Robbie makes a critical choice, Daisy steps up, and rules are called into serious question in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 4×08.
‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ 4×08 recap:
Winter finale or not, it must be said that “The Laws of Inferno Dynamics” isn’t a very strong showing for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The episode feels like it runs short of track, framed around a MacGuffin that seems flimsy even by action show standards. Eli Morrow’s entire arc is packed into one speech and given little time to percolate, while Mace’s longstanding inscrutability is at least partly attributed to a puppydog desire to do good.
All this leads to a plot that is both overly complicated and frustratingly simple. Eli Morrow is holed up in a Los Angeles warehouse, cooking up elements with his mind as he creates a mysterious energy box. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s first attempt to investigate is thrown back by a fiery explosion that leaves Yo-Yo lightly injured.
Driven by his lust for revenge, Robbie moves forward and investigates Eli’s Energy Box. (The box has another box inside the box, because box!) Robbie confronts his uncle, but though Eli shows a touch of remorse, he skewers Robbie inside the box.
As Robbie’s calls for Ghost Rider go unheeded, Eli monologues a bit about how his work and genius were never valued. This isn’t without a certain valuable social commentary — Eli’s anger comes from the marginalization he always perceived, in spite of his accomplishments. But Eli’s actions have been so convoluted and dreadful that the glimpse of his motives falls rather flat.
Anyway, thanks to Robbie’s footage, Fitz and Simmons are able to identify the box-within-the-box as an aptly-named Demon Core. (Which apparently is a real thing.) In other words, Eli has created a plutonium bomb, and if the lid on the little box falls, Los Angeles will go boom.
(But Why Does It Need A Lid: The Unanswerable Question.)
As it is, Eli’s actions are causing increasingly powerful tremors to shake the city, making everyone (especially the media) think of Quake. Daisy stays out of sight however, insisting that she is not responsible for the quakes.
The S.H.I.E.L.D. team is joined by Radcliffe and Aida (who has been picked up by an annoyed May.) They have brought the components of the inter-dimensional arch from last week. Together with a supermagnet from the EMP episode, the team cooks up some kind of device from the very convenient basement of Eli’s warehouse.
And it is around this point, as the scientific mechanics of the episode become truly inscrutable, that some of the genuinely interesting ideas in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 4×08 come through.
“There’s an order to things, in this seemingly chaotic universe,” Fitz says, struggling to explain Eli’s apparently godlike skills of creation. “There are laws. And one of those laws says that every speck of matter… no matter how much it changes, it comes from somewhere. Belongs somewhere. It’s natural state. It’s home.”
Whether or not Fitz is aware of it, this line of thinking is strikingly similar to Simmons’ speech as the pair faced death in the finale of season one. (You know, the one about their surviving energies that made us all cry.) But either way, it causes a brainwave; Fitz realizes that Eli is not creating elements ex-nihilo.
Instead, he is summoning — or stealing — them from disparate dimensions.
This reinforces the idea that creation ex-nihilo is truly impossible. Nothing comes from nothing; the grand cosmic system can be briefly cheated, but it cannot be changed.
Coulson brings this news to Eli, calling the would-be god “a petty thief.” Eli is enraged, and tells Coulson, “The darkhold has shown me the way. I can create life even after death. Can a petty thief do that?”
Eli’s real plan, after all, is… well, it’s not terribly clear, but apparently he always meant for the bomb to go off. This once again piques the question of Why The Lid again, but can also be seen to have a thematic consequence. What else is mass murder, after all, but grand larceny?
At this revelation, Coulson activates his plan. Mace (dressed in armor you just KNOW he ordered for the occasion) attacks, along with May and Mack. Yo-Yo zips in to help, and hands Eli a magnet.
Downstairs, Daisy struggles to contain the massive force of the earthquakes. Upstairs, Robbie demands that the Ghost Rider fulfill his end of their bargain. He is finally able to go Ghost, and rejects Coulson’s offer of the chain. Robbie/Rider pulls Eli into the box with him, and as the lid slams shut, the force absorbing… somewhere… pulls Eli down to hell with him.
Or at least, I’m pretty sure that that’s what happened.
The S.H.I.E.L.D. team is relatively unscathed. Aida has been shot and FitzSimmons watch in horror as the android suffers through her programmed pain. Daisy bursts outside to release the tremendous buildup of energy, landing right in the middle of the press.
But Mace throws his support behind the once-renegade, announcing that Agent Johnson has been working on the side of S.H.I.E.L.D. all along.
Just like that, things seem to snap back to almost normal. The stolen energies are returned, as is Daisy, who agrees to return to S.H.I.E.L.D. Coulson remarks that he doesn’t believe that Robbie is gone, and that he had hoped that she, not Mace, would be the new face of S.H.I.E.L.D.
“Maybe in the comic book version,” she says ruefully.
And Yo-Yo and Mack reconcile and finally kiss, and the bureaucracy of S.H.I.E.L.D. plods on with Daisy’s “blue” clearance. Mace conscripts Radcliffe and Aida to continue their LMD work at S.H.I.E.L.D.
And Coulson and May crack their long-awaited wine bottle. To paraphrase May, all is as it should be.
But, as it turns out, there is still a current of theft and creation at work in “The Laws of Inferno Dynamics.”
Aida has taken the Life Model Decoy program into her own synthetic hands. She has kidnapped Agent May, and replaced her with a decoy. Aida’s behavior is fascinating. She snaps Agent Nathanson’s neck with soft precision, but cares for a nearly comatose May with a tenderness that belies the profound violation of her actions.
If Eli was a thief of dimensions, then Aida can be seen as a thief of time. Each is stealing a critical facet of life — that thing with which both Eli and Aida are, in their own ways, obsessed.
“The Laws of Inferno Dynamics” may not be the show’s strongest episode. But if Aida’s germinating goals (and the undischarged promise of the Darkhold) are any indication, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will have plenty of interesting things to say when it returns in January.