After almost a year of anticipation, it’s finally Secret Warriors time for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Hinted at all the way back in the season two finale, the pieces have slowly been coming together for Daisy Johnson’s super team comprised of her fellow Inhumans: Lincoln Campbell, Joey Gutierrez, and Elena Rodriguez. Within Marvel’s comic universe, the Secret Warriors are the single-A team to the Avengers’ major league club, with a roster of heroes that even the most hardcore fans would have trouble picking out of a crowd. However, this lack of star power actually makes the Secret Warriors ideal for the small screen, where their lesser known backstories can be delved into more deeply
“The Team” picks up right where we left off last week. Daisy and Lincoln are rounding up the Secret Warriors in a sequence that feels rather Avenger-ish, and we even get Daisy performing a patented Captain America Quinjet leap, as the squad advances on Hydra. The rescue mission is presented in a fairly straightforward fashion, allowing the focus to largely remain on the effects-driven action, but it wraps up quite quickly relative to the build-up, which ultimately makes sense given its responsibility for setting up the plot for the rest of the episode.
The Secret Warriors’ supporting members, Joey and Elena, end up being a surprising bright spot this week. I particularly enjoyed Joey's presence this episode, and his transformation from the scared, disbelieving civilian we see at the beginning of the season, to the honed in, quick thinking secret agent we see today, has been fun to watch. When he first debuted, Joey functioned as the audience surrogate, an "everyman" sort of character whose initial shocked reaction to the craziness that is S.H.I.E.L.D. mirrored how we, as viewers, would feel in the same situation. Skye was given this role back in season one; however, this was obviously abandoned as she became more comfortable with the team. And, while Joey has similarly shown an increasing comfortability with “agent-ing,” as I like to call it, there's still a noticeable innocence about him that serves as a charming point of levity.
Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez makes her first appearance since her introduction in the midseason premiere. Unfortunately, this time most of her super speeding takes place off camera, most likely due to budgetary reasons, though in my opinion she still has the coolest set of powers in the biz. The writers continue to drop hints at an Elena-Mack pairing, with the two demonstrating just enough snippets of chemistry to make an eventual romance seem plausible. There's speculation that Elena is the victim in Daisy's exploding Quinjet vision, due to the noticeable presence of her necklace floating in space. While I'm not totally convinced that the writers would telegraph the identify of their next victim this much, signs seem to be pointing in Yo-Yo’s general direction, at least for the moment.
The crux of this episode rests on the realization that one of the Secret Warriors might have succumbed to Hive's influence during their earlier infiltration of Malick's base. The predictable internal strife this creates is handled well; and while it's a little difficult to accept that the human members of S.H.I.E.L.D. would turn so quickly on their Inhuman allies, the writers have sufficiently developed the team’s general apprehension towards Inhumans and their powers, to justify Coulson's extreme response to a very real threat. Arguably the highlight of this week’s episode is when the dissension settles in amongst the Secret Warriors, and each member suspects each other of being under Hive’s control. Overall, this episode does a good job of providing enough believable misdirection to cast doubt on all of the Secret Warriors, a crucial element for an episode of this nature that can be hard to effectively capture in the span of an hour-long episode. Nobody wants to be able to guess “Who done it?” too quickly, after all. It’s hard to shake this feeling of déjà vu; though, as I'm fairly certain we've seen the whole “sleeper agent” dynamic before.
In fact, I'm fairly certain we've seen it twice.
After all the twists and turns that take place during the final third of this episode, I'm surprised to say that it's actually Lincoln who walks away with the largest slice of character development pie. While the focus eventually shifts away from him, Lincoln's reaction to how things unfold, and what this means for his arc is very intriguing. If you've been following my reviews, you'll know that I've been critical towards the Lincoln-Daisy pairing, and have long wished for the writers to explore Lincoln alongside other characters. However, taking the time to examine his relationship with Daisy, in the context of this episode's fallout, provides a unique pivot point in the path both of these characters might head down.
Speaking of relationships, I’ve written enough, in this space, about S.H.I.E.L.D.’s favorite star-crossed lovers to the point where my autocorrect changes words like “string” and “along” to “Fitz” and “Simmons.” But, I’m happy to say that we’re finally one step closer to that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. wedding special, after an awkwardly tender- but oh so FitzSimmons- moment between the two, in one of the episode’s final scenes. This week serves as an endearing reminder for why we became so invested in this duo to begin with, as their playful banter and collaborative lab work harken back to the brighter days of season one. And, just like with Joey, the levity these interactions bring to the episode are more than welcome for a show that can sometimes take itself too seriously.
Finally, by episode's end, the show starts to tread in waters that I've long hoped it would avoid. Daisy will be front and center, for at least the next couple of episodes, in a role that will require Chloe Bennet to do some heavy lifting, in terms of acting. We’ll see how Bennett does when the bulk of the narrative falls on her shoulders. It’s something she’s struggled with in the past, and it will take more than opening her eyes really wide and speaking slowly to deliver a performance worthy of this pivotal stretch in Daisy's development.
Garrett Yoshitomi is a contributor for A Play on Nerds. He covers Marvel films and television, and enjoys fantasy baseball, Big Brother live feeds, and Anna Kendrick. You can find his tweets @garrettweets