This week’s episode featured action so intense, and climactic confrontations so epic, you could have almost mistaken it for a season-ender. Hell, it even had cliffhangers. Let’s take a look at “Devils You Know,” perhaps the best episode so far this season.
SPOILERS AHEAD
First of all, I’ve gotta point out that I was right about Coulson and Price’s slow-but-steady ride down the highway of love. It is now obvious that these two have a “thang,” and even Daisy notices it (and is none too pleased I might add). I know, I know, I can’t take too much credit for the prediction last week – it was pretty clear to anyone watching. But still, yay me. Now, what this romantic energy bodes as far as good or ill for the S.H.I.E.L.D. team, remains to be seen. We know Coulson well enough to know that he is a leader first, and nothing – or no one – will get in the way of him doing what needs to do for the team. We can assume the same of Price – since she seems to be a kind of female version of Coulson. The only thing that is certain is that it makes for a lot more fun as a viewer.
Lash is back. And now, we hear his name officially for the first time. As seems to be de rigeur for dramas these days, we also get the impression that he might not be “totally evil” – that he has some reason for hunting the Inhumans (in his words, “he’s necessary”); we just don’t yet know what that reason is yet. But, this episode brings progress of a sort to his character arc, moving from Scary Monster to Mystery Creature. Add the fact that he has a human alter ego only complicates this increasingly complex character further. The problem with a character like Lash is that he becomes less and less interesting the more we know about him. The allure of Lash is that we don’t see him much, and the pleasure comes from the wanting to know, rather than the knowing. The show’s writers undoubtedly know this, and they will try as hard as they can to reveal tiny little pieces of his backstory over this season – so don’t expect to hear a lot about him in the next couple of shows, other than a few quick visual teasers.
But this week was all about one incredible culminating moment – the confrontation between May, Hunter and Ward. This has all the elements of a great conflict, as Hunter and May both have huge personal investments in hunting down Ward and taking him out. Hunter wants revenge for Ward’s attempt to kill Morse. And for making him kill his friend last week (although the “friend” didn’t seem too friendly). And May has bad blood for Ward going way back to Season 1. You can feel the palpable hatred Hunter and May have for Ward, and in this episode, my heart raced as it seemed they might have finally outplayed the original Chess Master. But come on, this is Ward we are talking about – he always finds a way to slither out of even the toughest situations. He tells Hunter and May that if they kill him, Garner will die. Hunter makes the crazy – but understandable – choice to try to kill Ward, sacrificing Garner in the process.
Now, to be fair, Garner might not be dead – hey, we’ve seen people come back from “death” in shows before. Plus, they did not actually show his whole body lying on the floor of the shop, and add to that the fact that only Werner, Ward’s protege, escapes after the store explodes – which leaves at least one HYDRA agent still unaccounted for inside. But it really doesn’t matter in a way; by making the choice he did, Hunter has earned the wrath of May (possibly – we’ll see for sure next week). And May is not somebody whose wrath you want. And, oh yeah – Ward didn’t die. Damn – I guess you can call him the Grandmaster now.
Lastly, I was disappointed that we didn’t hear more about what the heck is going on with Simmons. Last week, she mentioned that she “had to go back” to the alien world on which she was stuck since last season. I don’t know about you, but I was definitely expecting at least some details as to what she meant, and why she would want to do such a counter-intuitive thing. But we didn’t get much in “Devils You Know,” except that Fitz finds a bunch of Simmons’s notes that show she wants to rebuild the portal that sent her there in the first place. She is still acting all disoriented (I am no doctor, but I would venture a guess that she has a case of PTSD, just as Garner suspects), but still has not said anything more about what her plan is. With all of the other stories heating up, you have to wonder where the Simmons plot thread will be going. She looks like she is finally going to tell Fitz what exactly happened to her on the alien planet – hopefully that will give us some answers, too.
“Devils You Know” was an action-packed episode that really had a lot of “wow” moments, and this season continues to get better and better. We have lots of huge conflicts and threads headed for conflict by the end of the season – but I personally wonder where Daisy fits into all of this; she was in some ways the main character up till now, but this season, she is merely one of many, and reduced to more of an errand-runner for Coulson. You have to believe that her role will grow as the season continues – we’ll have to stay tuned to find out.