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“Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D” recap (2.2): Breaking up is hard to do

Hello, sweet kittens. I’m at the Future of Storytelling Summit, so this recap is a little on the light side. We’ll pick back up full force next week when (spoiler alert!) Simmons returns with new hairs and a gun, after having (no joke!) switched teams.

Previously on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Coulson hired some mercenaries-led by former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Xena Warrior Princess-to track down the original 084 and steal some cloaking tech so his tiny hodgepodge of heroes can continue to run from bad guys and now also the government. Agent Xena lost her life in the fight or possibly is lying in wait with a biomechanical arm. Only time will tell. Fitz hallucinated Simmons in vivid detail because she has abandoned the team, leaving his brain and heart incapacitated. He dealt with it by being as sad as a listening to Joy Division alone in the rain. Skye dealt with by shit-talking Ward (who is still a sociopath but locked in the basement for now) and shooting up shit.

Crashing your car into Absorbing Man is a thing that will kill you, probably. In fact, Hunter is the only one who has survived last week’s supersmash and he’s cut up pretty bad. May shows up to extract him, but he convinces her to go after Creel, something she is happy to do because: a) It means she can zip down the highway on her motorcycle, all black everything, looking fetcher than fetch, and b) Nobody fucking kills Xena on Agent May’s watch. But Coulson orders her to stand down, so the whole operation is a bust basically. Creel intercepted the obelisk. Talbot intercepts Hunter. Skye and Tripp did get the Quinjet, though, so that’s at least something.

Talbot makes a deal with Hunter: If Hunter will hand over the “zealot” “vigilante” Agent Coulson, Talbot will give Hunter two million dollars cash money and a proper burial for Xena.

Hunter marches right back to S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ and tells Coulson about the whole thing. He’s got 48 hours to hand him over and he’s willing to do it, too, if Coulson can’t bury Xena right and fork over the money he owes Hunter and Xena and whatever that other mercenary’s name was. Nebraska or Idaho or something like that. He heads on down to Xena’s bunk to help Skye clear out her things. Family photos. Books. Chakrams. Swords. Throwing stars. Two sets of leather armor. Letters from someone called “Gabby.” Hunter asks Skye if she wants to get in on the mercenary game but S.H.I.E.L.D. is her family and so no.

Creel is still on the loose. First he hits up a diner and accidentally turns a waitress to stone when she brushes up against him. Then he goes home and has a meltdown about how messed up his Absorbing powers have been ever since he touched the obelisk. He yells at his Hydra handler about it, but his handler blows him off like Hyrda does. Enter: Raina. She’s got this stone that’s like half-diamond, half-stardust and she’s willing to fork it over if Creel will come work with her. But she’s holding it out in the open plain as day, one-tenth of this dude’s size, no mutant powers, and so he of course just plucks the stone right out of her hand without a single bit of thanks.

So Raina calls up her buddy Coulson and explains the deal: Hydra’s about to get their hands on the obelisk which she does not support because they do not understand it. Garrett understood it, though, and so she thinks Coulson can too, since the key to unlocking its mystery seems to be the Jesus Juice. Luckily, Raina put a tracking device in that stone Creel took from her, so she gives the digits to Coulson and Coulson sends his team, including Hunter, out into the field to retrieve the obelisk.

While all of this is going on, Fitz is still trying to clear the funky junk out of his brain with the help of ghost Simmons. He peters around in like a bathrobe and slippers, jibber-jabbering at himself about how all he needs to do to get back in the team’s good graces is figure out a way to keep Absorbing Man from Absorbing stuff. It’s Mac who talks real gentle to him and finally gets him to open up. Fitz actually already found the solution before his brain got flipped, and so Mac helps him find the schematic and build the thing. Mac’s like, “It’s tough losing someone you love, huh?” But Fitz sees ghost Simmons over in the corner and waves, all, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Also, of note: Tripp says it’s pretty jerky the way Simmons abandoned Fitz, and Simmons literally goes, “SHE ABANDONED ALL OF US.” She also says she tried not to get attached and it didn’t work, and so please tweet me your fics where Skye yells at Simmons for feeding into her abandonment issues and they work it out over wine and making out. Thank you in advance.

Right, so. Out in the field, Hunter knocks out May and Skye with rubber bullets and then he knocks out Tripp, too, but not before Tripp legit goes, “Oh hell no.” (But hell yes, sadly. He gets blanked.) Hunter sets his sights on Creel, who is meeting with his Hydra handler to pass off the obelisk, but he senses a bullet coming his way and turns into stone and it just pings! right off his head like a penny hitting a sidewalk. But you know what? Fitz’s invention works! And Coulson shows up with it! And zaps Creel! And paralyzes him!

Back at HQ, May seals up Coulson in his office and tells him it’s been 18 days since his last episode, so go ahead and Hulk out or whatever. But because it’s Coulson, the way he Hulks out is he spends like four hours doing alien calculus on a chalkboard while May takes photos. Whatever gets you going, I guess.

Afterwards, Coulson convinces Hunter to join S.H.I.E.L.D. and then uses him to set up a meeting with Talbot. He asks Talbot to please just stay off their back in exchange for various gifts, like, for example, the sedated Absorbing Man in the back of the van. Talbot says he’s not making a deal with Coulson because Coulson’s got no team and no gear. Coulson just smiles and hops into his invisible hovercraft like some kind of Wonder Woman while Talbot gawks and feels dumb.

But who has the obelisk, you ask? It is Raina, of course. She finally touches it and instead of it eating her flesh like with Xena and Creel, it starts lighting up a bunch of gobbledygook runes. Kyle MacLachlan is there. He’s like, “I’ll show you how to really work that thing if you’ll bring me my daughter.” So I guess we just met Skye’s dad!

Next week: Real live Simmons is back, and she’s working for Hydra.

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