Agents of SHIELD Ends With A Bang And Some Tears

SPOILERS FOR THE SEASON 3 FINALE FOLLOW!

By: Tyler Miller

Agents of SHIELD wrapped up it’s third season with a two-hour action packed season finale that started off running and never let up. Well it did let up for a bit, but only for the emotional parts.

Everything started with a weird dream that Daisy had of her and Coulson stuck on what appeared to Maveth, but was actually Earth. She woke up and got an update from Simmons on what everyone else on the team was doing. Mack, Lincoln, Elena, and May were going to a missile silo to stop Hive from releasing his toxin while Fitz, Talbot, and Coulson worked to get the kill codes that would stop the launch. Once they landed, May and Lincoln went to the uplink to get the codes to work while Elena and Mack stayed behind and set up a machine of some sort. Everything happened at a breakneck pace since they had mere minutes to stop the launch, and they managed to do it just in the nick of time.

Needless to say, this only managed to piss off Hive since his plans were once again foiled by those meddling agents of SHIELD. Hive sends Radcliffe to the missile to fix it manually along with two of his primitive Inhumans, while he goes to find the team and kill them himself. He makes it to the room Lincoln and May were in, but only Lincoln is there as May went to head up to the missile itself. Hive taunts Lincoln some and then threatens to consume his body before chasing after him. Lincoln manages to make it back to Mack and Elena with Hive right behind him, but they haven’t finished building the machine. Elena uses her powers to get it done and then Lincoln uses his to activate it. Turns out that were building a different version of the memory machine to use against Hive since he has the memories of the people he’s taken over. Elena then goes to save any hostages that are there while Lincoln and Mack make it to the exit.

Giyera and James find Hive and see he’s going kind of crazy. He manages to compose himself enough to tell Giyera to dissasemble the warhead so that they can still use it, so he heads off to do that. Meanwhile, Radcliffe is trying to fix the warhead when May arrives and starts fighting a bunch of the primitives. She almost gets beaten when Radcliffe kills one of them, saving her in the process and asking her to take him as well. They get out the building and meet up with Mack’s crew as they free the hostages as well. Hive comes outside before they can completely get away though and gets ready try and sway Elena and Lincoln. Elena uses her powers to drop a device under him before he can do anything, causing a gel containment chamber to come down and freeze Hive in place, capturing the bastard.

Everyone goes back to SHIELD HQ and are enjoying their victory over Hive. The base goes into lockdown and Fitz and Simmons go to work with Radcliffe on a cure for the primitives while Mack, Lincoln, and Coulson start to unload their equipment. Lincoln then announces that once Hive is done for that he’s leaving SHIELD, and both Coulson and Mack don’t agree with him, but leave it alone when Coulson says he isn’t going to tell Daisy that they’ve caught Hive yet because she wants to kill him herself. Mack decides to go tell her anyway and grabs his jacket, but drops Elena’s cross in the process.

He meets with Daisy and the two of them have a real emotional moment together, as she breaks down while he hugs her and forgives her for what she did while with Hive. She tells him how Hive has to be destroyed and how she feels guilty for everything that’s happened. Meanwhile, Fitz goes to the hangar to check on Hive’s containment cell and make sure he can come in the base. Before he goes he ends up grabbing a jacket and Elena’s cross, putting it in the jacket pocket. While he’s checking on it he notices that one of the containers in the hangar came from a place called Absolution, something that they’d heard of but never knew exactly what it was.

Before he can stop an agent from going near it, the container explodes thanks to Giyera and James remotely detonating it from not too far away. It causes the agent that was near it to turn into a primitive and begin to go after everyone else in the room. More and more agents end up being turned into primitives as the team works to get a door open for Fitz, and they manage to just in the nick of time as a primitive almost got him and turned him as well.

The primitives then free Hive from his containment cell and begin to make their way into the base while he goes after the Zephyr since Daisy told him it can go suborbital; the perfect vehicle to deliver his warhead and toxin. Mack warns Coulson and the others about this while Daisy takes it upon herself to confront Hive. Except she doesn’t want to fight him; she wants him to sway her again! He attempts to, but it doesn’t work because she was made immune to it when Lash saved her. She gets pissed and the two of them get into an awesome fight.

Daisy kicks some major ass using her martial arts training and her powers together. Just look at her!

Look at her go!

Kick his ass Daisy!!

Hive still manages to win the battle and captures her, putting her in the containment chamber on the zephyr when Giyera and James arrive. Meanwhile, Coulson, Lincoln, and Radcliffe head off elsewhere in the base while Mack and Elena are heading to the armory to try and lock it down before the primitives get there. On the way they come across a primitive that shoots at Mack, but Elena uses her powers to stop the bullets and ends up getting shot in the process. The primitives then take out the power making things worse for everyone. Mack and Elena come across Coulson’s group and they all take shelter in the workshop, while Simmons takes shelter in a boiler room. With the base in chaos, Hive and his team start to leave in the Zephyr. What they don’t know though is that May and Fitz are stowed away on the plane as well.

Back in the workshop, Elena is bleeding out incredibly fast and the crew doesn’t have anything to slow the bleeding. Their only solution is to cauterize the wound with a blowtorch since they can’t get to the lab as there are primitives outside, so Mack ends up doing it. Over in the boiler room, the primitives get in and almost find Simmons. They leave though when they hear someone else screaming. It’s then when Simmons realizes that increased heat will cause the primitives to go blind, so she turns the heat up in the boiler. Radcliffe realizes this is why the heat has increased and heads to Coulson’s office with the rest of the group.

