Agents of Shield: Seeds
by J.D. Cook
Well luckily I found a way to watch last week’s episode of Agents of Shield ‘The Magical Place’ before this week’s premiere because it was pretty awesome. At first I didn’t think the idea of spending an episode at S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy would be interesting in the slightest but I was pleasantly surprised. It was really amusing to see Agent’s Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) treated like the coolest people in the world at the Science and Technology Academy. While Ward (Brett Dalton) felt a bit like a college student visiting a rival’s campus, as he trained at a different Shield Academy. We also got Skye’s (Chloe Bennet) mysterious back story and the icing on the cake, a new Super villain!
Spoilers Below
Ok so last week’s episode was a bit disappointing to me because Coulson’s (Clark Gregg) survival after the Avengers seemed pretty underwhelming. Not to mention the episode killed off villain Edison Po (Cullen Douglas), who I just started to like. Plus the episode was built up in my head after being forced to miss it. Mike Peterson’s (J. August Richard) fate was pretty tragically awesome though!
Anyway this week we got the introduction of a Marvel Comics villain Blizzard a.k.a. Donnie Gill (Dylan Minnette). His origin is obviously tweaked but 
it’s great because he starts out sympathetic before resigning himself to his villainous fate. In place of Justin Hammer helping him get his powers, like in the Comic Books, we got Ian Quinn (David Conrad). Quinn is awesome in a lot of ways as he is a continuing villain in the show and he is now allied with the mysterious Clairvoyant, more theories on that later! Not to mention that Quinn seems to be the exact opposite of the heroic Tony Stark. Secondly we discovered that Skye’s origin is that she mysteriously popped up in a Chinese village exhibiting powers only to be rescued by Shield. Then her rescuers were knocked off one by one until the survivors buried existence of her and went into hiding themselves. Still the question remains…where did she come from before that and who is out to get her? Could she still be Spider-Woman as we hypothesized a few blogs back? It was pretty cool to see her accept her past so easily and it was even cooler when she mentioned Bucky Barnes on the Wall of Honor for Shield. Fans in the know will recognize the name pretty easily and chuckle as to why he is listed on the wall for deceased agents.
The most amusing moment of the show came when Mae (Ming-Na Wen) told Coulson she and Ward were doing the horizontal monster mash. Hilarious!
This episode reminded me a lot of the Asset, the episode with Graviton’s origin, for a lot of reasons. Quinn showed up in that episode as well and he helped create a tragic sort of villain. Any episode where we get a character lifted directly from the comics I am happy. The show’s creators obviously want to add their own characters into the mix of things but it is so much fun to get to see characters I’ve read about appear on the…err small screen! I just can’t wait to see these villains who now have grudges against the Agents of Shield get to actually use their powers against them. Maybe Quinn will assemble a super villain team at the end of the season made of the characters the Agents came into contact with throughout the show!
Ok last bit before I sign off. Last week the Clairvoyant killed his underling using a phone. I don’t know if anyone else thought this but I was quickly thinking that Ultron would have the power to do just that! Imagine if you will an evil A.I. that did not have a body but was stuck in cyber space. Perhaps he is in his beta stage assembling troops to wage war on mankind! That said it seems more likely the Clairvoyant is the Leader or just a mad dictator type trying to raise an evil army to rule the world. We discussed some of these theories in more depth at the end of the Bridge episode blog.
This shows scheduling is getting pretty annoying as I was going to write, see ya next week, but the next episode isn’t on until February 4th! Why are you doing this to me ABC! I want my fix!
Until February 4th!
Other Episodes of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Agents of Shield: Pilot
Agents of Shield: 0-8-4
Agents of Shield: The Asset
Agents of Shield: Eye Spy
Agents of Shield: The Girl in the Flower Dress
Agents of Shield: F.Z.Z.T.
Agents of Shield: The Hub
Agents of Shield: The Well
Agents of Shield: Repairs
Agents 0f Shield: The Bridge
Agents of Shield: The Magical Place
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