Spoiler Alert!

So, while I was all happy about the Holiday Drought ending so quickly, The Gifted and Gotham both skipped this week, leaving Agents of Shield as the last man standing in my lineup this week. Heh, figures.

On the bright side, The Gifted will be giving us a two-hour event, though, less happily, I am guessing that will be the season finale, but, then again, I expect it’ll be plenty exciting! 🙂

But, as for this week…

Agents of Shield

5.07 “Together or Not at All”

So, the theme of this episode is: flee, escape, outrun, get away, hide, survive!

On the heels of their dramatic exit from Kasius’ little death-match party, Daisy and Fitz-Simmons are particularly motivated to do exactly that. They’re barely managing to slip just beyond the Kree’s fingertips, making it up as they go. (improvisation = important skill for agents of shield) They pause for just a moment so Daisy can catch her breath and Simmons can change, but Kasius’ activates Simmons’ implant in her ear, so Fitz has to get it out (owch!) while Daisy subdues a Kree guard, and she almost blows that because she reflexively tried to use her powers, which she can’t do while the inhibitor is still on. So, she has to adapt again, now that she’s finally mastered her powers and become reliant on them.

ADD moment: is it just me, or are the Kree a bit weaker then they were when they were first introduced?

They make for Fitz’s ship, hoping to get away and then make a plan, but Kasius blows up their ship. They’re stranded, supposedly with nowhere to go… but when “nowhere” includes a labyrinthine structure like the Lighthouse, with so many corners to wriggle around, the chase can go on for awhile yet. They nearly get caught more than once, and Fitz gets injured, but they’re doing well for themselves in an increasingly-dire situation.

Back where they’re fleeing from, Kasius now has a new scar on his face (poetic, but a slit throat would have been better than a cut cheek) is beset by both his brother and Sinara.

The latter is taking it rather personally, as well she ought to, that she was thrown into the ring to die by the Destroyer’s hand, betrayed by he who she had served so well. Kasius, much like an unfaithful boyfriend, is trying to talk her back to his side, playing it like he had faith in her strength, that she would survive somehow, and how he needs her so much. That last is pretty much the only part I buy, that he needs her physical power. Kasius is so close to being restored to his place of honor, somewhere besides this backwater dungeon, but he needs her strength to get him there. He wants her to get inside their enemy’s head and figure out where they would go, to get ahead of them.

She has some competition in this hunt. Faulnak’s brother brought his own “greatest warrior” and sends him to hunt down the fugitive trio and kill anyone in his way. This apparently includes random servants who simply don’t know where his prey is (which is stupid, to kill willy-nilly like that).

The difference between the brothers can be seen in their servants. Faulnak respects brute power and bloodshed, and holds it as a sign of strength that one does not need distance from an enemy to kill them, as with a firearm. He also holds it against Kasius that he fled a losing battle, shaming the family and failing to protect their subjects or even die in the attempt. So, he has a certain flavor of honor, if he’s concerned with the subjects his army protects, but it seems very short-sighted to the point of stupidity to me. How has this man not died in battle already, if he’s never retreated and never killed anyone himself except at close range? Success in battle, let alone prolonged war, requires a bit more flexibility than that, as does the proper governing of an interstellar empire.

Still, Faulnak has some fair points against his brother, especially in regards to end results. Even more, his brother is a coward… but cowardice is not so far removed from cunning.

It’s a bad idea to turn your back on a coward.

Elsewhere, Coulson, Mack, and Yo-Yo are trying to protect Flint, but without Tess – a loss that hits Flint hard – they’ve lost their guide through this future society, and they’re keenly aware that a direct threat from the Kree will absolutely inspire the locals to turn on them in a heartbeat. It’s a grim situation, made all the worse with the arrival of their friends in their hiding spot, with two Kree hunters in hot pursuit.

