHIELD agents who aren't dead) and leaves him with orders to hold things down at the Hub as Ward joins her to turn the key on Garrett's cell. The team (Trip included) boards the Bus and starts patching it up with the goal of gathering all their allies to survive. And on the jet bound for the Fridge, Hand suggests that Ward shoot the right Clairvoyant, but he instead shoots Hand and the two guards on either side of Garrett - and he gives the camera a knowing look as Garrett recounts one of his classic exploits.

***

It's safe to say that things have been kicked up to 11, what with the tie-in to 'Winter Soldier'. But is Ward a mole? We'll see tonight ... hopefully! Tonight, "Providence", guest starring Patton Oswalt (Agent Eric Koenig) and Adrian Pasdar (Colonel Glenn Talbot), airs at 9 PM Eastern, along with a sneak peek at 'Guardians of the Galaxy'.

(GIFs from marvelshieldagents + fuckyeahmelindamay + fyeahskye)

[theanglerfishmagazine]

'SHIELD' Files: "Yes Men"

Following the stinger at the end of "T.A.H.I.T.I.", who's going to stop Lorelei? Clearly the SHIELDies ... with some help from Lady Sif! Read on for the reviewcap of "Yes Men" before seven straight new episodes of 'SHIELD' return starting tonight with "End of the Beginning"!

The enthralled Jimmy pulls into a biker gang stop, and the leader, Rooster, approaches Lorelei. She's clearly impressed by their motorcycles, so she enthralls Rooster and his "army", ditching the hurt Jimmy by knocking him back into his car. On the Bus, meanwhile, Skye is feeling better, but Dr. Simmons is keeping a close eye on her. Ward pops down to the med-pod to update her on the Mike situation: Garrett is running point on hunting down Mike, and Ward thinks that Mike is beyond help because he didn't help Skye - little does Ward know that Mike has a cybernetic eye now. As for Coulson, he doesn't want his or Skye's blood sample results being uploaded to HQ; his brief meeting with Agent Sitwell (Maximiliano Hernandez) in an attempt to locate Fury doesn't go well, either. But he gets back to the Bus in time for a SHIELD alert briefing - there are massive energy readings in the skies over the California-Nevada border that match Dr. Selvig and Foster's findings, so the Asgardians are coming to town and SHIELD wants the SHIELDies to be the Welcome Wagon. As the team is enroute, Sif (Jamie Alexander) ports down in the middle of the road with a dire warning.

So Sif has shown up because she needs help finding Lorelei and the Bifrost only took her to the nearest coordinates where Lorelei ported down after escaping Asgard as a result of the Dark Elves attacking in 'Thor: The Dark World'. The SHIELDies welcome her and learn that 1) she has a special muzzle/choker that will shut Lorelei up, and 2) Lorelei's aural and tactile ways of persuasion only work on men. While the team searches for incidents near where Sif touched down, Lorelei gets a mite ticked off at the biker bar because 1) she's delivered cash instead of gold, and 2) Rooster's (a.k.a. Duane) wife barges into the bar and confronts her ... so Lorelei has Rooster get rid of the pesky noise with his hands around her throat. And back on the Bus, while Sif pours over police reports on the antiquated (by Asgardian standards) touch-screen tech, Coulson presses her for blue alien species, and she name-drops a few - Levians, Kree, Centaurians and Frost Giants among them, but few have ever visited Earth. Once the SHIELDies find that there's a rash of jewelry thefts and related crimes surrounding Rosie's Desert Oasis, they head out, armed with Icers (improved Night Night weaponry) to knock out Lorelei and any of her allies, but they take fire from enthralled cops outside the bar. So Sif provides cover (thanks to an Airstream trailer) for the SHIELDies and heads inside to clean the bar and stop Lorelei.

Ward, in an effort to help surround the bar, gets in a fistfight with Rooster before being enthralled by Lorelei, who slipped away during the chaos in the bar. They're off to someplace grand while FitzSimmons is tasked to maybe fix the collar, which took some buckshot during the bar fight, and Skye looks for Ward, even though he's trained to stay off the radar. And knowing Ward, the area, and "someplace grand", he's taken Lorelei to Caesar's Palace in Vegas, where he admits that the feelings he had for someone on his team are gone, so the two shack up in a hotel suite before working out the rest of the plan, namely taking Sif (or the SHIELDies) out of the equation. Sif and May bond a little over fighting styles, and Sif warns May that Ward is no longer the man she knew because of Lorelei's ways (Sif was in a similar situation eons ago). They're interrupted when word comes in that security cameras caught Lorelei and Ward in Vegas, so the SHIELDies raid the suite to find nothing, and they all head back to the Bus. Fitz has fixed the collar to Sif's surprise, and he presents it to her on her cot in the Cage before locking the door ... and then the Bus takes off with Ward and Lorelei at the helm. Coulson's on his own, as a dazed Fitz (who Coulson bluffs) reveals that Skye and Simmons are locked up in the med-pod. As for May, she's in the midst of a fight with Lorelei to get her plane back - and right about this time is when Ward opens the Cage roof from the cockpit. Sif nearly loses the collar ... but out the two of them go.

Ward joins Lorelei and May in the Bus's lounge (most likely having put the plane on autopilot), and May attempts to remind him of who he is. Lorelei taunts her by telling her that Ward is hers and that Ward had feelings for someone else (Skye, duh). Downstairs, Coulson manages to unblock the med-pod door and catches the two women up on what's happening on the Bus (narrowly missing an attempted beaning from Simmons). While Ward and May are in their standoff, Lorelei goes to claim Sif's sword from the Cage, but Sif surprises her, having snuck back in, and shuts the Cage door with the two of them inside. Fitz does his best to keep it locked from the outside, but Simmons surprises him and he gives chase, warning Ward (who is duking it out with May) while the two Asgardians fight with words and Sif's split sword. And once Fitz gets down to the cargo bay, Coulson proceeds to give him a shiner.

Inside the Cage, Sif manages to pin Lorelei and could end everything with a stab, but instead collars Lorelei and puts and end to her enchantments before leading her out into the lounge area. There, the no-longer-enthralled Ward insists that he's himself and receives a surprise right hook from May to finish off their fight. May lands the plane, and Sif and Lorelei ready for their return to Asgard, but before leading, Sif mentions that she's bound by her code, much like the SHIELDies and SHIELD, and that she moved past what Lorelei wrought in the past. Meanwhile, May heads off to run diagnostics on the Bus, but not before suggesting to Coulson that he talk things over (regarding what happened at the Guest House) with Skye. After the Bus takes off, Ward visits May in the cockpit to talk over what happened, but she calls their "thing" off because of honesty issues. And down in Skye's med-pod, Coulson kicks out FitzSimmons before revealing to Skye that both of them were treated with alien chemicals/hormones.

Skye is a little shocked, to say the least, but she's oddly optimistic, partially because Coulson saved her life and she's still with the team. Coulson, on the other hand, still wants answers and is willing to go after them himself ... as soon as Director Fury resurfaces. But in the meantime, this development is going to stay between them ... oh, and they're going to find the Clairvoyant first and make him/her pay. And unbeknownst to them, there's a tiny listening device/microphone in the med-pod that's wired up to the cockpit headset, and May proceeds to call a secure phone line with the message that Coulson knows.

***

So 'Agents of SHIELD' has definitely hit its stride, has it not, fellow SHIELDies? Let us know what you think, and we'll see you back here after "End of the Beginning" tonight. From here on out, it's seven new episodes in a row, ending with the season finale on May 13th!

(GIFs from marvelshieldagents)