So I was mistaken, next week’s episode will tie into Thor: The Dark World, which actually makes sense allowing more people a chance to see the film. Nonetheless this week’s episode, “The Hub“, was a good one, as this show continues to impress me with its ability to set itself aside from the “superhero” element of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Hub is another great team building episode that deals mostly with Agents Fitz and Ward learning to rely on each other as they go on a mission together. We get another great cameo this week, with the return of Agent Sitwell, played by Maximiliano Hernandez, who shows up when the team arrives at the secret SHIELD base, called “The Hub” of course. SHIELD is all about secrets and level clearance as we’ve learned since the beginning of the show, and depending what level you are, the more secrets you are privy to. Skye has a hard time understanding why things are this way, but she should try to be more patient especially since she “lied” to the team only a couple of episodes ago. Her time will come as each week she proves how important she really is to the team, but her Level 1 clearance isn’t going to open most doors to her now, literally in this episode. The biggest “new”cameo of the week was the appearance of Victoria Hand, played by Saffron Burrows, who if you are familiar with the Secret Invasion story line from the comics, you will recognize right away. Except in this world she is more than a mere SHIELD accountant, but seems to be the head honcho at The Hub. I love these little introductions as the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to grow its rich stable of characters.
A basic run down of the episode is this, SHIELD needs two agents to go into Ossetia and disable a secret weapon. In what appears to be a normal mission, Skye and Simmons are concerned about their teammates so they decide to hack the SHIELD network to find out the status of the mission. What they reveal is rather disturbing, there is no extraction plan! So this sets off a series of events, including a rather comical scene where Agent Sitwell confronts Simmons while she is hacking the system and Simmons ends up tazering him after a really awkward conversation. The ladies reveal the bad news to May and they decide to go and extract Ward and Fitz themselves. Coulson who is starting to realize that Level 8, or classifying people as any level, doesn’t mean squat and that SHIELD still keeps secrets from its top agents. He has a change of heart on the whole “trust the system” line SHIELD feeds everyone, and approves the teams actions. Ward and Fitz share some great screen time together, Ward is an easy character to understand as he is your typical ‘follow your orders” agent, but I am really starting to enjoy the development of Fitz, and of course Simmons as well, as I didn’t know how they would really fit and grow in this universe and they are becoming more than just the “Q’s” of AOS.
What did we learn this week? First off, the system doesn’t always work and as Coulson told Skye earlier this season, you have to think outside the box. Second, Coulson is really starting to realize that SHIELD is lying to him and that his Level 8 clearance isn’t what he thought it was, I’m sure we will see a Level 9 show up sometime of course I’m sure that is what Nick Fury is. As the “after-credits” scene reveals, Coulson is really losing his patience with this who Tahiti secret. Skye also gives up the chance to learn more about her parents, choosing to save her friends/teammates instead. The Bus is not just your standard plane, it has the ability to hover by rotating its engines, which is a pretty amazing scene when the team is extracting Ward and Fitz.
I am really excited for next week’s episode, “The Well“, as it deals with the fallout from the events from Thor: The Dark World!
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. airs on Tuesdays at 8pmEST on ABC!
Stay tooned 😛
~CynicNerd
