Agents of SHIELD episode 13 RETRO REVIEW

 By Mark Rodriguez

Originally written on Tuesday, February 4, 2014. Keep in mind these reviews were done way back when the show first aired, so we had no idea what future events or movies would bring. Also, before it was retconned away, at least at the moment, the Agents of SHIELD show was in canon with the movies.

Centipede is delivering a dangerous package aboard a train. SHIELD is on the case. We have an epic suspenseful ending. Another Marvel character gets hinted. Oh, and we get Stan Lee. This episode also has something happen in which the agents are divided, and we backtrack to show what happened from each agent's point of view. Let's get started.

The episode opens on the jet with the crew discussing that Quinn is having a package delivered to him on a train by Cybertek, and they have to stop it. The train is also crawling with enemy agents, soldiers and ex-mercenaries. Later on, on the train, the agents split up. Skye and Fitz pretend to be a couple, as do Grant and May. Simmons pretends to be Coulson's daughter. While alone, Grant and May discuss how Skye has changed recently and she seems more driven. Grant mentions how Coulson would react if he knew they were having sex. May said he took it just fine when she told him. Grant is surprised she told him, as she climbs out to the top of the train to get ready for her part of the mission.

Skye and Fitz work on their accents for their undercover acting, and Skye manages to snatch a pass from the conductor. She and Fitz sneak into a room and set up their computers. The guy they're looking is Carlo Mancini. Meanwhile Simmons treats Coulson like a bad father and yells at him for 'not being there for her mother, but being there for his (shall we say, working girls?)'. Stan Lee then comes in and scolds Coulson, telling him this is his chance to do the right thing, and he hops he knows how to take it. Just then Mancini walks by and Simmons times it so she accidentally bumps into him and spills the urn's ashes all over him. Now Miranda has something to lock onto as she follows Mancini from atop the train.
 

 

Suddenly, everyone's communications go down. Quinn's men know they're on the train. Coulson runs into an empty room and then sees Grant run in with agents after him, shooting at them. They both jump off the train, and the enemy agents throw something at them and it seems the train goes up in smoke! And this is where we backtrack.

From Grant's side, he's posing as a conductor when a woman asks for help with her bags. As he helps her, she pulls out a knife and another guy also enters the room. They fight it out and Grant eventually wins. When he tries to contact the others, he notices the communications are down. He walks alongside the train and he tells Simmons to go hide with Fitz. The agents with guns start to chase him, and we get to the part when he jumps off the train with Coulson and the train vanishes. They're wondering how Quinn knew they were on the train. Just then cars show up with more guys with guns and they run off. They find a truck that's already been hot-wired and use it to get back to the plane.

On the plane they try to study the explosive device that seemed to make the train vanish. They wonder if it's a cloaking device or if the train was sent through a portal. Coulson hopes it's not a portal since he doesn't want to deal with Asgard today. Grant and Coulson both struggle with the holo-table and making all the hologram images work and stretch to their liking. During this, Grant brings up the whole sex with May thing. Coulson says if this causes anything to hurt or hinder the team, he'll have him stationed to Alaska where he watch over Blonsky's cryo-cell (Abomination). Just then, Russo, the guy that told Coulson about the mission shows up to say he knows where the others are, but is killed by May before he can talk, and she looks bloody and beaten.

As Coulson asks her why she did that, we backtrack to her side of the story. Melinda is on the train, following Mancini until suddenly there are gunshots. She dodges them and jumps off the train with a parachute. As she lands, she finds Coulson and Grant on the ground, frozen in place. She tries to hotwire a nearby truck to take them away but she gets smacked unconscious with a gun by Russo.

Melinda is tied up and hit with cold water to wake her up. Russo was working with Cybertek and is making sure the shipment goes down. He wants to know where the others are, and since she won't talk, he stabs her shoulder with a knife. She uses the knife to cut herself free and fights everybody. We get back to the scene where Russo reaches Coulson and Grant, and she kills him by tossing a knife to his back. She explains they were frozen with no idea time passed, so as far as they knew, the train did 'vanish'. She tells them that Russo sold them out and they have to get the plane ready as she showers up.

As Melinda stitches herself up, Coulson told them SHIELD found the train and  it was stopped on the countryside. Everyone is out and there are no signs of the others. As Coulson, Grant and May step into the room where Skye and Fitz were, they see the computers were shot at. Suddenly Simmons appears and starts shooting everywhere. They try to calm her down to find out what happens.

