This week, the much-anticipated showdown with Lash finally went down – did it live up to the hype? Let’s find out in our look at “Chaos Theory.”
SPOILERS AHEAD
It seems that the show’s writers painted themselves into a bit of a corner earlier this season when it comes to Lash. In hindsight, I think it’s fair to say that we were led to believe that Lash’s story was much bigger in scope than it turned out to be. For instance, all of Lash’s declarations that he was “the cure” when he killed Inhumans, and that he “had to” do what he was doing – all of it definitely gave the impression that there was a much bigger plot behind all of Lash’s mysterious behaviour.
But, in “Chaos Theory,” it turns out that, when you boil it all down, Lash/Garner just basically has a kind of virus that drives him to kill Inhumans, for reasons he is not even sure of. He is not really some morally ambiguous crusader, and he is not part of some big conspiracy; he is just a guy who gets urges sometimes. Um, ok. It is all a bit of a disappointing resolution to Lash’s plotline this season, and now that he is being held in the S.H.I.E.L.D. saferoom, I don’t really feel any urge of my own to see more of him. I had hopes that Lash would be an interesting character this season, but it turns out, he is just Andrew Garner with a disease. Oh well.
But fortunately, there are other interesting stories on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and one of them is Lincoln. He is now on board the S.H.I.E.L.D. jet, and from the sounds of it, he is a loose cannon that will provide a lot of conflict with the team for the rest of the season. He definitely does not like being given orders by Coulson, and he has a major axe to grind against Price for the way they have hunted him this season. I am predicting that Lincoln will only whip up more resentment in Daisy, who has already been questioning Coulson’s close relationship with Price. With Lincoln’s influence, that is sure to only get more intense.
And wow, has Coulson ever gotten to be close with Price. The two finally slept together this episode, and I was really starting to think that maybe she was ok after all. But then, almost on cue, came the catch, and boy was it a big one: Price is secretly working with Gideon, the ultra-bad-guy who has been hanging out with Ward lately. Price claims she “has him,” meaning, presumably, she has agreed to deliver Coulson over to Gideon. This, of course, throws a whole new wrinkle into the season, as we have Coulson letting his guard down and heading towards a major shock – luckily, Daisy and Lincoln are not drinking the Price Kool-Aid, so I am sure they will save their Leader in the end.
Morse and Hunter had a really good moment this week, I thought. Once again, their exchange displayed a major strength of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and that is its representation of relationships. Morse told Hunter, in no uncertain terms, that she was not ok with his recent cowboy routine to get revenge on Ward. She doesn’t need a knight in shining armor, she needs Hunter to be smart. I thought it was a very intelligent thing for Morse to say, and it shows S.H.I.E.L.D. once again refusing to give us all the usual cliches and stereotypes that we have grown to expect on TV shows. I always feel that people on the show act in complex, unpredictable, and realistic ways, and I like that.
And that has always been the case for Jemma and Fitz, who continued to show layers of complexity this week. Fitz watched all of Jemma’s videos and listened to her recordings she made while she was away, and you get the sense that he got to truly know her for the first time. He saw the picture of Will, yes. But he also saw Jemma at the end of her rope, clinging to life, clinging to hope – and the person she called out to was Fitz. He seemed to finally understand how she really feels for him, and that her brief romance with someone else was not really important. When the two of them watched the sunset together at the end of the episode, I felt that they had somehow turned a major corner in their relationship.
Well, the end of Lash’s story left me a little empty, but now Price’s secret plot to betray Coulson has give me a new reason to keep watching – stay tuned for next week’s episode to find out what happens.