Agents of SHIELD: Review: Series 2 Episode 10: What They Become

After Skye finally meets her father, events in the hidden city come to a head…

Some may have complained that not enough happened during the first series of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD; they certainly can’t say that with a straight face about this year. This mid-season finale – the show isn’t back until March, to allow for the eight weeks of Peggy Carter’s adventures – moves every single one of the main characters forward in some way (in more than one case, terminally). As with the previous episode, you may well want to go back and rewatch this to pick up on the bits that were easily missed in the melee.

One of the bigger mysteries of the show was Skye’s background, and now it seems as if we know who – or rather, in Marvel Universe terms, what – she is. To those up to speed with the Marvel comics universe, the revelation that Skye’s real name is Daisy confirmed that she is almost certainly a version of Daisy Johnson, aka Quake, one of Nick Fury’s Secret Warriors; more importantly, the scene at the end, with the transformation of both Skye and Raina after the opening of the obelisk, made it pretty certain that they are the MCU version of The Inhumans (who have a movie coming up, remember) – which means there are finally some proper superheroes/villains on the show (depending which side Raina chooses). And that’s before Kyle MacLachlan was referred to as Cal – the real name of the supervillain Mr Hyde. To those who don’t follow the comics closely, it was clear that the obelisk triggered some form of mutation on those who had the alien blood – which was unfortunate for the member of the SHIELD team in there with them!

After the hair-masked fight last week, it was good to see MacLachlan and Clark Gregg getting into it for their encounter, and I’m looking forward to seeing how Skye deals with her real and surrogate fathers in the back half of the year, as well as the fallout from the deaths and believed-deaths of the last couple of weeks. And as for Ward? Jury’s out once again!

Verdict: Going out on a high for its break, SHIELD is finally far nearer the show I was expecting when it was announced. 8/10

Paul Simpson