And so nine episodes into the season, with "Collision Course (Part II)" we get some resolution. Or... do we? Sarge is captive, one of his crew is dead, the other two are imprisoned, the team is back together, Mack and Yo-yo are back together. Things look good. But they're probably not.
Where does the resolution come in? Sarge finishes freeing Jaco and Pax, and they briefly capture the Zephyr. Sarge orders Davis to pilot it to Izel, who is aboard the Lazy Comet with Fitz-Simmons. Izel and Sarge talk briefly over the radio, and he complains that she not only killed his family but took his memories of them. Izel suggests that Sarge isn't who he seems. So other than a few vague hints, no revelations on the whole "Sarge has Coulson's face" thing.
Yo-yo easily takes out Pax, and convinces Jaco to switch sides. Mack manages to knock out Sarge, and Mack, Yo-yo, Davis, and Jaco go aboard the Lazy Comet to rescue Fitz-Simmons. They do so, but Davis is briefly off on his own after confronting Izel. We all know that isn't going to go well for him.
On Earth, Daisy manages to do something with the nuclear bomb Sarge had aboard the trailer and armed before he teleported away. The bomb is still active afterward since Deke can't disarm it, so I guess she shielded it. I don't see why insulating it from vibration would shut off the countdown timer on it. I'm sure there's someone with a comic book/physics explanation out there somewhere.
The truck slams through the black crystal tower, destroying it. The Shrike swarm the truck and in a cool sequence, Daisy lets them into the truck and then vaporizes them with her quake powers. Jaco teleports everyone off of the Lazy Comet with the portal circle in his jacket, and then goes back with the bomb and detonates it, blowing up himself, the Lazy Comet, the possessed crew, and presumably Izel.
Everyone is finally together, and celebrate at the Lighthouse. Daisy tells Mack she's looking forward to the debriefing about her space travels. Fitz is uncomfortable with Deke gushing over him since Fitz is Deke's grandfather. Sort of. Davis dozes off. Melinda tells Yo-yo she's tired of getting suckered by Sarge and his Coulson-lookalike face. They share a toast to Jaco. Daisy objects to Snowflake being free since she's a murderer, and Deke figures she's jealous of him and Snowflake since now they're an item. Mack offers a toast to agents alive and dead, and the return of everyone being back.
Mack visits Yo-yo and gives the as-expected spiel about how he tried to shut down his emotions over her so he'd be a better Director. That didn't work, and they end up kissing.
In the closing tag, Melinda enters Sarge's cell, smiles, and shoots him repeatedly.
As part of 2 of a two-parter, "Collision Course" was pretty good. As the previews reveal if we hadn't already figured it out, Izel is alive and Melinda will have no memory of shooting Sarge. So presumably Izel jumped into Davis' body somehow, escaped the ship's destruction, made it to the Lighthouse, and jumped into Melinda's body to kill Sarge.
Daisy destroying the Shrike was cool, even if she seemed to destroy a lot less of them then we saw flying a few minutes earlier. Jaco got a decent send off, and Winston James Frances is a class act: better than Brooke Williams and Matt O'Leary as Snowflake and Pax, respectively. Heck, I like him more than Clark Gregg as Sarge. Whose alternating smugness and out-of-control anger get more obnoxious each episode.
The rest of it is... okay. It's not that exciting, but excitement left the Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. building a while ago. The creative team still produces really good episodes on occasion when it focuses on characters: see my review of "Inescapable" a few weeks ago. And seeing Mack and Yo-yo back together is definitely a high point of the episode. Although it makes you wonder why anyone thought it was a good idea to split them up for nine episodes
No complaints about the actors: they're almost always bringing their A game. But the actual threat of Izel and the Shrike and the world-destroying is so-so. We know it's not going to leak out into the MCU because that's now how Marvel and Disney and ABC and whoever else won't let the creative team roll. But even in the show, Izel just doesn't seem like that powerful a villain. Daisy handles her Shrike horde pretty handily. We've never seen how or why Izel is such a world-destroying menace. She's not Thanos, is she? Heck, Izel isn't as impressive as Mysterio. Take away her body-possessing and Shrike-creation/possession, and she doesn't have much of anything that the creative team has bothered to show us.
Iain De Caestecker has been the most impressive villain on the show. Izel just comes across as low-key threatening compared to him. I don't know if the creative team is afraid of really coming up with a really villainous villain, or Disney et al. have told them not to for fear of overshadowing the "real" MCU. Or some weird mix of both. Regardless, the result is an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that seems afraid to really cut loose. Part of it is American TV drama and season scheduling: they've got 13 episodes to fill and they're going to drag out plots like the "Who is Sarge?" thing to fill 13 episodes. They have to have manufactured character drama and make sure that all of the main cast get their moments in the spotlight. And so we get episodes that are half-filled with that.
Granted, a lot of the Marvel TV stuff does that these days: look at the 13-episode Netflix shows. Stranger Things can pull it off in eight episodes: why can't S.H.I.E.L.D. do it in thirteen? I wish either they'd try, or the Disney conglomerate would let them try.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
Written by Gislef on Jul 13, 2019
Yup, thanks!
Miranda? I think you mean Melinda.