Agents of SHIELD 2.12 “Who You Really Are”

The only thing that disappointed me about “Who You Really Are” was that we didn’t get an awesome Agent May (Ming-Na Wen) vs. Lady Sif (Jaimie Alexander) fight sequence. I was really expecting one; especially since we were dealing with a memory-loss scenario for Sif – and we all know those usually end up with at least one bout of hero-on-hero violence.

Sigh.

Despite not satisfying my May-Kicking-Ass fetish, the rest of this episode was solid on just about every level (although I’m gonna get tired of the freeze-frame/slo-mo revelation of Skye’s earthquake powers if they do that every time).

Not only did we get a very welcome guest-appearance by Alexander’s Lady Sif, we also had Warehouse 13’s Eddie McClintock as Kree warrior Vin-Tak, brought to Earth on a secret mission to track down newly-transformed Inhumans and exterminate them. You know, because they’re atrocities.

This is kind of huge, as he info-dumps a bunch of Kree history, revealing that the Inhumans were the result of a rogue program using the Terrigen Mist to create living weapons for use in an unnamed Kree intergalactic war. But the kicker is that the program was considered a failure (at least as far as the Asgardians knew), with Earth secretly being the only planet where beings were successfully transformed.

Which triggered the shutting down of the program by a rival Kree political faction – represented now by Vin-Tak. And if we know anything about the Kree from what we saw in Guardians of the Galaxy, that shutting down was probably devastatingly violent.

Along with finally letting our heroes know exactly where the Diviners came from and who the Kree are, we also discover that there were at least five or six Diviners hidden in a buried crate and they’re ALL gone.

It’s already been established that the eyeless Inhuman, Gordon (Jamie Harris), had one, but apparently there are a handful more in the wild. And that’s enough, if used right, to transform (or murder) the planet, if Vin-Tak and Sif are to be believed.

As you could imagine, this news isn’t taken very well by anyone on the team – especially Mack (Henry Simmons) and Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge).

The pacing of the episode keeps barreling on at breakneck speed as Skye’s (Chloe Bennet) secret doesn’t remain hidden very long, and literally as soon as the team discovers what’s going on with Sif and Vin-Tak, it becomes obvious to everyone that Skye was also transformed. It doesn’t really help that she triggers an earthquake (with full-on freeze=frame/slo-mo effect) once everybody starts looking at her funny.

While it’s nice that the crew steps up and immediately defends Skye from the aliens in their midst, as soon as the threat is over they’ve got their own trust issues with her. Basically, the only people supporting her by the time everything is said and done are Coulson (Clark Gregg) and Fitz (Iain De Caestecker), with May on the fence. The best thing about this is that it doesn’t feel forced into the storyline in order to invent conflict. Coulson and May are still in their pseudo-parent roles and Fitz has seen firsthand how ostracized the others can make you feel when you’re suddenly different.

The others, though, haven’t really had any contact with superhumans that didn’t end with chaos and death, so the groundwork for their anxieties is already well-established, especially after the doom and destruction Vin-Tak predicted. The question is going to be whether or not this tension ends with her recruited by Gordon alongside Raina, or if it pushes her into the welcoming arms of her father.

Speaking of whom, next week looks like Cal’s gathering of super villains is well underway.

In other news, Hunter (Nick Blood) isn’t as dim as he lets on and after Mack convinces Bobbi (Adrianne Palicki) to push him away, he’s positive that they’ve got some sort of side project going on. Of course, a sleeper hold from Mac nips that confrontation in the bud. But what to do now? And who are they working for?

Tune in next week and at this pace we may just have an answer!