‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ Episode 2.9 “Ye Who Enter Here” (8 out of 10) Created by Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen; Starring Clark Gregg, Chloe Bennet, Ming-Na Wen, Brett Dalton; Tuesdays on ABC.
In case the ominous title doesn’t give it away, SHIELD takes some abuse during this episode. We also get an official name drop regarding that mysterious blue dead guy that supplied Coulson (Clark Gregg) and Skye (Chloe Bennet) with the goo that saved their lives—which might have caused me to squee just a little bit (SPOILER: the name rhymes with “squee.”)
Other, less stupidly-revealed spoilers ahead.
Skye’s Weird Dream
As much as I wanted to gloss over the episode’s opening scene, it’s hard not to pick apart a dream sequence to try and figure out how it relates to the story so far. Perhaps the most heavy-handed image in this scene is that of Coulson and May (Ming-Na Wen) talking cryptically about making sacrifices while carrying a baby. It’s clear that she’s accepted Coulson and May as surrogate parents, given the fact that her mother was tortured to death and her father may or may not be a full-fledged supervillain. This whole moment hearkened back to the rebellious teen version of Skye that we had in season one—which was my least favorite version of her.
I’m still wondering about the music box. The fact that it turned Skye to stone made me think that it was some kind of place holder for the Diviner, so perhaps Skye is having memories of the Diviner as some kind of childhood toy? Or maybe this is some foreshadowing regarding her inevitable confrontation with her father. I guess it could just be a messed up music box, too. I don’t know Skye’s life.
Coulson and the City
It’s easy to get lulled into a sense of security with Coulson briefing his team about their upcoming objectives. While he splits the team in half—one half to go with him to find the entrance to the mystery city that everyone’s talking about, the other to track down Raina and bring her in—he calls the shots with the dry confidence that we’ve come to expect from SHIELD’s director.
This section of the show started off slowly, but prettily—Adrianne Palicki strolling through the streets of Puerto Rico is remarkably easy to watch—only to devolve into something both nightmarish and tragic. The local legends surrounding the entrance to the city built a good amount of apprehension and uncertainty, which offered a satisfyingly freaky scene in which Mac (Henry Simmons) becomes host to some ancient beast and starts throwing his teammates into things. The interaction between Mac and Fitz (Iain DeCaestecker) was especially hard to watch as Fitz had to muster up the guts to shoot the person who has become his closest friend (he doesn’t though. Morse electrocutes Mac in the nick of time).
All in all, the Coulson stuff was decent. I liked seeing this well-laid plan completely blow up in SHEILD’s face. That kind of thing doesn’t happen too often, and it served to establish the “Empire Strikes Back” tone of the episode.
Raina Plus Koenig Times Two
Raina (Ruth Negga) has become an interesting character this season. Her time spent on the run from SHIELD and HYDRA has established her as a bit of a wild card, and it’s a role that suits her character. Tonight, May’s detachment was assigned to bring Raina in for safekeeping, which is going fine until Skye lets slip that Whitehall is looking for someone who can touch the Diviner without getting disintegrated (Raina can do that). Sure, you can blame Ward (Brett Dalton) for figuring out how to hack the SHIELD tracker that was implanted inside Raina, but I blame Skye for the sudden HYDRA intervention on their quinjet.
The most entertaining moments of this storyarc come from the agents Koenig (Patton Oswalt), who may or may not be clones from a classified SHIELD experiment. Either way, it’s fun to see Oswalt play off of himself, and he does a good job of switching between geek and badass. Raina’s scenes with Skye are also intense. Even though Raina might be manipulating Skye, she’s gotten some kind of ball rolling within Skye’s mind with all her talk about “special” humans and being “worthy” to enter this underground city. She also reveals that the dead blue alien on ice with SHIELD is part of the Kree, an alien race that features heavily in the Marvel universe.
This excited me very much. So far, the Marvel cinematic universe hasn’t really gotten in touch with the Kree, and I would be totally down with their inclusion on SHIELD.
The final scenes of the episode end badly for our special agents. Ward takes Raina and Skye with him during an aerial assault on SHIELD’s quinjet, and there’s nothing anyone can really do about it—but, when we see Whitehall (Reed Diamond) at the end of the episode, he curses Ward for not destroying the quinjet entirely. My theory is that Ward is in fact acting as a double double agent so he can reunite Skye with her father and let the two of them take revenge on Whitehall.
Verdict
As weird as this feels to say, it’s nice to see SHIELD get knocked around a bit. The show was making Coulson’s team feel a bit too invincible—they were almost literally everywhere they needed to be at exactly the right time this season. The supporting cast remains stellar as always, with the standouts being Oswalt and Nick Blood, upon whom I’ve been nursing a steady man-crush. I’m not a fan of the stuff between Jemma (Elizabeth Henstridge) and Fitz, though. It is very awkward to tell someone you love them right before you get jettisoned out of an airplane and nearly drown together, but it might be time to give it a rest between those two.
Only one more episode before the winter hiatus! Things are happening!