Well Agents of SHIELD wasted no time getting right back into action. After last season ended with the tease that Terrigen Mists had been infused in fish oil, I was curious how long it would take to see repercussions. Seems the answer was about five seconds into the episode. We get thrown into the discovery of the latest Inhuman, a man who has the ability to melt metal with a touch, and without any sort of control over it. Soon we find a mysterious black ops team is trying to collect all Inhumans that pop up. This group is being led by a mysterious woman of influence named Rosalind (played by Constance Zimmer).

It’s nice to see how they’re handling the Inhumans so far. Rather than just treat them as a monster of the week, we instead get a nuanced character. This new Inhuman is upset, and rightfully so, that he won’t be able to return to his former life. Also, as a nice touch they casually mention his file referencing his boyfriend wanted him to be healthier. Leading up to the premiere there had been a lot of talk about several characters and plot points for this season. The fact that a gay character as an Inhuman wasn’t used for publicity and is mentioned as basically a throwaway line is kind of nice, rather than making his character all about his sexual orientation. He’s written as a real person and not just a prop to make a statement.

We also get some updates on where the team is now. Fitz is searching the world for any information about the mysterious obelisk that swallowed Simmons. Bobbi appears to have abandoned field work while she heals and turned to operations research instead, which will be a nice change for her character but one that is almost guaranteed to not last long this season. A nice little touch was seeing Coulson’s petrified severed hand in a display case at headquarters, still gripping the Terrigen Crystal from last season’s finale. Also quite a nice job casually mentioning the events of Age of Ultron and Antman. Marvel is keeping up their little expanded universe quite nicely, even bringing back William Sadler in a cameo as the president, reprising the role from Iron Man 3.

I have to say one thing that surprised me was the writers’ decision to have Skye embrace her birth name of Daisy from here on out. When Agent Coulson asked if anyone else still was getting used to it I was definitely raising my hand. I suppose it makes sense since Daisy is her comic book counterpart’s name and Marvel loves their cross-platform promotion. To me she’ll always be Skye. Though having them address the change directly and moving on is probably the best way they could have gone about it.

The premiere bravely didn’t show us fan favorite Agent May, from the previews it looks like we’ll get an update on her situation next week along with turncoat Agent Ward. But even leaving out these prominent characters, the premiere kept up the great quality from last season. Special effects were great, save for when we met our first super villain of the season, an Inhuman called Lash. The makeup job on him looks a bit like a giant hedgehog, not exactly intimidating. This is television though so it’s not all going to be gold. Aside from this, green screen effects looked good and superpowers were pulled off great. The team behind Agents effects have really come into their own over the last few years.

One really impressive part of the premiere was how far the character of Leo Fitz has come. From season one’s nerdy scientist in love to season two’s damaged victim, season three seems poised to be the season of Leo Fitz: enraged and in love. His solo scenes in the Mideast show him to have become a well rounded agent, now capable of getting himself out of a tight spot as easily as he stumbles into them. Where his character used to be one of the weakest points of the show, this week he showed some real range and took scenes that could have come off as laughable and made them one hundred percent believable. Even after he discovers the secret of the obelisk that swallowed Simmons is that it’s death (or represents death … that old parchment was a little vague), I don’t think any of us really believed Simmons was gone for good, and in true Marvel fashion in the final minutes of the show we see a bruised and battered, but very much still alive Simmons, alone, and seemingly running from some sort of danger, and from the appearance of either very large moons or small planets in the sky above her, she is not in our corner of space anymore.

The season premiere has done a great job at hitting the ground running and giving us a great balance of answering questions while raising new ones. Who is this new clandestine group searching for Inhumans and what are their motives? Where is Simmons and how will our SHIELD agents find her? Where did Coulson lose his first two hands? It’s starting to feel like an episode of Soap in here.

I’m especially excited to see more spy action this season. While last season was very good, it started to abandon the spy part of the show and became more straight up action adventure. The subway scene this week with SHIELD tracking Rosalinda and the twist that they had walked into a trap was a nice little classic espionage moment. Here’s hoping there’s more of the same throughout the season. Save for a few awkward lines, season three is off to an amazing start and promises to be a great ride.