After its last hiatus, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is finally back for its remaining episodes without any breaks and what a great return it was!
The episode continued to make the show more Marvel-y which has been something that we have wanted a lot for the past few episodes and seeing the return of agents such as Sitwell, Hand, Garrett and Blake was a helpful factor. While we won’t spoil this part for you in the episode, we did get a pretty interesting lead-in for a certain Marvel movie that is coming out later this week.
While we enjoyed Bill Paxton’s first episode on the show, “End of the Beginning” was a lot better for him and his character. I really hope that they will promote his character to series regular in season 2 because this show could use a character like him. Seeing the gruff, a bit older, more command-y character that he is, we think it’s a nice addition to this specific team and the show as a whole. The same can be said about Agent Triplett who is also an enjoyable character as well as a good counter-part to Agent Ward.
While we were hoping to see more of Mike Peterson aka Deathlok since that was the person that they were hunting in this episode, there was sadly not enough of him. We see another upgrade to his tech and a deep moment where Blake tries to get through to him, before he has to run and attack the team. But that didn’t lower the quality of the episode as we will be seeing more Deathlok before the season is over. J. August Richards looks absolutely awesome in the Deathlok outfit that costume designer Ann Foley did.
One of my favorite scenes of the entire episode was absolutely when Skye became an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and got her badge. Regardless of how you have felt about this character since the pilot, whether it’s good or bad, it can’t be denied that Skye has grown so much as a character and is a lot stronger now than before. Chloe Bennet has really been able to shine for the past few episodes and seeing Skye finally becoming an agent was a strong series moment. Even the phrase “Welcome to SHIELD” was trending worldwide last night! It was enjoyable to see Skye having such a big part in this episode with her basically being one of the co-leaders of this operation.
When we saw the new trailer that came out for this episode last week, we saw a man in a wheelchair watching a lot of monitors and even though I thought it was the Clairvoyant, a part of me was hesitant. First of all, that room/set looked so cheap and having gotten an idea of who the Clairvoyant is, we are glad that Thomas Nash wasn’t the real one. Our image of how the Clairvoyant operates is in a big facility, with a lot of high tech in a location that would be harder to track down. It was a surprise though to see Ward shoot him, but it was a really good character moment because we are finally starting to see his emotions coming out.
The last moments of the episode is where it’s at its best because we get something completely different here. The scene where Coulson starts putting all the pieces (sort of) together of how the Clairvoyant is operating was brilliant and a big step forwards in the story. I liked to see CouNow, let’s remember that despite the cliffhanger that we are about to talk about, looks can be very deceiving.
Out of all the cliffhangers that we have gotten so far for this show, the one we got last night was one of the biggest one so far. A lot of people have commented that Agent Hand has always been a shady character since her first episode and we finally see what she is all about. I doubt that she is in fact THE real Clairvoyant, she is likely one of his minions and there is probably a reason to why she is working with him. Our speculation is that he forced her to join him because he has something on her or has taken something or even someone from her.
Victoria Hand is a big player in the S.H.I.E.L.D. mythos, especially because of her involvement with H.A.M.M.E.R. (which we got an Easter egg of in “The Hub”). No matter what they do with her in the end, we hope that they will at least keep her alive because there is so much potential with this character for future storylines. This isn’t me saying that I’m disappointed about this reveal, but it does concern me with what may happen to her by the end of the season.
Overall, “End of the Beginning” was a phenomenal returning episode with great writing as well as performances. It will be very interesting to see what the next episode will be like since we know that it will be heavily affected by the Captain America sequel, but whatever that effect will be, it’s going to be absolutely huge.
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. airs on Tuesday nights, 8/7c on ABC and don’t forget to see Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier that comes out in theaters this Friday!
[Photo via Kelsey McNeal/ABC]
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