Spoiler Alert!

So, the bad news: with The Gifted having finished its first season last week and Gotham twiddling its thumbs until Spring, Agents of Shield was the only show in my lineup to air this week.

Good news: it was fun anyway! 🙂

Better news: you may look forward to the addition of Black Lightning to my lineup, starting next week! 😉

Agents of Shield

5.09 “Best Laid Plans”

Things did not go the way Kasius wanted this episode, did they? Somehow, I am not too sad about that! 🙂

So, the action is mostly divided between what’s happening up top and what’s happening down below.

Up top, we have an increasing gravity storm, making it all the more difficult for the beleaguered agents to return to the Lighthouse. All they’ve got to work with is a many-decades-old ruin of a Zephyr, and one which even they do not know any more. They knew it like the back of their hand before, but now it’s all reconfigured… which Fitz-Simmons realize is deliberate! Zephyr is supposed to fly one more time, to take them back to the Lighthouse, to Flint and the monolith, to get back home and save the world!

Of course, everything is breaking down and shooting off sparks because… well, it’s an old ruin with nothing available to make repairs. So, they can’t fly. But, with the gravity storm trying to take them up into the sky anyway, why not just let it? If they can get high enough, up into the outer atmosphere, the Zephyr has been modified, by Fitz’s future-past self, to maneuver in space.

They find more gravitonium, among other modifications, and realize that’s what’s making the gravity on the Zephyr and possibly what keeps what’s left of the Earth and its atmosphere in place. And, very possible, what broke the Earth in the first place, into a shattered sphere with gravity storms which are highly reminiscent of the effects of gravitonium in general.

In effect, the plane didn’t make it to the Lighthouse before, but fell into the ground, but now they need it to rise once more, to take them that last spit of distance, through a storm much like the one that brought it down, to complete its journey at long last… and in style! 🙂

The residents evacuate, running for cover from the gravity storm in the caves. Voss is among them, as Coulson left his fate for Deke to decide, and Deke let him live. As Voss tells it, Shield tried to stop some aliens come from the sky or something, and lost, and something about that, and Daisy’s involvement, broke the world. Somehow I still think Daisy is perfectly innocent of what she’s accused of, but she herself is getting very scared of it. She doesn’t want to destroy the world, so she thinks they ought to leave her inhibitor in, and active, though Coulson disagrees completely. Deke, however, has a choice to make, and for a time it looks like he might choose to kill Daisy rather than risk this apocalyptic future.

That choice comes to a head when Sinara catches up to them, boarding the Zephyr just before May takes it up with a gravity wave. Daisy went to unlatch the anchors holding them in place, but they came apart on their own. With Daisy lacking her powers, Sinara had a clear advantage. Daisy was putting up a good fight, but I’d have bet on Sinara in a straight up fight. Though, she probably would have won a lot more easily if she’d still had those floating metal balls of hers, which… no idea why she didn’t have them. Anyway, Deke used one of the gauntlets to pull Sinara off Daisy, but she pretty much went right over him like a small speed bump. Daisy and Deke only won, and survived, partially by luck, because Sinara floated up to attack Daisy again, and couldn’t change direction when Daisy wielded a handy sharp, metal pipe, impaling her straight through the chest.

That’s Daisy, two, and Sinara, zero. 🙂

The Zephyr‘s final flight, tumultuous though it is, is a smashing success, such that Enoch actually says it was a good plan, after continually trying to convince them to shelter in the caves with the others. LOL. 🙂

Back down below, Kasius grows ever more angry and frustrated with his uppity human subjects. His attempt to wipe them out with the roaches has failed, and he loses eight soldiers once the humans have armed themselves. In response, he thinks a display of power over life and death, of “godhood,” will bring them back into line.

He resurrects Tess with an infusion of Kree blood, a demonstration that he can give life, and sends her to deliver terms: either hand over Flint and all the kids, or burn into extinction “with the push of a button.” The latter option is to be completed with bombs that have been set on each level, rich with enough oxygen to incinerate everyone. It’s a knife at the throat of the last remnant of humanity, and Kasius expects the humans to do as he wants, especially with Tess as his messenger, so afraid and still reeling from the trauma of being murdered.

He’s not counting on the wily defiance of Mack and Yo-Yo, or the humans’ unity. He has carefully nurtured a humanity that epitomizes the act of turning against one another in self-interest, and that is all he foresees them doing. But if there is one thing humanity both can and should fight to their very last breath for, it’s defending the children. Yo-Yo already made sure to remove the metrics, an act which, itself, is a declaration of independence, of breaking away from the rule of the Kree. They survived the roaches together, they’re fighting Kree together, and they’re going to keep their children safe from Kasius together, or die together.

That last option is what Mack and Yo-Yo most want to avoid. So, they have a plan: they rally the leaders of the various levels, with some parting words of encouragement, and they offer themselves up to Kasius… with leverage to even the playing field. They send Tess to Kasius with their reply, that he is to come meet them, or they, “with the push of a button,” will incinerate his ability to make new Inhumans. A frustrating notion for him, so he relents, and the standoff begins. They mostly insult each other, the two agents holding a knife at Kasius’ ambition as he holds one at humanity. There is not going to be any ground given today, only taken and lost.

Which is exactly what the agents want.

Kasius is ready for Yo-Yo, with a force field between her and him, but Flint arrives, saying “it’s done.” The boy has been a source of concern for Mack, not wanting the boy to become a killer, but Yo-Yo is more practical. She has experience with and a particular distaste for people like Kasius, so she’s happy to have help in killing the bad guys, but Mack is a protective father figure, so he wanted to keep him out of what comes next. Which, as it happens, involves a desperate fight against the enemy, but that only comes after “it’s done.”

Kasius presses the button to kill all the humans, not knowing that the humans have already located all of his bombs and put them all in the same spot, on Level 25, while moving all the people up. The explosion takes out the entire level, isolating them from Kasius. They’re free now, and they don’t need him. He can’t just meddle with them like he has before, and he can get them across the open space.

Mind you, making them truly safe will involve taking out any other way Kasius can reach them, like, through space, with spaceships. So, hardly “safe,” really, but certainly protected for the moment, and out of range of the battle down below between the agents and the Kree.

That last kicks off with Mack pressing his own button, and actually burning what he wanted to burn. The Kree are safe behind the force field, but Kasius watches his work go up in flames as Mack, Yo-Yo, Flint, and Tess escape. And now comes the impotent screaming in rage. 🙂

Mack and Daisy manage to get each other on the radio, the two teams soon to converge and fight their way back to the past.

Small detail: Kasius apparently already knows about the incoming agents. His mystified subordinate is told only that Kasius has a seer too.

Between that and the preview for the next episode, it seems it will take more than just the agents’ current momentum to carry them the rest of the way forward. And with time itself in flux, who can say who will make it back to the past?