Nerdophiles Catch Up With… Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Just out of plain life circumstances and laziness, I never got around to recapping the season one finale of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, which was titled ‘Beginning of the End.’ It was a solid three star finale. Not my favorite episode ever, but it still delivered lots of great moments.

For those who may have missed it or need a rewatch like I did (which I then tweeted about), here’s the TL;DR version:

• The team performs a four man assault on Cybertek Industries to capture Grant Ward and John Garrett once and for all.
• By the way, Garrett has gone completely insane after being injected with GH-325 to keep himself from dying in the previous episode. He and Raina claim that he’s able to see the truth now and that Garrett can see into the soul of things. Uhhh… Tesseract possessed Selvig much?
• Agent Antoine Triplett brings the noise and the funk wherever he goes. *sigh* Be still, my heart.
• Fitz and Simmons get trapped at the bottom of the ocean in the medpod and brace themselves for death. However, the two think of a plan to escape involving busting out a window with a defibrillator, but it really only means one of them can survive. Fitz confesses his love for Simmons before executing the plan, allowing Simmons to escape intact…
• …Where they are promptly rescued by FORMER DIRECTOR NICK FURY WHO COMES DOWN FROM THE SKY LIKE AN ANGEL DRESSED LIKE A HOBO. (Hey, he’s the one who says he looks like he lives under a bridge, not me.)
• Simmons survives, but Fitz might be braindead from the the lack of oxygen. S.H.I.E.L.D. is working on it.
• Back at Cybertek, Ian Quinn gets the hell out of dodge with the Gravitonium and Raina follows. Grant is in way too deep now, but I feel no sympathy for him. He’s ordered to go get Skye, but she faces him like a stone faced badass while pretending to strap a bomb to the head of Cybertek.
• Which is then followed by Melinda May beating the absolute shit out of him and delivering the best one liner ever of “You were never on top.” It ends with her nailing his foot to the floor and breaking his larynx.
• With Skye and Trip’s help, Coulson finds Garrett and faces off with him. He gets help from Nick Fury, who arrives just in time with the big ass gun Coulson shot Loki with. The two mouth off as Garrett expounds upon being an evolved being. This scene with Bill Paxton’s scenery chewing would have been less enjoyable if it wasn’t for Fury and Coulson being 110% done with HYDRA.
• Seriously, just look at their judgement faces.

• 

• Skye digs up the “Incentives Program,” which turns out to be HYDRA kidnapping family members of people who work at Cybertek to force them into working for them. She finds Ace and reveals that she’s been linked up with Mike Peterson’s eye the entire time. With help of her “Ace in the hole,” Peterson eventually turns on Garrett.
• Ward is taken away in handcuffs, Peterson goes to wander the earth to redeem himself as Ace goes to live with his aunt, and Garrett comes back from the dead for 30 seconds before Coulson zaps him with the 0-8-4 from the second episode.
• Coulson yells at Fury over Project T.A.H.I.T.I, but Fury assures him that it was a break glass in case of emergency situation over the death of an Avenger. Which he considers Coulson. After a brief inspiring speech, Fury turns over the keys to the kingdom to Coulson, effectively making him the new director of S.H.I.E.L.D. He tells him to start over again, do it right, and that we won’t see him for a stretch. Of course, being Nick Fury, he’s got his eyes on the situation at all times.
• With the new coordinates given to him by Fury, Director Coulson and team fly off to a place called The Playground where they are re-united with Simmons and meet… BILLY KOENIG?! Yep, Patton Oswalt is back as Eric’s twin (or Life Model Decoy, who knows) and he asks Coulson where he wants to start. Looks like everything is bright and beautiful for Coulson and team…
• …Except that Raina is now informing a mysterious man that she found his daughter as she shows him a picture of Skye. Uhhhh.
• And Phil’s up at night drawing the mysterious diagram from ‘Eye Spy’ as well as the one Garrett was drawing earlier in the episode. UHHHHHH.

Alright, now that we’re caught up, where does the team currently stand? While S.H.I.E.L.D. does have a new director in Coulson, they are still completely disavowed as an organization. Meaning that anyone on the side of S.H.I.E.L.D. is currently a fugitive if they didn’t go off to the private sector like Maria Hill did or whatever Natasha Romanov ended up doing. Coulson has a lot of work to do to put them back on the map.

Of course, there are bigger questions at hand here as well. Like what in the fresh hell is in GH-325 that it’s keeping Coulson up at night drawing mysterious diagrams? Is it Kree or is it something bigger? Maybe something related to the one and only Star-Lord? (Hey, Marvel has already dashed my hopes of Kevin Bacon as J’Son of Spartax. Let me have this for a bit.) What is Skye really and who is this man who claims to be her father? Will we be seeing more of Raina and will we see how Garrett answered her question of “What will I become?” What’s going to happen to Fitz? Will he ever be the same again? Will the fandom find more ways to try and excuse Grant Ward’s behavior as the show continues to let him be a cast member?

Most importantly for me though… Who the hell is Lance Hunter and why does he get to be a permanent cast member while Trip is still listed as a guest star in the first two episodes? Seriously, Trip has proven himself to be a part of this team and I’m not here for some rando guy who doesn’t look that much different from Brett Dalton getting more seniority than him.

Still, we’ll hopefully be getting those answers and more as Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. starts its second season on Tuesday, September 23rd at 9 p.m. on ABC.