S.H.I.E.L.D. Exposed – “T.A.H.I.T.I.”
All those people who bowed out early should be kicking themselves now!
With Skye’s condition quickly deteriorating, the team resort to desperate measures and, with the help of Agent Garrett (played by Bill Paxton), they head to Tahiti in search of medical help but what Coulson finds is more than even he bargained for! Questions are answered but what questions does it leave us with?
SPOILER ALERT FOR UK VIEWERS (The Magical Place will air on March 14th on Channel 4)
I guess we’ll start with the main plot of the episode, with the team disobeying orders after the SHIELD medical staff not being able to save Skye. Coulson hands his Level 10 resurrection files to FitzSimmons and orders them to find something to help her. They’re soon intercepted by Agents Garrett and Triplett who want Ian Quinn for interrogation and we learn that Garrett is hunting Quinn because of Cybertek and the Deathlok program. They agree to partner up and they find their way to the Guest House, a non-SHIELD facility where Coulson was treated. They find the chemical they’re looking for (GH325) and administer it to Skye, who soon recovers but as we find out, it could have dire consequences.
Bill Paxton is our guest star of the week and plays an affable, joke-y counterpart to Coulson’s straightman. He’s Ward’s old SO and he has some pretty funny lines throughout the episode. He’s a welcome addition to the SHIELD organisation and I hope to see him again. His understudy, Trip? Eh, he didn’t really have much to do apart from a sly attraction to Simmons that made him seem more creepy than anything. Hell, I thought he may have been working for the Clairvoyant and was going to take Quinn once they found the formula.
That’s another thing, the Clairvoyant has played the long game, actively telling Quinn to kill members of Garrett’s team and then shooting Skye so they’d be forced to use whatever they did to Coulson to save Skye. It seems like they won the day but who knows how this will play out.
Okay, now onto the BIG part of this episode. This big blue bastard.
I’ve got a fiver on him being a Kree, one of the major alien races in the Marvel universe. It makes sense to me in a meta sense because I know Guardians will be out this year. Regardless, this poor bastard has been vivisected and is, presumably, being kept alive to produce the chemicals GH325, GH317 and GH084. The sight of this creature visibly shakes Coulson to his core, so much so that he think the GH325 shouldn’t be used. How this will effect Skye is up for debate but considering her status as a 0-8-4 and this “Kree” blood, we could be looking at the MCU’s first Inhuman. For those who don’t know, Inhumans are essentially the space equivalent to homo superior, mutants. Given that Fox owns the rights to mutants because of X-Men, using Inhumans could be the right way to go. Hell, that could be the explanation for Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch in Avengers 2, instead of mutants, make them Inhumans. It’s pretty much the same thing.
Stinger for this week is a prologue for the next episode, as a beautiful young woman appears in the wilderness of Death Valley and comes across a honeymooning couple. Her dress and speech pattern pegs her as Asgardian straight off and after beguiling the man, she reveals her name to be Lorelei. OOOOOOOOOOH!
Next week, we’re going to be getting a visit from Asgard and I can’t wait!