On the Zephyr, May and Fitz come out of hiding and go to the Daisy’s containment chamber to get her out. Daisy doesn’t want to be let out, but May is trying to talk to her and convince her otherwise. She gets cut short by Giyera who knocks her out and holds Fitz at gunpoint. Fitz however manages to kill Giyera with a hidden invisible pistol and let Daisy out. The two of them bring May into a back room and Fitz gives Daisy his jacket. She soon realizes that she’s wearing the jacket and has the cross that she saw in her vision, accepting that she’s the one who dies.

At SHIELD, Coulson’s group makes it back to his office where Simmons is hiding. He calls in a remote Quinjet to get them out of there and to a hospital for Elena while he goes after Hive and has Talbot use the military to take back the base. Back on the Zephyr, Giyera’s body is brought to Hive who gets even more pissed now. He sends James after May, Fitz and Daisy when the Quinjet arrives and decides to go to the Quinjet himself. When he gets there he comes across Coulson who’s ready to fight him and kill him. And after a long wait we FINALLY get to see Hive’s true face!

As he approaches Coulson’s to consume his body, it becomes revealed that he’s been talking to a hologram this whole time and the entire team is on the Zephyr. So now Hive is furious beyond measure. Lincoln comes across James and they fight, with May delivering the knockout blow. At that moment Daisy turns the corner and sees Lincoln, but Lincoln has an explosive attached to him from James that goes off and injures him pretty badly. Fitz and Simmons do what they can for him at the moment, but things aren’t looking good for him at all. Him and Daisy share a moment with each other and he realizes that she’s going to go in the Quinjet to die because that’s what has to happen, but he implores her to not go. Daisy being the person she is goes anyway.

Coulson explains to the rest of the team what the plan is involving the Quinjet, but then they realize that Daisy’s gone to fly the Quinjet into space herself. They can’t stop her though because they have to fight a bunch of primitives first. As they fight, Hive comes down and then proceeds to go up to the Quinjet to stop Daisy. They handle the primitives with relative ease and then head up to the bridge to try and stop Daisy. As for Daisy, she’s getting the warhead on the Quinjet when Hive appears behind her and gets ready to kill her. She then realizes that Lincoln got on and is in the pilot’s seat before he shoots her out and flies off with Hive and the warhead. To ensure that no one can stop him he shorts out the manual controls so that he has to fly it himself.

Daisy goes to the bridge and gets on the radio to talk with Lincoln and get him to stop, but he refuses as he’s going to die anyway. They have an emotional moment together, but get cut off once Lincoln gets too high. She begs Coulson and the others to try and save him because he’s dying for her mistakes, but they can’t do anything. In the Quinjet, Hive and Lincoln accept their fates and share a calm moment together as well before they both die together.

Things then jump six months into the future and Coulson’s on a mission with Mack, staking out a location that they believe Daisy is going to appear in. She does appear and it’s to meet with the wife and daughter of the Inhuman Charles that gave her the vision in the first place. Coulson calls in other agents to get her, but she manages to get away. He then tells Mack to inform the Director that she got away. Our final scene of the season is with Radcliffe in his office. He’s celebrating having his name cleared and talking with his A.I. Aida about it and how he wishes Fitz was there for what he’s about to do. And what is he about to do? Create a Life Model Decoy!

Other thoughts:

• Mack made a legit shotgun axe!!!!
• Coulson’s Star Wars reference was absolutely perfect. “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”
• I’m glad that Fitz and Simmons made it out of this episode safe and sound. They more than deserve it after all the crap that they’ve been through. I hope they had a great time snorkeling in the Seychelle Islands.
• Lincoln’s death was a good way to close off his character’s arc. Ever since he joined SHIELD he just wanted to protect Daisy and keep her safe. This was the case even moreso after Hive got to her, with his constant desperation and begging to help the team save her. Him dying to keep her alive and save the world was a good way for him to go out and it was totally in character for him. It’s obvious that his death is going to affect Daisy the most, but I wonder how everyone else on the team is going to feel about his death and if it’ll be referenced next season.
• Goodbye Brett Dalton. You were great as Ward/Hive and you will definitely be missed. I’m happy they decided to kill him off entirely though because there really was nowhere else for his character to go. Better to end him now than keep dragging him along.
• As for Daisy, it looks like she’s on the run now. It hurts to see her leave SHIELD, but I can understand why she did with all the guilt that she feels about what happened while she was with Hive and Lincoln’s death. How long is she going to stay on the run though? She’s gotta come back to the team at some point right? RIGHT?
• Daisy referencing her dad’s practice when she talked to Charles’ family was a nice little reference for people who remember him.
• What the hell happened with Coulson and Mack? Are they not with SHIELD anymore? Who’s the Director that Coulson mentioned? And why did Coulson get demoted from his position as Director of SHIELD if they are still with SHIELD?
• Just based on what Radcliffe said, it appears as if Fitz has been working with him on the Life Model Decoys. Introducing LMD’s into the series is definitely going to be an interesting direction for the series and I’m really looking forward to it.

The season finale of Agents of SHIELD was an exciting one and it wrapped up the season in a great way. From start to finish the episode was action packed and delivered on all fronts, especially on its promise to kill a member of the team. Things are going to be different for the team (and the show) come next season. They’ve lost two (counting Daisy as a loss since she’s on the run) of their best members, and people are in different roles/positions. And with the introduction of LMD’s, there are a number of possibilities for where the story can go. Gosh, season four needs to be here now!