After a lengthy hiatus that felt like it rivaled the forever that Game of Thrones was gone, Marvel’s Agents of Shield returned Friday Night for its Season 6 Premier. In Missing Pieces, Directed by Sarge himself, Clark Gregg, the Shield team is trying rebuild after the events of Season 5 and the losses of Coulson and Fitz. So now that we’re back in the Shield saddle, what did we learn from Missing Pieces.
1) One year has passed and Mack is still adjusting to his role as Director by watching holographic crash courses left for him by Coulson. Mack has pretty much just focused on his job and the responsibilities that go with it. This has left him little time for personal interaction with his team, especially Yo-Yo, inspite of their past relationship.
2) Some new members have been added to the team. Agent Keller, who is played by Lucas Bryant adds a fresh and admittedly handsome face to the team. Yo-Yo, for her part, seems to be going out of her way to be cold toward Keller. This has not gone unnoticed by May (nothing gets by May).
They also brought aboard Dr. Marcus Benson, played by Barry Shabaka Henley, who May recruited to attempt to rebuild some of the teams brain power. This is sorely missed with Fitz “lost in space” and Simmons and crew out looking for him. Benson doesn’t really want anything to do with Shield as he is grieving the loss of his husband. However, the presented opportunity of establishing a Shield Academy to recruit new talent intrigues him. In the meantime, he gets to investigate “boogie men” as he calls them.
3) The year long search for Fitz has lead Simmons, Daisy, Piper and Davis across space. The fact that at the beginning of the episode, an unknown force literally splits Enoch’s ship (containing the frozen Fitz) into two halves didn’t help. They found one half of the ship but Fitz’s cryopod was not in it. This lead them to a refueling station and an alien who had been using traceable fuel. He was selling a way to track that fuel to high bidders. When confronting the refueler, Daisy demonstrated the control she has gained over her powers by shaking their guns apart. Before she probably would have taken half the building down.
Simmons has grown darker and much tougher in the year she has been looking for Fitz. During the interrogation, she goes into detail to explain how she would cut into the refueler and watch how his organs reacted. This isn’t the “look on the sunny side” Simmons from earlier seasons. She means business. They find out that the other half of Enoch’s ship is there. In it, they find Fitz’s pod but he isn’t there. A crushing blow. More on this in a bit.
4) While half the team has been space jumping, Mack and crew have been searching for some strange energy anomalies. They track an impending one and send May and Keller to investigate. Before they can get there, a grizzled looking man comes out of a solid brick wall. He has a Mad Max vibe to him and his name is Juco. His partner Tinker attempts to come through as well but something goes wrong and he is stuck halfway through and turns to concrete. By the time May and Keller arrived, Tuco was standing near some children which prevented Keller from engaging. That didn’t stop him from opening fire with a futuristic looking weapon that disabled their craft and allowed for his escape. They did however recover the man in the wall.
5) Time to exercise their newly recruited brain power and have Dr. Benson look over the man who became “just another brick in the wall.” Upon closer examination, Benson discovers that the man had cybernetic implants. As he leaned in, Tinker sprang to life for a moment. Welcome to Shield Dr.Benson. “Boogey Men,” indeed. The man said:
Can’t stop it. It’s coming. Pachakutik. Wave goodbye. (Yes, I had to look at the closed captions to decipher that).
Pachakutik refers to a massive, global change and is connected with myths of creation. (Yep, I had to look that up too). The writers at Shield are great at finding concepts to base story elements on. After he gave his message, he resumed his concrete form but dropped a device that was counting down to something. So here we go again, world saving time Chapter Six has begun.
6) While the “stone-walled’ invader’s nature is being studied, two more made their appearance and linked up to Tuco. They asked him what became of Tinker and he explained what happened to him at the wall. They then reported that “Sarge” was on his way but his entry coordinates corresponded to the history museum. The Museum was in the way and had to be eliminated.
