Friday 1 July 2016

TV Review No. 30 Marvel: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Ascension (S3, Ep22)

Strong Points:
Nice use of science to escape
Great first ending and nice send off to some characters
Awesome fight between Hive and Daisy (earthquake martial arts)
Awesome fight scene with the whole team
Fitz's invisible gun
Mack's shot-gun axe
Coulson's: 'help me Obi-Wan, your my only hope'
Coulson calling a Quinjet...
Radcliffe's quips
The biggest game of hot potato ever seen
Robin scene

Weak Points:
The 'ending' ending seemed a bit out of place (was setting up next season)
Mirrored Captain America: First Avenger more than a bit in the final scene
...could be scene as a bit of an Eagle moment
Hive's face reveal seemed a bit forced in for such a big reveal

Spoilers ahead:
In-depth Review:
Ending a great series can never be truly satisfying as you don't really want it to end. Episodic games have this problem, as do TV shows. Some go the constant cliff hangar route, while some tie it all up neatly in a nice little bow. AoS does both with this season's many story arcs, mostly finishishing and extra ones being created.

Huh, so it seems that Daisy actually did want to go back to Hive, not double cross him. Interesting. What was more interesting was when he couldn't take her back due to Lash and an awesome fight scene broke out, with Daisy fighting Hive with martial arts with the added twist of using tremors to actually hit him instead of her fists and culminating in her stabbing Hive, only to realise he can't die like that. All in the first 10 minutes. While it felt odd that Daisy actually did want to go back to Hive, it felt right and helped to explain her exaggerated actions from the first half of this two parter.

It's getting hot in here. Or at least, to beat the Primitives it needs to be. It turns out the Primitives can only see via infrared, a fact a cornered Simmons works out pretty quickly, turning the furnaces up and making the Primitives practically blind. Another cool use of science (although this is a bit more advanced) was the use of an invisible gun to kill Giyera. This scene was good as Giyera couldn't quite tell whether he should trust Fitz's threat or not, a threat which turned out to be all too real.

This episode seemed to be the episode of highlights, with another two notable, short scenes: Mack's shot-gun axe scene, a great throwback to episodes bygone and Coulson's hologram scene. From the tension as we tried to work out how Coulson could possibly escape from Hive to the Star Wars reference to end all Star Wars references. We also had another well-choreographed fight scene most of the team fighting the Primitives, with even Simmons grabbing a crossbar and many little quips from Radcliffe about Coulson's robotic hand and more, there was a lot of highlights.

The first ending finally allowed the prophecy Daisy had recieved happen but to who was what we were all guessing. First Fitz (no!) then May (no!) and Daisy (they couldn't do it but it would've been interesting to kill of such a big character). It finally landed on Lincoln. who sacrificed himself (he was close to death anyway) to protect Daisy, the woman he loves, in a scene quite reminicent of The First Avenger. They even had the mostly normal conversation until the radio suddenly cut out.

Hive's acceptance of his fate was what made the scene however, as we actually started to feel bad for this 10,000 year old creature who could finally experience something new - death. I'm glad they didn't make Hive and Lincoln fight until the end as Hive wasn't evil in the sense that he actually just wanted peace, just went the wrong way about it. Is this the end of Brett Dalton though? Well, due to the next endings I'm not so sure.

After the poignant first ending, we jump 6 months into the future, where Daisy (Quake) has gone rogue, Coulson's no longer the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Fitz is working with Radcliffe. I liked the conclusion to the Robin and homeless Inhuman's storyline although I'm not too sure about Goth Daisy running about. We'll definetly need to be filled into why pretty quickly, as with Coulson's position.

Radcliffe has finally been given a decent sized part and for next season it seems - I was wondering if he was going to be kept or not throughout the episode. The idea that he could be creating some sort of artificial life is a cool idea, as long as it doesn't veer into Ultron territory, and could allow for Brett Dalton to come back, although I hope they don't as I don't want Ward's ending to be soiled even if he is one of the best characters on the show.

Conclusion: so that's the end of Hive, and I'm left wondering whats going to happen to Hellfire, the one Inhuman he took over that isn't dead or rescued. Also, what could a LMD possibly mean for the future of AoS. I can't wait to find out.

Rating: 84%

Thanks for reading, Satamer.

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