Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: The One Who Will Save Us All (5x20)

I don't... I didn't know that Talbot was gonna... I mean, this is all about Talbot all of a sudden and I'm so shook!

Cons:

Deke is adorable and all, but his pining for Daisy is only cute for a little bit, and then it starts getting mildly irritating. Not hugely irritating, but annoying enough that I wish it would go away. It kind of detracts from all of the crazy stuff going on in the rest of the episode.

I'm sort of miffed about Fitzsimmons this week. Not their relationship stuff, which didn't really have any material in the episode, but both of them as individual characters. Simmons seems willing to blindly go along with Daisy's somewhat insane plan, and Fitz has seemed pretty much completely normal and okay, if a bit more ruthless, since the episode where he hallucinated his evil alter-ego for an extended period of time. I'm miffed that this didn't cause more lasting effects, and that Fitz and Simmons didn't really deal with the trauma of this. They're back to being totally okay with one another, which sort of cheapens things.

Pros:

Talbot. He's become this super-powerful dude because of the Gravitonium, and he is NOT messing around. I feel like it took me too long to get up to speed on this whole Confederacy thing, because for a long while I simply didn't care. But Talbot and Coulson showing up on the ship, and then Talbot strong-arming his way into the sacred council, killing a member of the Confederacy by absorbing him through Gravitonium, and then threatening to kill Coulson... all of this stuff really ramped up my interest in the topic, let me tell you. I love all of this because literally I had no way of predicting this was going to happen. It's bonkers! It comes directly out of nowhere! And you can watch as the effect of the Gravitonium on Talbot begins to work. He was already a little unbalanced, sure, but at first it seems like the only side-effect is he's a little cocky about his powers. And then he asks a bunch of powerful aliens to kneel, and gets more and more snappy with Coulson. By the end, he's threatening to kill Coulson if Daisy doesn't stand down, he's murdering Hale, he's forcing Coulson to kneel to him... damn. That Gravitonium stuff doesn't mess around.

Last week I said I was excited to see how our team of heroes dealt with all of the personal problems between them, and this week we see some of that play out. Obviously the biggest example is Yo-Yo and Daisy actually getting into a fight. I loved the moment when Daisy first Quakes, and Yo-Yo turns up the heat, saying that she'll definitely win if they start using powers. It's heartbreaking to see these two Inhumans, who have been through so much together, turn on each other. And yet the circumstances are such that I understand why tensions are running high the way they are. May breaks up the fight by firing into the air, which was a nice bad-ass moment, and a reminder that even if Daisy is "in charge" in Coulson's absence, she might not be ready for the mantle of leader if May still has to supervise.

Elsewhere, you have Mack dealing with his feelings of betrayal. Obviously we've already seen him talk to Elena a few times, and this week we see them maybe approaching a tentative peace, or at least a temporary one while everything is stressful and urgent. But we also see Fitz and Mack have a talk, and it breaks my heart. They talk about morality, and Fitz says that sometimes you need to sacrifice the few for the good of the many. Mack knows that the way Fitz has been acting lately is wrong, and that he needs to get a grip on who he is and who he wants to be. I hope we have more time to contemplate these breaking relationships before the season comes to an end.

The Avengers: Infinity War tie-in is very slight - basically, Talbot discovers that Earth is being attacked by Thanos, and insists that he is Earth's Mightiest Hero, and he needs to get down there and fight alongside the Avengers to save the day. I like the way that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. manages to maintain its own identity from the movies, but sometimes it does make me chuckle - is there any reason to think that Quake, Yo-Yo, and now Gravitonium-Powered Talbot aren't as powerful as some of the Avengers? Yo-Yo has got to be at least as useful as Hawkeye in a fight, right? And some of the stuff that Daisy is capable of could rival Scarlet Witch. But whatever. That's a tangent. I like the idea of this stuff with the Confederacy happening quietly in the background of Thanos' assault. Apparently Hydra's deal with the Confederacy was to "protect Earth" from such an attack, but really they were just in search of resources, figuring they could pick the Earth clean before Thanos came in and destroyed everything.

I honestly don't know how Infinity War (which I've now seen three times, by the way) is going to shake things up moving forward. I mean... logic would dictate that what happens to everybody at the end of that movie is going to have to happen to our main cast of characters too... but maybe the time loop protects them from that in some way? Whatever. Point is, this was a good episode. RIP Hale, I guess, but more importantly - is there any way Talbot comes out of this alive? And is he the Destroyer of Worlds now? He wants to get to more Gravitonium under the Earth's surface. Is that how the Earth is torn apart? So many questions - I'm so excited to learn the full story!

8.5/10