Fortunately, Deke is with them. Yes, he managed to get out of his locked room and he comes to the rescue now. First, he finds Daisy and Fitz-Simmons and, despite their substantial, well-founded distrust, he leads them to the others. They arrive just in time for Flint to slip out and get justice for Tess by killing the Kree guardsman. He’s gutsy, has a potent weapon at his command, and he’s not stupid, but he’s still very young, inexperienced, and not entirely competent. He has about two seconds of triumph before Sinara hits him, intending to use him as bait. It works fairly well, her prey has to come to her, and with Faulnak’s man catching up, the agents can only manage to get back to the refinery, where they’re locked and barricaded in (thank you, Flint, for burying the doors in rocks) with no way out.

Fortunately, Deke is still with them. Nobody trusts him because he’s already betrayed them once, and trust doesn’t come easy to this lot in the first place. But they go with his plan, to use his levitation device to take them up a shaft, then use Coulson’s plan of taking the Trawler to the surface, where everything has been pointing them to and where the Kree won’t quickly follow. They make it out just in time, and then they split up.

Flint feels responsibility towards his people in the Lighthouse, so he won’t abandon them. And Mack, who bonded with him, won’t abandon him, which means Yo-Yo stays behind too. The three of them will handle the Lighthouse while Coulson gets answers and makes a better overall plan.

After Coulson flies the Trawler out, that is, and up, and lands on the surface, which, considering he is no pilot and the Trawler is not built for landing, goes about as well as can be hoped, which is to say, terribly, and bumpy, and ending in a crash.

Back down below, Sinara surprisingly kills Faulnak’s man, just after he blew the refinery open. Got him in the back with her floating spheres. She returns empty-handed to inform Kasius and Faulnak of both the humans’ escape and how she killed her rival. Faulnak is dismissive of Kasius, who has apparently been sending people to die, instead of straight-up killing them, but they’ve been managing to survive instead, and now his failures are mounting towards a disaster. But as for Sinara, Faulnak is intrigued. He is interested. He suddenly sees the promise in her, the strength, the power, the things he holds as important, and he immediately tries to woo her away from his brother.

She looked interested, but we’ll never know what she would have chosen, because Kasius stabs his brother in the back before she can answer, and this, too, seems to please her. Kasius takes a moment to gloat at his brother, how Sinara killed the generals who would not let him retreat from that battle they were talking about. Sinara understood, as Kasius does, that he has no place on the battlefield. He’s just not built for it. So, Sinara takes care of the violence, usually, while Kasius focuses his strengths where they are more useful. It’s a partnership of sorts between them.

Faulnak curses his brother for a coward… but cowards are still very dangerous any time they happen to be standing behind your back. Kasius finishes his brother off from the front, looking into his brother’s eyes as he dies. Then, with his face painted in his brother’s blood, he is practically drooling at the chance to present the Destroyer to his father and “avenge his death” at the same time. Surely that will result in his restoration, especially since Faulnak’s death leaves an opening at the top to be filled.

Which, makes me think that Kasius the Elder probably won’t long survive any reunion with his son either. I mean, why stop at Number 2?

Finally, up on the surface, we see May struggling to survive. I’d bet on her instead of a roach any day of the week, but with her injuries, she can barely even hide. When a roach finds her, all she can do is stand her ground. Then Enoch arrives and kills it (ah, that’s where he went!). He’s a friend of Fitz and he has no tasty insides for the roaches to drain, so they ignore him, to their fatal detriment. He’s catching her up when she realizes he’s the one who threw them all into the future, but she holds off on kicking his butt. He’s there to look after her. Easier done with the roaches than with the approaching gravity storm, which they two of them only weather because help arrives to anchor them to the ground.

May awakes to find she and Enoch are on the Zephyr, apparently, or what’s left of it. And their host is none other than the future-seeing Inhuman, now an elderly woman: Robin.

So, almost everyone has managed to escape and survive, and apparently Morse and Hunter did their job very well, seeing as Robin survived the end of the world. Maybe now they can start getting some answers about what happened and how they can go back in time again to prevent it.