Agents of SHIELD - 'Failed Experiments', 'Emancipation', 'Absolution' and 'Ascension'

For identification purposes, I am not Apocalypse.

And so to the end, as the season finale and the death of the be-crucifixed one looms.

In 'Failed Experiments', Hive recounts his origins as a primitive hunter who was captured by the Kree to become one of the first Inhumans. His plan is to repeat that experiment, to bypass the need to track down suitable candidates by turning ordinary humans directly into swayable Inhumans. When the first tests fail, killing the remaining senior HYDRA members, Radcliffe suggests that this is because the Kree blood which Hive donated to the distribution cocktail is long dead. In order to secure a better result, Hive summons a pair of Kree Reapers from orbital stasis to provide live Kree blood, at the same time that SHIELD hit the Inhuman town after Daisy appears on facial recognition.

Creepy mind controller has people management skill gaps.

In the ensuing clash, Alicia is killed and Mack gets the snot kicked out of him trying to get through to Daisy. Daisy gets a Kree for Dr Radcliffe to drain, but as a parting shot Mack splinter grenades the body. Unfortunately, Daisy realises that there is another source of viable Kree blood, as she was injected from the living source at Project TAHITI back in Season 1.

In 'Emancipation', we catch up with the movies as Peggy Carter dies and the Sokovia Accords are ratified. Coulson makes an appeal to Talbot to allow SHIELD to remain in the shadows, with their own records of Inhumans separate from the main register. He brings in Yo-Yo as an indicator of an Inhuman doing good work against the cartels, who would be in danger of her life if exposed by the Accords.

Team Hive kidnap a number of Watchdogs and expose them to the new version of Holden's delivery agent, a mix of Kree blood, Terrigen and Hive parasites which transforms the Watchdogs into waxy-faced supermooks. At the same time, Daisy hacks repeatedly into the base systems to talk to Lincoln and, with Talbot bristling at him from the other direction, persuades him to make a break for it. They crack him out of containment and he heads for the hangar and the quinjet, which Daisy remote pilots to Hive.

I tell you, I could watch this scene all day.

Only... surprise! It's not Lincoln, but Lash, who has also been languishing in SHIELD custody for a while. He lays into Hive like the ancient one were a pinata, incinerating his control parasites and thrashing his primitives. Unfortunately, Daisy shoves her oar in and, instead of just punching her, he pulls the parasites out of her, carries her into the Quinjet and gets skewered by James's burning chain. The jet returns them to base, but this leaves Hive not dead, and another black man dead of trying to save Daisy.

To cap that off, Yo-Yo gives her crucifix to Mack, putting the last black man standing in the crosshairs of fate.

'Absolution' sees Daisy in a bad place, psychologically, but honestly I struggle to care. After a decent season, Daisy is becoming unbearable again, and I think it comes back to her increasing prominence in the plot. The series struggles to make her important without the whole show becoming the Daisy hour, and she's just not that interesting.

... I got nothing.

Ahem. Anyway, she reveals Hive's plans and, together with a stolen ATCU warhead, the team realise that he plans to disperse his metaphorical seed across half of the world's surface by detonating a warhead full of it in the upper atmosphere. The team use some crafty mo-cap shenanigans to disable the chosen missile and capture Hive by overwhelming him with the memories of his many hosts. Unfortunately Giyera and James follow and use a Terrigen bomb to transform SHIELD Agents into swayed primitives. In the confusion, Daisy breaks out, confronts Hive and... begs him to take her back.

It's really not very dignified.

It turns out in 'Ascension' that she is in fact now immune to his powers, so she tries to clobber him because Hell hath no fury and all. He smacks her down and sticks her in a box, then he and his team nick the Bus Mk.II (it's actually called the Zephyr,) intending to use its high altitude capability as the launch vector, escaping in a containment pod as it is destroyed.

Well then...

Yo-Yo is injured as the team regroups. May and Fitz stealth onto the Bus and Fitz kills Giyera with an invisible gun. Coulson insists on heading to the Bus alone on the quinjet, but his team won't be left behind, because they follow from choice, do you see. While Hive gloats at a hologram Coulson, they take control of the Bus. The plan is to remote pilot the quinjet into space with the bomb. Daisy takes this on as her martyr sacrifice, but an injured Lincoln double-trumps her by stealing the crucifix of doom, frying the manual controls and taking Hive into space with him.

Six months later, Coulson - apparently no longer Director - and Mack are tracking a vigilant named Quake, who turns out to be Daisy with a dye job and a bandana, because trauma makes her edgy and cool.

Oh look, she's all attitude and cool and stuff.

So, Ward is gone, but Daisy is still my least favourite and at the same time the largest part of the show. I'm not of the opinion that she ought to be punished for her actions while under Hive's influence. I could even accept that her attempt to return to Hive's influence is the act of a recovering junkie and accept that, but I don't have much patience for sacrifice pissing contests and so many more interesting characters - Trip, Andrew/Lash, even Lincoln - seem to die to allow her to continue to mope about how hard it is for her that all these people die.

Agents of SHIELD continues to be a really up and down experience. There are some good episodes, but the arc is overextended. It doesn't help that I don't much care for Daisy, and I like her less each time the show tries to convince me that she's cool. You know who was cool? Trip was cool. I liked Trip, but Trip turned to dust while we were watching Daisy's superstar moment and apparently Andrew turned into Lash with the explicit purpose of saving Daisy, because apparently the universe loves her too much to let her die.

No, I will not 'get over it.'

Oh well; Ghost Rider next series.