Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – The Man Behind the Shield Review

This week Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. delivered another twist, maybe the most impressive one yet this season. The episode started as a rescue mission, but ended in a trap. Let’s dive in and see what went down on this week’s episode, "The Man Behind the Shield." This episode was woven together using the present mission and a past mission with young Coulson and May. Let’s go back in time first. Coulson and May were on a mission in Russia to secure an object that was found. It sounded pretty simple, but the mission was much more than that. It was when Coulson and May first started working together, and while they were very flirty, they didn’t quite trust each other as partners yet. Even though they eventually got what they came for, they landed themselves in hot water with some Russian agents. Guess who just happened to be part of that unit? That’s right: one of the men that kidnapped Mace and is working with Radcliffe. It appeared that this mission just a got a new motive: revenge. The Russian in question is named Anton Ivanov and not only did he hate Inhumans, but he also hated Coulson. He was hoping to get two for one with this kidnapping scheme. Coulson and the team followed his clues to find the Russians' base. They assumed they would be able to find Mace and May, but the mission didn’t go quite as planned, which seems to be a theme lately. While they found Mace nearly beaten to death, May was nowhere to be found. Coulson decided they should regroup and continue searching for May later, so that’s what they did. As Fitz and Simmons were regrouping, they started recalling the mission and realized that some things weren’t quite adding up. There was a chunk of time missing, their comms were down half of the time, and things just weren’t making sense. Then Simmons realized the base's alarm that notices if an LMD is on the base had gone off, but was overwritten by someone, but who? With her credentials, Simmons found out it was Coulson and then also realized that ALL four of their teammates had been replaced. That’s right now Mace, Coulson, Mack, and Daisy are androids. I really enjoyed this twist. When they were talking about missing time and things not feeling right, I thought for sure the answer would just be in the framework, which would have been really annoying. While this android storyline isn’t ideal, it does makes things interesting and it’s exciting that Simmons and Fitz are the ones left alone on the base with them. I definitely don’t envy their position, but it should be fun watching them get out of this. It was also pretty smart on the show's writers part to make the major villains this season clones of their team. They didn’t have to worry about hiring and paying for any other outside actors and they don’t have to worry about killing anyone off because the bad guys are just androids. We’ll see how this pans out.

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Overall:

- It was a strong episode, but the flashback didn’t had much to the story. We knew May and Coulson flirted and worked together before. The only new information we got was that May might have started dated Coulson if she hadn’t met Andrew (her husband) first. None of that is really shocking though and I just don’t ship May and Coulson. I’m over this storyline that they are forcing. - The twist was excellent. This season has been full of some failed or just lame twists, but this one was good. - Mack again had some great one liners and I was actually glad he scolded Fitz a little. “The line between scientist and mad scientist is paper thin.” It’s a good point and should make Fitz think twice about the technology he develops in the future. So far Aida and the framework are doing a lot more harm than good. - I’m also interested to see what the object was Fitz and May secured in their past mission. Did Coulson really forget what is was? Is it important to the story? Was it something Inhuman related? We’ll have to wait and see if Fitz and Simmons get out of this mess when Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns next Tuesday.