Strap in Evil Geeks, because The Bus is taking off once again. I’m at the controls and the auto-pilot is set for the runway at the Evil Lair! It’s been another week and yet another crazy adventure with the team from Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. Last week found us dragging up the failings of Coulson’s past, but this week has us focusing on the current failings of another member of the team: Skye. Also, as we saw in the premiere episode of the show, the Extremis technology first seen in Iron Man 3 is still actively being researched and it manages to rear its explosive head again this week as we meet a character who may hold the key to stabilizing the volatile compound. Plus, we finally get to see a really pissed off Coulson!



It’s been known to the audience, that since Skye was conscripted into SHIELD’s services, she hasn’t really been on the up and up regarding her true intentions. She’s been up to some sneaky stuff behind the scenes and has been in contact with the hacker/terrorist organization Rising Tide. Coulson and the rest of the team sooorrrrtttt of trust Skye, but some are more suspicious of her than others, particularly Melinda. Coulson fully believes that Skye has pure intentions and even is a little boastful of the fact that he was “right” about her; a sentiment he’ll immediately regret as Skye’s double agent scheme is exposed when she discovers that a close friend of hers has hacked a SHIELD security feed. The info gleaned from the feed concerns a man in China who has the ability to create and control fire. Skye rushes to warn her friend that SHIELD is on to him (the warning leads to a quickie, because as George Costanza taught us, there’s nothing hotter than fugitive sex) while unbeknownst to Skye, Melinda is following her every move. Busted!

Meanwhile over in Hong Kong, the man from the security feed, Chan, is approached by a mysterious woman, named Raina, while he’s performing some street magic, featuring his fire controlling ability. In what would clearly be a setup to even the most dim-witted of dumb asses, the woman coyly convinces Chan to show her some “tricks” in private. Do you think Chan was at all surprised when this naturally led to him being kidnapped? C’mon man, did you really think that was going to go another way? The mystery woman and her goons take Chan back to a lab and tell them their going to augment his abilities so that someday he’ll be as famous as Captain America. Raina even dubs him “Scorch” which is probably the worst hero or villain name ever. Scorch, really? Terrible… just terrible. This jackass even goes so far as to coin a catchphrase with “You almost got Scorch’d!” (I added the ‘d for added emphasis on the douche-baggery). As soon as the flame mongering magician gets used to his new abilities, that’s when the rug gets yanked out from under him. It turns out the real reason the mystery organization kidnapped him wasn’t to augment his powers, it was so they could figure out what keeps his skin from burning up when he uses his powers so they can steal it from him and use it to keep the Extremis soldiers from exploding. This possibly could be a clue as to the identity of the organization that’s been pulling the strings behind the events that the SHIELD team has been dealing with all season. They seemed to be focused heavily on the Extremis technology, so I’m thinking that the behind the scenes villain is A.I.M., since they were the organization that created Extremis in Iron Man 3. This could also be a red herring to fool us too, A.I.M is the easy assumption. Skye’s hacker friend mentions that the organization he provided the security feed info to was involved with research on insects, specifically centipedes. Could that be a hint that maybe Hydra is is behind all of this? I realize that a hydra isn’t an insect, but it’s got a bunch of tendrils..or legs which centipedes literally have a hundred of. It’s a stretch, but those are my two leading candidates for the mystery villain.

Even though Skye was caught aiding an enemy of SHIELD, it seems that she has changed a bit since her van living days. She’s no longer solely focused on exposing the “evils” of SHIELD. She sees a bigger picture in that while SHIELD may be a little harsh at times, what they are doing is for the greater good. She wants to redeem herself in the eyes of her teammates, so she tags along on the mission to rescue Chan and manages to swipe some vital information before the lab explodes. Lab explosion you say? Yes indeed, lab explosion. Clearly Peter Parker doesn’t exist in this world or his Uncle Ben for that matter, because Chan seems to be completely unfamiliar with the phrase “With great power, comes great responsibility.” Instead he goes the opposite way and holds the words “With great power comes incredibly ego maniacal assholish behavior.” When Coulson and his Hong Kong counterpart, Agent Kwon, show up to rescue Chan, he repays the favor by injecting himself with a bunch of the Extremis serum that his captors have been using to boost his powers and chars a whole straight through Kwon. He soon finds out though that they’ve already taken his ability to not burn up, so whenever he uses his powers, he burns up his skin. In the end, without the ability to prevent himself from burning, the unstable Extremis tech causes him to explode, taking out the lab in the process.

Anyone who’s familiar with Coulson knows that he’s kind of a hokey, “Gosh! Gee!” kind of guy. After finding out about Skye’s betrayal, he has this barely contained rage sitting just below his outer surface, that seems to seep out every now and then. It’s clearly evident at the end of the episode when he’s talking to Skye in his office aboard the Bus. I think the thing that really pisses him off the most isn’t so much the betrayal as it is the fact that he was wrong about Skye. He personally vouched for her and was one of her biggest supporters. Her leaking info to a wanted fugitive makes him look like quite the ass and even though he’s supposed to be a changed man since his trip to “Tahiti”, I think that’s something that would still really grind his gears. In the end, he lets Skye stay on the team, but she must wear a tracking/inhibiting bracelet as a condition of the arrangement. Skye also comes clean with all of the secrets that she’s been harboring and gives Coulson a file containing all the info she’s managed to gather on her past. She’s been searching for her parents the whole time, which is why she joined Rising Tide; in order to gain more resources to aid in her search. All of her research has led her to a document that discloses the identity of her parents, which has been almost completely redacted by SHIELD. Even though she’s been working for this terrorist organization, it seems her motives for doing so actually aren’t all that sinister. Her beef with SHIELD is basically that they info on her parents that they aren’t sharing. Coulson warns her that she may find something out that she’d rather not know, but she’s determined to find out the truth. I’m thinking it means that her parents probably had powers of some sort, but they weren’t necessarily heroes. Given Joss Whedon’s past writing on The Runaways, what are the chances that her parents were villains of some sort? I think we’ll have to wait and see if that prediction is correct, but I guarantee you that if it turn out to be true you can head back here to get the lowdown (and to here me gloat a little) in a brand new S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Up!

Wanna brush up on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s past adventures? Read On…



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