Agents of SHIELD: Review: Series 2 Episode 13: One of Us

Cal pulls together a group who all have a beef with SHIELD…

And it’s time for Super-Villain Team-Up as Cal (who gives us a bit more of his own backstory along the way) entices three others to assist him against Phil Coulson and his team. They’ve all been put on the “index” by SHIELD and are either incarcerated or kept in some way from using their powers (although those powers are – with one exception we’ll come to – not particularly great). Cal takes them around the country in a motor home and they end up demonstrating their great capacity for evil in a way that will shock the world. No, strike that, they don’t. They knock out a few kids at a football field… Underwhelming doesn’t begin to describe it. (The exception, by the way, is Angar the Screamer, whose introduction here is hopefully a precursor to a proper use of his powers somewhere else in the MCU.)

This is counterpointed with further investigation into Skye, carried out by a psychiatrist (Blair Underwood) who turns out to be May’s ex-husband. There are some decent scenes between Skye and the doc, as well as with May – and even a minor reconciliation between Fitz and Simmons. The Hunter/Mockingbird/Mack scenario continues to roll along, with an interesting revelation at the end which hopefully links to Age of Ultron (and may be a way that that movie could be filmed last year without overly stifling SHIELD’s continuity).

Verdict: One of those episodes that passes the time entertainingly enough but doesn’t really stick too well in the memory afterwards – and SHIELD is better than that. 6/10

Paul Simpson