Agents of SHIELD - 'Many Heads, One Tale', 'Closure', 'Maveth', 'Bouncing Back', 'The Inside Man', 'Parting Shot', 'Watchdogs', 'Spacetime' and 'Paradise Lost'

Perhaps surprisingly, it's not that man again.

Oh, man, so... yeah; I got a little behind. My much delayed catchup of Season 3 of Agents of SHIELD began with 'Many Heads, One Tale' in which Ward learns the secrets of the castle and the monolith. The stone was first used to send an Inhuman to Simmons' planet long, long ago. When the Inhumans rebelled against the Kree, one among them was so powerful that the others booted it to another planet, and it was HYDRA's goal to bring it back long before they got into all this fascism malarkey.

Coulson and SHIELD uncover a secret ATCU programme to expose its members to Terrigen crystals, but Price reveals that the man behind it is her partner, Gideon Malick, leading to his exposure as the last head of HYDRA and a full, working relationship between SHIELD and the ATCU. In 'Closure', Ward shoots Price while she's having dinner with Coulson, revealing that he's still a whining cry-baby who feels aggrieved that people he tried repeatedly to murder tricked him into killing his equally murder-happy girlfriend while he was working on a plan to murder them. Seriously, I get being upset when people are killed in a war, but when someone is swearing vengeance for deaths which occurred in a war which they pretty much started it just feels self-indulgent.

Malick's head of security, Giyera (played by bad movie superstar Mark Dacascos) kidnaps Fitz and Simmons and brings them to the castle, where Simmons is tortured to force Fitz to lead a team to the planet (named 'Maveth', from the Hebrew for death) where he plans to ditch them and rescue Will. As he goes through, a vengeful Coulson follows by HALO jumping into the open portal, which is to be fair pretty damn badass. While the rest of the team moves in to rescue Fitzsimmons and Coulson, Fitz finds Will and persuades Ward not to kill him as he is the only one who can get them to the exit point fast enough. They ditch the HYDRA team and Coulson shoots Ward before allowing him to lead him to Fitz. When he realises that Will is in fact the Inhuman possessing Will's body, Fitz kills him (again) with a flare gun while Coulson does for Ward. During the breakout, Simmons releases Andrew Garner who goes all Lash on the guards, and the Inhuman escapes the planet using Ward's body as a host.

In 'Bouncing Back' the team tracks down a super-fast Inhuman who has stolen weapons from the Colombia. Mac bonds with 'Yo-Yo' Rodriguez, despite a total language gap, and they discover that she was seeking to disarm the brutal police force, rather than selling the guns. The police turn out to have their own Inhuman, a man with a paralysing stare, who ends up captured by HYDRA to join their army under the recovering Ancient Inhuman, while Rodriguez becomes a detached assets while pursuing her own web series adventures. Interestingly, we open with a three month flash forward to a spaceship slamming through the atmosphere, while someone in a SHIELD spacesuit floats alongside Rodriguez's crucifix.

Nothing in his character became him like the ending of it.

'The Inside Man' sees SHIELD attending a conference on 'the Inhuman question', which kicks off Daisy's inner radical something awful. Together with new ATCU head and old sparring partner General Talbot, Coulson attends while the rest of the team search for a rumoured HYDRA inside man and try to play nice with Talbot's bodyguard, the Absorbing Man. Talbot turns traitor and sells Coulson out to Malick, who uses the moment to get an Inhuman 'sanctuary state' in Russia approved before the team can recover Talbot's kidnapped son and wreck HYDRA's shit for them. Morse and Hunter pursue Malick to Russia where they save the Prime Minister, take out an Inhuman general, but get arrested and have to take the fall for the team and be disavowed. They hit the bar, and are sent drinks by 'anonymous' admirers, as the team acknowledge their departure without making eye contact in what is, kind of unexpectedly, an awesomely moving scene of moving awesomeness.

Seriously; compare and contrast with the above, which I remind you is actually
Trip's emotional exit scene.

Bobbi Morse always felt a little like the spare May and Lance Hunter is Lance Hunter, but damn I felt for them in this scene because Adrienne Palicki and Nick Blood played it like pros. Little tears shining in the eyes, faces cracking just that little bit; it was possibly the single most effective scene in the entire three year run of the show. Of course, it was intended to set up the Most Wanted spin off that never happened, but that doesn't detract from the scene's power.

'Watchdogs' sees Mac taking some time off to visit his brother, while a group of anti-Inhuman hate bloggers start imploding ATCU facilities with Stark-tech knock-off paintball guns. It turns out that the self-styled and titular Watchdogs are being organised by ex-SHIELD Agent Felix Blake, who has been in a strop since Deathlok incapacitated him, and supplied with money and intel by HYDRA. Their goal is to identify and kill a powered, but they misidentify Mac as the source of Daisy's powers and go after him instead. Honestly, given how hard he fucks them up, it's probably lucky for them that they didn't target an actual Inhuman. Also, he gets to make his own shotgun-axe with a shotgun,a cleaver and some duct tape.

In 'Spacetime', HYDRA kidnap an Inhuman who can see the future, but only deaths associated with a person who touches him and who shares the vision. Failing to prevent the snatch, Daisy gets an image of what seems to be her death, with many of the team in a bad way and Coulson shooting her. The team try to avoid this future by not letting her go after the kidnapped Inhuman, but when May is forced to stay at base to say a last goodbye to Andrew before Lash takes over completely, they have to send her in. Events play out exactly as seen, but not as interpreted, which supports Fitz's interpretation of foresight: Seeing the future is glimpsing the universe from an extra dimension, which means that the events can not be changed. Essentially, free will is factored out of the equation.

Finally, 'Paradise Lost' sees the ancient Inhuman, all recovered thanks to his Soylent Green diet and decked out in a swishy AF long-coat, takes control of HYDRA from Malek. Having seen 'Ward' active in the previous episode, the team realise that he has been possessed as Will was, and Daisy and Lincoln travel to contact a failed Inhuman candidate who stole a Kree orb which contains information on the Ancient. In flashbacks we learn that Malick has been maintaining the HYDRA cult while using a trick stone to make sure he never had to go to Maveth, and the ancient Inhuman teaches him a lesson about sacrifice by confronting him, forcing him to confess to his daughter and then murdering the daughter. Meanwhile, Giyera is captured, but breaks out of containment using a stretcher buckle and captures basically everyone but Daisy and Lincoln, leaving them to contemplate activating the Secret Warriors Initiative.

Although... this does feel like one of those situations where you might consider calling the Avengers (especially as we're still pre-Civil War.)

It's telling that Season 3 is probably the strongest season so far, but it's still not quite enough to keep me coming back. I maintain that it would have been far better off with tighter half-seasons and less filler, as it's good when it's good but has a lot of sag. I just binged seven episodes and watched two more before Christmas and there are still about ten left to watch.

Brett Dalton is, by the way, much less irritating as the ancient Inhuman than he was as poor little assassin Ward, although Daisy is rediscovering her inner irritating radical strawman in a series of arguments with Lincoln over the status of the Inhumans as a minority, race, artificially balanced combat force and/or symptom of disease.