After a few weeks I am back to catch up on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. with its latest three episodes; titled "The Hub", “The Well”, and "Repair". With Marvel characters and Thor tie-ins galore let's take a look and see what surprises are in store for us. Warning for those of you that haven’t caught these episodes yet there will be some spoilers ahead.
Review "The Hub" started off with easter eggs a plenty with the team visiting the titled location before settling into its throw away story, basically to set up some time with the pairing of Ward and Fitz. Not a bad episode, we got to see a more interesting side to Fitz and the appearance of Jasper Sitwell and Victoria Hand was appreciated as well as more revelations about Skye's family.
"The Well" was the so called Thor tie-in, in fact the tie-in scene could have been added to the start of any episode and it would have probably been even better suited to the latest episode. The story involving the Norse protest group wasn't elaborated on enough to make it interesting, at first when they mentioned they were gods I thought maybe the show would take the interesting route of making these people the decedents of Asgardians who fooled around on Earth but unfortunately the episode was just an excuse to see insight into the least interesting of the mysterious back stories, as frankly I don't care that Ward's siblings mistreated each other. However, the saving grace for this episode was the guest star Peter MacNicol portraying a lowly Asgardian warrior that decided to hang around on Earth, which makes me think either Asgardians cant have kids with humans or there are a lot of people with Asgardian blood in them on Earth.
"Repairs" another episode, another uninteresting back story to explore. The show should stick with Coulson and Skye's mystery, leaving the other characters to be actual characters. The episode itself was fine and probably a better tie-in to Thor, with a partial accelerator (along with Arrow, it seems these days if you want powers forget radiation just make your way to CERN super-collider) getting a guy trapped between Earth and Limbo/Hell/Hel/Muspelheim when attempting to recreate the transportation between realms seen in the Thor film.
Easter Eggs and MCUbuilding Entering the Hub we had mention of "Triskillion" (which looks to be making an appearance in the next Captain America movie) and saw Jasper Sitwell and had the first appearance of Victoria Hand. However, the most interesting things we got to see were located on the signage in the Hub.
Specific Sub divisions mentioned included:
ARMOR - Altered-Reality Monitoring and Operational Response is a division that looks at alternate realities in the comics.
SWORD - Sentient World Observation and Response Department which in the comics this decision watches out for Alien threats. Whether this division was set up in the wake of the Battle of New York or not, it does seem that SWORD doesn't deal well with Aliens teleporting to Earth.
EuroMIND - The European Monitoring Investigation and Enforcement Division is the European decision of S.H.I.E.L.D., though I find it strange they didn't use the more widely known S.T.R.I.K.E.
Other signs point to
HAMMER which I am thinking in the MCU is the more militarized side of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well a
PSI-OPS division (which is strange as Simmons keeps saying there is no such thing as mental powers in the MCU), and most notably a
LMD division. LMD division, along with a robot joke, things keep pointing to an android Coulson.
The "overkill device" is in fact a reference to a HYDRA doomsday device called the the Overkill Horn, and we find out the Bus has a VTOL ability.
I would have liked to seen the Jotun beast being airlifted away in the Thor tie-in scene but at least the events of the film have an effect on the world the show inhabits. The only real easter egg came in Coulson's brilliant nightmare stinger scene where the dialogue "Did I fall asleep?" "For a little while" is a obvious Dollhouse (Joss Whedon show) reference.
In "Repairs" the bad guy was trapped between realms in a lab accident and it the realm he is stuck in is Hell or, more correctly within the MCU, Hel/Muspelheim.
We also saw yet another Roxxon petrol station.
Did you guy notice anything I missed? Let me know in the comments below.
Read the analysis of previous episodes:
Pilot episode Episode 2 “0-8-4” Episode 3 “The Asset” Episode 4 “Eye-Spy” Episode 5 “Girl in the Flower Dress” Episode 6 “FZZT”