Agents of SHIELD S2x06 ” A Fractured House”

WARNING! MAJOR SPOILERS!                                   

Once again, Agents of SHIELD is continuing to prove that it has not lost its momentum from the Post-Winter Soldier bombshell and that it doesn’t need another Marvel Movie (and there won’t be one until Age of Ultron) to support it. This week’s episode turned the attention away from the mysterious writing to look at another major problem, the Ward family. Because not only did Grant Ward got plenty of screen-time this week but we also met his politician brother, Christian, who could be just as ruthless as Grant. Christian (Tim DeKay) is doing his best to cover up that his brother is a member of HYDRA, whilst taking an anti-SHIELD stance that could turn the world further against them when HYDRA mercenaries impersonating SHIELD take out members of the United Nations, during Talbot’s press conference.

So things aren’t exactly going to plan, especially when HYDRA’s next target are SHIELD-friendly supporters in Belgium. However, naturally, the real SHIELD are able to sweep in and save the day, and get Christian to back them, even though they don’t really know which Ward brother is lying. And to make matters worse, Grant has escaped SHIELD custody, which is no doubt going to have consequences. Whether it was part of Coulson’s plan or not remains to be seen (because come on, they really should have put more protection on him) and it’ll be interesting to see how the character’s role affects the team going forward, especially when we got to see their reactions to him this week, and when Simmons threatens to kill him the next time that they meet, things look pretty interesting indeed.

There was another key part of this week’s episode that continued the relationship between Fitz and Simmons. It’s clear that they’re not just going to go back to the way things are, with the new Fitz getting along more with Mack than Simmons. It allowed this episode to have plenty of emotional moments, and it will be interesting to see what direction the creative team takes with this subplot going forward. Will we see Mack, Simmons and Fitz working together as a trio? Or will Simmons be permanently shut out?

With a relatively large ensemble, it’s great to see that the writing team behind the show is giving each character plenty of action. Bobbie (who is still my favourite character on the series), May and Hunter got to go into the field in two separate locations which didn’t exactly go smoothly when you consider Bobbie and Hunter’s shared history. There’s plenty of snark between the two characters and it’s great to see that Bobbie was not just a one time guest star (and is now promoted to a series regular), with May getting plenty of action to boot as well. So needless to say, there’s lots of things going on here, as A Fractured House balances everything nicely, offering up another fun, well paced hour of Agents of SHIELD that didn’t disappoint.