Spoiler Alert!

It was fairly par for the course this week. Meaning, Agents of Shield delivered a good, entertaining episode that wraps up last week’s events entirely. Though… I can’t quite put my finger on it, but did that feel slightly lackluster to anyone else?

Agents of Shield

6.09 “Collision Course Pt. 2”

Picking up from last episode’s cliffhanger, we have Fitz-Simmons on a ship with Izel and the dead crew on her puppet strings as they descend towards a shrike tower which has an alien nuke being delivered to it on an auto-driving truck with Deke, Daisy, May, and Snowflake trapped on it while Sarge joined Pax and Jakko on the Zephyr to take it from Mack, Yo-Yo, and the other agents as they’re trying to handle both of the colliding crises. That about cover it?

On the ground, Snow is only able to tell them what the bomb does, so it falls to Deke to try to disarm it within five minutes. May keeps her calm very well, but there just isn’t enough time to disarm it. It will go off when it senses the impact of the truck with the tower. But that’s the key: it goes off with the impact. Daisy has the brilliant idea, at the last moment, to quake the bomb, but in a way that it doesn’t sense any outside vibrations, so the truck crashes, yet the bomb doesn’t sense it, so it doesn’t go off. Yay!

Now, that just leaves them trapped in the middle of a cloud of angry shrike. Open door, see swarm coming for them, close door quickly! They barricade everything, especially the windows, but it’s a losing battle. There’s so many of them, all of them coming at once, from every direction, it’s just a matter of time until they get in. Daisy figures out a solution for the second time in minutes: she opens a door at the end of the truck, so they’ll all come in that way, in a nice choke point, and she just quakes the entire swarm to dust all at once. Very dangerous, but it works.

In the sky, Sarge’s fortunes change drastically. He’s constantly had the advantage thus far, largely because of his wealth of experience, but his weaknesses all come to bear on him all at once.

It starts out well enough for him. He sends Pax to claim the engines while he and Jakko take the bridge, a standard, effective tactic most of the time. He even has a shield that can keep Yo-Yo at bay. But Yo-Yo gets to Pax before he can set his shield up, and Jakko does not share Sarge’s capacity to cast everyone else aside without hesitation. Once Yo-Yo gets him alone, she’s able to talk to him, remind him what he fights for. As Sarge left Snowflake behind, and shot Pax in the chest, he’s forfeit all chance of loyalty from the people who follow him.

When they make contact with Izel on the ship, Sarge is clearly outclassed there too. It was him who destroyed Chronica, but that was just to try and kill Izel, who has much more experience than him, and also much more knowledge. It’s a disturbing war of words, one which indicates that Sarge has no memories of his past beyond a hundred years ago, and doesn’t even has a past beyond that. He just goes from world to world, destroying them all just to get at his enemy.

Sarge loses his cool, he has less experience than someone Izel, he forfeits loyalty by casting his people aside, so he is alone and unraveling and weak when Mack gets lose, thanks to Yo-Yo slipping him the key, and takes him down. It’s a pretty even fight, as Sarge is surprisingly strong, resourceful, and determined, but Mack is bigger, more resilient, more controlled. It takes a few minutes, but Mack wins and Sarge loses. He’s left in a containment pod while Mack, Yo-Yo, Davis, and Jakko go to the ship to rescue Fitz-Simmons.

Speaking of, elsewhere in the sky, Fitz-Simmons begin to realize what’s going on. They notice that the crew is not behaving right, courtesy of Izel. They’re not keen on taking whatever it is to the ground below, but they’re not in a position to help. It’s only when Izel senses the destruction of the tower below that she senses anything amiss with her plans. She guesses Sarge is nearby, and immediately flees. She has relatively little to work with this time, and he’s intent on killing her.

Izel seems entirely unconcerned by what she’s doing to people. They’re all dullards and morons, after all, so she gives them a higher purpose that only costs them their lives and free will and humanity and all that. She’s absolutely evil. The only reason Fitz-Simmons is spared, for the moment, is because they’re smart. They might have something to offer in communicating with their friends at Shield, too. So, they get the comms working, and get a distress call to Davis, who distresses right back because, right then, he has Sarge pointing a gun at his neck.

Fitz-Simmons are surprised to hear Coulson’s voice, and they have no acceptable explanation to give Izel for recognizing it. Still, she taunts him, and wins their little war of words. But she also knows that someone is coming, which gives her another advantage.

While Fitz-Simmons run and hide, and the agents come for their friends, she is singing, which, the last time we heard that, she was making a shrike. The agents all get parted from each other, Mack and Yo-Yo finding Fitz-Simmons, but Jakko and Davis hold the line, and then find Izel, choosing to strike while they can. I’m afraid that moment where we lost sight of Davis is a moment where Izel put a shrike in him and escaped, though I can’t guess exactly how she got off the ship.

With shrike zombies closing in around them, the agents get out by use of that portal technology, taking them to the truck where Daisy and the others are, and there are happy reunions. Then Jakko, once a baker, takes the bomb back to the ship and, far from any civilians that Sarge could dismiss as collateral damage, sets off the bomb. It’s a magnificent boom, but it would have been better if Izel had been caught in it.

Afterwards, Shield celebrates their apparent victory, and toasts those they lost in the fight.

Deke shows off to Fitz-Simmons, who just drink up and enjoy the show. May opines how she knew Sarge wasn’t Coulson but still got played by him, while Yo-Yo drinks to Jakko’s heroism. Daisy talks with Mack, ruminating on the past and future, and encourages him to get back with Yo-Yo. Snowflake has to be kept back from killing Sarge, who assures her it wasn’t personal (not to him, at least) while he’s being escorted to holding. Daisy has Snowflake locked up for being a murderer (Deke gets her a television) though Deke tries to play it off like Daisy is jealous of what they got going. And Davis seems to fall asleep while talking with Piper.

Mack eventually talks to Yo-Yo, admitting the he messed up with her. He was certain he’d be too worried about her when things went bad on a mission, but the entire time things were going wrong earlier, he was calm, because he knew she could handle herself. So, he’s asking for another chance, starting with a chance to earn her forgiveness.

She responds by closing the door before he can leave and kissing him. I’m guessing that’s a “yes,” then!

Episode ends with May killing Sarge.

I’m guessing she was being controlled by a shrike, probably come to her out of Davis.

So, a lot of stuff happens but the agents come through… and now they really need to worry.