Duck Fox

Thanks ABC

Loyalty. It’s the thing that separates us from the animals. Well, that and the whole “wearing pants” thing. But loyalty tends to be much more useful at helping us forge meaningful relationships. Tonight’s episode of S.H.I.E.L.D. explores the loyalty Lance Hunter had for his fallen teammate, Isabelle Hartley, and manages to successfully resuscitate an interest in the character after a forgettable first appearance.

I complained last week about how the slow burn of plot points makes the show a chore, but thankfully, 

“Heavy is the Head” engages with its long term storytelling instead of dropping hints in awkwardly during the procedural A-story. 

Said A-story is essentially the follow through on last week’s cliffhanger. Crusher Creel has run off with the Obelisk and is plans to meet the buyer of the mysterious artifact. It’s here where we get the first glimpses of how the team is really doing since being forced out into the cold.

Both Skye and May are eager to pursue all possible leads, with Coulson forcing them to stand down, endlessly frustrating them. Fitz is still hallucinating Simmons, and Tripp is prattling on about Chinese food. 

Alright, so Tripp seems mostly okay. But the others have serious issues with their new leader. Thankfully, Coulson isn’t attempting to protect Skye from field work itself, despite Skye attributing his attitude to paternalism. The real reason Coulson is so stressed is he’s been trying to avoid having another “wall of crazy” episode. Something about getting alien lifeblood injected into you to return you from the afterlife starts making you feel like drawing weird alien diagrams. 

And yet, it’s pretty clear Coulson’s not in the best shape to be handling the team even if he didn’t have the urge to start drawing weird alien symbols everywhere. All the issues the team is facing relate directly to Coulson’s failures from last year. While the team no longer holds themselves responsible, it’s telling that Coulson only jumps into the field to save Hunter after Mac has helped Fitz make progress. The molecular destabilizer used to bring down Creel bridges the team in more ways than one. Coulson seems to be gaining more loyal followers by the end of this week’s escapades as well—Lance Hunter admits he’s intrigued by the idea of working for S.H.I.E.L.D. on a more regular basis. 

Which is quite the turn considering where the episode started with him.

The death of Hartley took Lance hardest, and his trip with Talbot is the perfect display of loyalty to her. Talbot picks him up shortly after he escapes Creel and they discuss his military past. Hunter intimates that he was in a romantic relationship with Hartley (“Why else does anyone do anything, general? I met a girl”) but regardless of whether he was in love with Hartley or merely admired her talents and respected her as his leader, his apparent willingness to betray Coulson’s team in exchange for a proper burial for the woman fills the emotional void the newcomers were dealing with. While Hunter was focused on honoring his commitment to deceased team members—forcing himself to play a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with Coulson and Talbot— Mackenzie, is developing a loyalty to everyone’s favorite nerdball. The bond Fitz and Mac seem to be developing is no doubt going to be better in the long run than Fitz having to hallucinate Simmons to cope. And Mac’s no nonsense attitude has even Imaginary!Simmons intrigued.

As for the long form storytelling, we get a lot more of Ruth Negga’s Raina, the mysterious “girl in the flower dress” for much of season 1 who turned out to be philosophically interested in HYDRA’s pursuits, but less interested in all the icky bloodshed and violence HYDRA regularly commits. She ends up snatching the all important Obelisk this time, keeping it out of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s and HYDRA’s hands, only to serve it up to a new player who is as mysterious as he is likely to be Skye’s father menacing. Kyle MacLachlan seems to know something about the Obelisk, but he’s not telling until he gets to have a conversation with his daughter. Coulson manages to hash out a deal with Talbot by making excellent use of their newly developed cloaking technology. It’s a pretty epic scene and one which really lets Clark Gregg break out of his shell. Gone is the tension of the past couple of episodes. Now that Coulson’s had another episode he’s fully focused and unbelievably on point when he marches to Talbot’s meet, apparently alone, only to reveal he’s cloaked the bus and another S.H.I.E.L.D. carrier. Talbot will probably be taking Coulson’s offer to surreptitiously receive “gifts” like Crusher Creel and keep them under lock and key while S.H.I.E.L.D. is rebuilding. That’s definitely a form of loyalty, right?