We go back to the train once again as Skye and Fitz are on the computers. Skye asks Fitz about O8-4s and he says they're always dangerous. She asks if she ever heard of a person being an O8-4, and he says he'd hate to meet that person. Just then, they notice that the communications are down. Enemy agents come in to shoot and Skye and Fitz tries to fight them off (though Fitz mostly gets beat up). Simmons arrives to warn them and tries to wrestle one of the freeze devices away from one of the men. It goes off and both Simmons and the bad guy drop down, frozen. Skye and Fitz have to move quickly. They leave Simmons with a gun (which is why she woke up with a start, shooting everything) and they put the bad guy in a crate, which Fitz shoots at a few times.

The train stopped and they see the bad guys delivering the package to a car. They follow them to their hideout. Skye sneaks inside to check it out while Fitz stays outside, disabling everyone's cars. As Skye sneaks around she finds an empty garage-type room and sees a cryo-capsule with Mike Peterson inside. Quinn and his men grab Skye and they open the capsule and set Mike free. They use the package which was a metal brace for his missing leg. Quinn tells Mike to stand and when he does the brace opens up and forms a cybernetic leg. Quinn says Mike can't hurt him due to the Clairvoyant's orders, but he also can't stop him if wants to hurt him. He gives a gun to him and tells him to kill Skye, but he walks off saying those aren't his orders, and she isn't the one he has to kill.

Skye is then shot by Quinn, who says he had his own orders. Skye holds onto him as she starts choking on her own blood, and he shoots her again and leaves her to die. In the other room, Mike starts killing the earlier woman with the knife, and the others telling them that the Clairvoyant isn't happy to how they lead SHIELD right to them. Fitz is still hiding under the car and sees how the outside guard suddenly drop dead, and he rushes inside to help Skye. As an agents tries to attack him, Grant appears and shoots him down. The gang is all here and Fitz tells them that Skye is inside.

Mike notices that SHIELD is in as Grant walks inside, gunning everybody down. He is ordered to 'not engage SHIELD' and leaves. Coulson asks Quinn where's Skye and he tells them it's dangerous to keep sending her on these missions alone. Coulson angrily smacks him with a gun. They find Skye, bleeding and dying on the floor. Simmons says they can put her in the cryo-capsule for now.

Back on the plane, Skye is kept in the cryo-capsule but if she stays frozen too long she'll have permanent brain damage. She needs medical attention fast. Fitz hugs Simmons for support. Grant is pissed and May tells him not to blame himself. He says it's not himself he's blaming. Coulson watches over Skye, worried and guilt-ridden.

Elsewhere Mike Peterson is watching kids on a playground and writes a note, asking if he can see his son. He sees the answer 'not yet' written across his eyes. As the episode ends, it zooms in on his robotic leg as we see the logo Deathlok Project written on it.

My Thoughts-

Another episode with so much to talk about. First let me get the mentions and cameos out of the way. It was great seeing Stan Lee again, I guess for many of us, we all feel his cameo was long overdue. Now we have to be sure to find wherever he'll be hiding in the new Captain America movie. The next one is the random throwing out of Blonksy's name. So I guess after The Incredible Hulk, he was locked up in a cryo-cell in Alaska. Makes sense. I mean, how else would you imprison what is basically an evil insane Hulk? And finally for those that at once time thought Mike Peterson might have been Luke Cage, now we see that's been turned into Deathlok. Man, I feel so sorry for the guy... especially when he wanted to be a hero, and then had a small chance to become one... and now they had to dump all of this crap on him. All I know about comic Deathlok is that there are several of them, but most of them were dead people revived by cybernetics.

 

As for the episode itself, it was cool. I liked the mystery of what happened 'when the train vanished' and we backtrack to what everyone was doing when it happened and how it all led up to the end. Skye being shot surprised me, especially the second time. I thought they were gonna bring up the 'she's an O8-4' deal and make her magically survive or something, but seeing as the next episode previews them trying to save her life as time runs out, we can tell Skye is pretty much gonna have to survive this like any other human could. Though Paige joked that they could just send her over to Nick Fury.

Everything else was pretty good. It was funny seeing Coulson being 'Simmons' dad' and get chewed as she went overboard on her character. The whole deal with Grant and May having sex keeps getting brought up as well. And wow, I thought Fitz was rather cold-blooded when he shot that frozen guy in the crate. That dude's gonna wake up just to die seconds later. Ouch.

Anyways let's see what happens next time. It seems Mike will be a recurring character, forced to work for Centipede. Let's hope he can eventually be saved.

Oh and by the way.... Lady Sif from the Thor movies is going to be in one of the episodes. Doing what and how exactly she will fit into the show... I have no idea. And whenever Captain America Winter Soldier hit theaters which, by the way, deals heavily with SHIELD, what references from that movie will they fit in there? And will Coulson appear in Avengers 2 or something?