7) Back in space, the latest disappointment made most the team decide it was time to return to Earth. If nothing else so they could regroup and fix the Zephyr. Jemma on the other hand found a small plaque in the cryopod written in an alien language which she deciphered. Of course, Jemma learned an alien language. She explained to the group when asked by Piper.
Piper: You learned to read alien?
Simmons: Of course, what have you been doing with the last year?
The plaque reported where the pod had been made. Jemma explained that is where they needed to go, because that is where Fitz would have went. The team however had other plans. While they wanted to find Fitz as much as Jemma did, they still felt the smart thing to do was to return to Earth. They were concerned that if they went that far into deep space, they might not be able to return. Davis wanted to see the family he had been away from for the past year. Before the debate could be continued, the Confederation from last season came calling. Daisy had the crew initially shut down power, hoping not be noticed. That proved not to work as the Confederation ship opened fire. They quickly fired up the ship and prepared to make a jump, but Jemma had set the coordinates to the destination she wanted to go to. Jemma apologized, but by the time Daisy and the rest realized, it was too late. They were gone.
8) Mack and crew recognized where the “Mad Max” crew was going. He sent a full contingent to face them down. Unfortunately, they were unable to stop the complete destruction of the Museum. While they were picking themselves up, the timer Mack held at HQ hit 0:00 and another entry point was created. A giant semi truck came plowing through the smoke, crashing into the Shield vehicles and sending them flying. From its cab, stepped another Mad Max looking man, this time as the doppleganger to the beloved Phil Coulson. Sarge had arrived. He proved that he wasn’t Coulson when he shot a Shield agent who was holding one of his team, Butterfly. Much to the shock of May and the team. They made their escape while May and company picked up the pieces.
9) The end segment has Fitz on an alien world, speaking an alien language (he obviously went on the same crash course as Jemma). He also injected himself with a syringe that made his eyes change appearance to a more alien form. Fitz has once again entered alien infiltration mode as the episode closes.
10) So we have Sarge/Coulson now on Earth on some as yet unknown mission along with Juco, Trek, and Butterfly. Sarge is cold, ruthless, and NOT Coulson but, the blurb mentioned on the Episode Two teaser abut how the name of Coulson sounded familiar to Sarge might open some story arc. Time will tell.
Mack has adjusted well to his role as Director (although it is not his first turn at the job). He unwinds with trips to a bar and Church on Sunday (not to mention his holographic communes with Coulson). May also appears to be at peace with the events of the last year. She got to say goodbye to Coulson and steal some moments together that she thought they would never have. The May on the other end is a confident, perhaps even more talkative person than in the past. Elena has moved on from the loss of her relationship with Mack and found another (Just as May had deduced) with Keller. Because May figured their relationship out so readily, Elena decided to take it slow and Keller is in agreement. If for no other reason than to keep the peace with Mack. As he noted, Mack is BIG.
In fact, the only member who appears to be struggling is Jemma, and for obvious reasons. Unlike, May who had the chance to make peace with Coulson’s passing, Jemma has had no such closure. While one Fitz died, another one was out in space, just within her reach but not. The stress of this has made for a Jemma who might not think things through as clearly as before she lost Fitz. The evidence of this lies in her disobeying Daisy and setting the course to find Fitz in spite of the others objections.
There’s no doubt about it, Agents of Shield has returned and laid the ground work for what’s to come. For those of you who watched the premier episode, what did you think? For those of you who didn’t, and haven’t watched Agents of Shield, you might want to at least check out Season 5 first so more of this makes sense. Either way, feel free to talk about it with us at GVNation.
Senior Writer at GeekVibesNation – I am a 50 something child of the 70’s who admits to being a Star Trek/Star Wars/Comic Book junkie who once dove head first over a cliff (Ok, it was a small hill) to try to rescue his Fantastic Four comic from a watery grave. I am married to a lovely woman who is as crazy as I am and the proud parent of a 18 year old boy with autism. My wife and son are my real heroes.
