‘Agents of SHIELD’ season 4, episode 9 review: A betrayal amidst the rise of the machines
It’s been a long hiatus in terms of new episodes of “Agents of SHIELD” episodes, but there was a good bit to look forward to tonight courtesy of Aida’s rise, the journey to find the Darkhold, and so much more.
Bad news – Aida is pretty darn powerful. Since we last saw her, the character’s installed a few “upgrades” to better herself in terms of physical combat. Oh, and she’s also created a fake version of May who is wandering around while the real May is locked up. She made her mission fairly clear in this episode: To obtain the Darkhold, and leverage the power for her own gain. Since she removed the ability to feel pain, the team quickly realized that firing bullets at her really was not going to do too much in terms of stopping her.
Let us now take a minute to give a rather lengthy eye-roll at one Dr. Radcliffe for thinking that starting up an LMD like Aida was ever a good idea. Seriously. This may have been one of the worst ideas imaginable, since basically what he did was create Ultron 2.0 with all of the warnings in place that it was a terrible idea.
(Warning: We wrote that before getting to the twist at the end of the episode. We kept it in as a way to praise the show for managing to keep the big twist under wraps.)
Even worse news – While Fitz and Radcliffe were off trying to stop Aida in her tracks, Coulson sand LMD May found themselves trapped … temporarily. While they had a bonding session, eventually they were able to join their friends (plus Mack and others) to try to stop her in her tracks.
Surprisingly, they did! The fact that we saw Aida’s robotic head severed from her body this early in the winter run was a shock, mostly because it felt like so much of this story was themed around her.
Well, about that … Radcliffe was able to create another new model, and it’s starting to seem like he is a madman at the center of everything. He’s out to acquire the Darkhold himself, but has to find another way to secure it. This is where May comes into play.
We will say that when it comes to twists, having Radcliffe (who we thought was just a bumbling doctor) turn out to be an architect of an evil operation was certainly refreshing.
The trouble with Nadeer – The Senator’s been one of the more under-the-radar villains of the season so far, and we saw the true extent of her power tonight. She doesn’t have superpowers, but she was able to leverage her own knowledge of persuasion in order to trick her brother BJ into going with her rather than Jemma and Mace. After she learned of his powers and got him aboard a helicopter, where she could then shoot him. She’s at war with SHIELD, and seems desperate to do what she can to take away any shred of influence from them.
Overall – The show really put us on a rollercoaster when it comes to Aida! There were some really fun moments during the episode (Mack’s knowledge of robot movies), but we also felt for Coulson (falling for a robot?) and also experienced one of the bigger twists of the season in Radcliffe’s true plan. Overall, a pretty good episode through and through. Grade: B+.
Next week – Get ready for a big episode that is all about Jeffrey Mace. For some more news in terms of what is coming up next, just be sure to head over to the link here now! (Photo: ABC.)