Agents of SHIELD S2x09 “Ye Who Enter Here”

WARNING! SPOILERS!

Ye Who Enter Here is the penultimate chapter in Agents of SHIELD’s run of episodes before the fall break, and this one featured the return of Agent 33 (now looking like a much more disfigured May) allowing for an interesting addition and escalation to the threat as the team chased after the secret city with HYDRA hot on their heels.  It’s safe to say then, that Ye Who Enter Here is quickly shaping up to be another fairly strong episode of SHIELD, even if it did end up having a few problems.

The fight between Agent 33 and Skye is probably my biggest issue with the episode. May and Agent 33 came into conflict earlier in the season and Agent 33 proved to be on the same level as May, but the fact that Skye handled herself so well against Agent 33 given the less experience she’s had put me off. Skye’s become too good, too quickly. They need to watch what they do with this character to prevent her from becoming just as annoying as she was in Season 1. This did allow for a fun fight scene however, which made this issue not quite as annoying as it could have been.

Raina’s addition to this episode made it quite an interesting one with a strong performance by Ruth Negga. You’re not quite sure what’s up with this character and what her intentions with Skye are and it’s great to see that the mystery concerning both characters is left open to debate and not quite wrapped up as quickly as it could have been. Nor does it feel like the writers are dragging it out like they did with Coulson’s resurrection in the first season. You get the feeling that there’s plenty more to come with them.

We got a touching emotional moment between Fitz and Simmons once again this episode and the show is not done with their problems yet. Simmons still thinks of Fitz as nothing more than a brother, and it’ll be interesting to see how long it takes for the two to resolve their issues. Clearly they’ll be placed in a situation at some point where they’ll have to put aside their differences to survive, the question here is really just how long that will take. It’s good to see that the relationships within the team aren’t always the same, and there’s plenty of friction between the agents of SHIELD. This is certainly something that we didn’t have (or didn’t have as much of, at least) in the first season, and seeing that we get plenty of it here is always good to see.

We did get a pretty interesting cliffhanger at this stage which set things up for the fall finale quite nicely. The team on the bus has been surrounded by Agents of HYDRA who are ready to blow them out of the sky and we don’t quite know what’s going to happen next. Mack could even be dead, but it’s unlikely, given that Mack isn’t quite big enough to make a death seem truly important and with him being the only one who connects to Fitz at this point it would pretty much shut Fitz out from the team once again. So it remains to be seen what happens on that front.

Ye Who Enter Here then, was another strong episode of SHIELD despite a couple of problems. Again, it’s just amazing how much this show has improved since early Season 1 and I know I’m saying this pretty much every episode, but it’s something that’s very true indeed. This show is a million times better than where it was before episode 15 and 16, and it’s great to see that it’s in a good place right now where I’m looking forward to it week in, week out. Next week’s fall finale can’t come quickly enough.