The team reunited with mixed results, while Coulson revealed his amazing ace on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 2, episode 19.
Looking forward
When Gordon returns to Afterlife with Skye and Cal, Raina realizes that her dreams are prophetic. Jaiying refuses to rescue Lincoln, devastating Skye, and Raina tells her that she is the only one who can save him. Together, they convince Gordon to drop Skye off somewhere far away from Hydra.
Speaking of Hydra, Bakshi and Dr. List are drooling at the prospect of experimenting on Lincoln and Mike, which they get started on right away.
Meanwhile, Coulson and Gonzales agree on a deal — if Gonzales supports a mission to rescue Mike Peterson, Coulson will open the Toolbox.
A plan or two
After discovering that Hydra has removed Mike’s eye-camera, Coulson lays out his plan to the SHIELD Council:
1) Use Bakshi to infiltrate Hydra’s Arctic base with a small team.
2) Rescue Mike (and Lincoln) and then have SHIELD planes bomb the base to smithereens.
3) Profit?
May turns out to be the swing vote, and she confronts Coulson privately about their lies. She is upset that he approached Andrew without telling her; Coulson claims he was just getting therapy. (We so don’t believe him.) He also refuses to tell her about Theta Protocol, but May agrees to the plan.
Meanwhile, Simmons has decided to take The Ward Situation into her own hands and plans to take him out with a Splinter Bomb. Fitz is unnerved by her resolve, but Simmons insists on arming herself against Ward.
Others around the base are also being disappointed. Kara is frustrated that Ward is leaving her alone with SHIELD agents, while Bobbi is angry at Gonzales for benching her from the mission.
But Simmons gets good news: Coulson allows her to come on the mission to provide medical aid to Mike. Simmons leaves out the part about packing a Splinter Bomb in her gear.
Fault lines
Unwittingly completing the reunion of Coulson’s “original six,” Gordon drops Skye off in the Bus.
“This is great!” Ward purrs. “We’ve got the team back together!”
Ward starts to give the team the rundown on Bakshi and the Hydra base, but interrupts himself to make a speech about how literally nothing he’s done has been his fault.
The team is mercifully disgusted by this, and Coulson lays out the plan.
1) Skye, Simmons, and Ward will rescue Mike and Lincoln.
2) Coulson, Fitz, and May will dismantle the security for the SHIELD bombs.
3) Profit?
Back at the Playground, Hunter forgives Mack. He has not decided what to do about Bobbi.
For her part, Bobbi visits Kara, who admits that she doesn’t remember much about her life before being brainwashed. Bobbi offers her support, but Kara is happy with her life now — after all, she met Grant.
Bobbi throws up in her mouth, or so we assume.
Losses
At Hydra, Mike has barely survived his surgery, while Lincoln is being taken in to his. Dr. List and Bakshi are bummed that their prospects for viable subjects (beyond “the Twins”) are low. But more pressing matters arise as they spot the Bus on their radar – and List orders the team shot out of the sky.
Which they are — kind of. The Bus is blown to bits, but the team is in the Quinjet, and May is disguising them as debris with her amazeballs pilot skills.
Let us have a moment of silence for the Bus. RIP, SHIELD 616. Now your watch is ended.
With Bakshi’s help, the team infiltrates the base and splits up; List, alas, escapes.
Skye, Simmons, and Ward find Mike in the lab. Skye uses her powers in utterly badass fashion to take down the guards, and Ward is like, “Oh, that’s what happened in Puerto Rico. You’re welcome!” and we’re like, “Ha ha, please die imminently.”
Monsters and men
Simmons tries to make that happen, ambushing Ward with a Splinter Bomb as she had planned. But her game goes awry when Bakshi intercepts the device and bursts into dust, looking irritated.
So that’s probably it for the Bakshi/Simmons ship. Yes we shipped it shut up.
All joking aside, Simmons has a pretty spectacular moment here. Unarmed, unapologetic, and alone, she stands up to the man who tried to destroy her life — and nearly succeeded. Ward aims his gun at her face, and she barely flinches.
“Go ahead,” she spits. “Get it over with, you monster.”
Ward just sighs. “You really have changed, Simmons,” he says, pretending like he’s a moral authority on anything. “I’m disappointed in you.”
And he leaves, leaving Simmons shaken, but alive.
Meanwhile, Skye goes off to find Lincoln in surgery, in the course of which she becomes an actual video game character and takes out the Hydra guards like they aren’t even there. Lincoln is very handsomely flatlining when she finds him, but Skye is able to restart his heart with her powers.
We’d call it overkill, but it’s just too awesome.
As Fitz disables the security, May finds Coulson completing his own private mission — downloading intel from Hydra’s servers. They extract Mike and Lincoln and leave the Hydra base in time for SHIELD’s bombs.
Winning
The team returns to the Playground, the mission a success. Ward contacts Coulson, having skipped out and somehow escaped from the Arctic all by himself. He is still an asshole, but he is leaving Kara with SHIELD. She deserves forgiveness, he says, and there is too little good in him to fix her.
“I’ll see what I can do,” says Coulson.
Lincoln is still unconscious, while Mike is in bad shape; Hydra dismantled his bionic leg, so he will have to be sent elsewhere to be properly repaired. Simmons is forced to admit that Bakshi “didn’t make it,” though she keeps the details to herself.
Gonzales is pleased as punch, leaving a frustrated Bobbi to realize that his goal was to collect Skye and other powered people.
Achievement unlocked.
It’s not a complete victory, however. Coulson opens the Toolbox, but warns Gonzales that Fury — who is totes alive — may come calling for it. Coulson then takes a call from none other than Maria Hill.
Theta
At Afterlife, Jaiying confronts Raina about manipulating Skye with her visions. Raina is angry, but before she can murder Jaiying or anything, she gets another vision from a cinema near you.
“A scepter!” she gasps, as Coulson shares the stolen intel on Loki’s staff with Hill. “Beautiful, dangerous,” Raina moans. “It isn’t finished yet. So much destruction!”
Coulson tells Hill where the scepter is. (For those keeping score at home, the made-up-country-whose-name-we-did-not-catch is coincidentally the same place where Strucker’s “Twins” are being held.)
“Last thing,” Hill asks Coulson. “Theta protocol. Is it ready?”
“Yes it is,” he says, smug as a cat. “Time to bring in the Avengers.”
So that’s, you know, unbelievably bloody cool. But Raina isn’t quite finished yet; she sees something else.
“Consequences are upon us,” she tells Jaiying darkly. “Men made of metal will tear our cities apart. And the world will be changed forever.”
That’s code for “Go see Avengers: Age of Ultron.”