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enness2000

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  1. Do we know how long the zombie scratch takes to work? The cutaway between the bomb reveal and the actual explosion leaves some wiggle room for "one of the FG soldiers was sharp enough to immediately scratch her", so you've still got 'Natalie's a zombie again' tragedy without the logistical issue of Major potentially being infected. It's a reach, though, and I'm inclined to think she's just dead (not like the show's been shy about killing off random love interests in the past). I cut Liv a lot of slack on the brain front, in that it's pretty well-established that she's barely aware of when the brains are taking over, and rarely able to control them. She's hurled herself into life-threatening danger under the control of 'superhero' brains and not been able to reason with herself, so I think cheating on someone is comparatively easy to see as being uncontrollable brain urge. And given that she didn't know when she spoke to Justin that she was on nympho brains, and by the time she knew what was going on she was already slipping back into Katty-mode, I'm inclined to sympathise with her (in the larger seasonal and series-long picture of her hating how much her personality changes and how little her 'real' self has control). Not saying that I'd expect Justin to see it that way, or would necessarily see it that way in his shoes, but just saying that I'm not as mad at Liv as others above seem to be. Given the 'tiny dog' link, I guess we can assume Chase was on the same flight, potentially travelling under an assumed name (which would fit for an ex-military slightly-paranoid guy), and that's how Katty met him? And he killed her to cover up the potential zombie exposure? I don't think he's the full-on season big bad though - given that the Johns brothers were being set up as patsies, there's someone else who blew up Vivian's helicopter, killed an FG employee and his family, shot at Barracus, and set up the whole Weckler mess. A senior FG person is the obvious candidate (given there's any number of things Vivian, the army dude and a random FG employee could have been killed to cover up, and helping Barracus become Mayor is a big win for zombie-kind), so it's really between Chase and the other woman whose name escapes me. I kinda hope the latter, as having Chase blow in halfway through the season and be responsible for everything (even stuff that supposedly happened before he was around) is a bit lame.
  2. I think this is most likely - I assume, back when Coulson, Mack, Mace and Leo were snatched and replaced before "Self Control", they also had a Jemma-bot ready to go had they managed to grab her too. It would explain not only how they had a fully-functional Jemma LMD ready to go, but also why she was the only one they replaced with an LMD - if they had time/tech to make more, you'd think they'd clone more of the team and not just hope that Aida limited her murder spree to one person before going after the Darkhold.
  3. I mean, you probably wouldn't, but SHIELD (and therefore Talbot, and also Aida) would have records of exactly what it looks like when someone is quaked to death from any kind of autopsy on Malick last year. And so when another body turns up that bears similar injuries, and where Daisy could plausibly (from Talbot's perspective) have reason to attack him, and she's missing, it's not a massive leap to conclusions. FWIW, I think Aida did have the Russian do it specifically to frame Daisy - in the first few days of the Agents of HYDRA arc, there must have been some offscreen news footage and speculation about the (most recent) fall of SHIELD and a massive unexplained explosion. It's entirely plausible that Aida would see Mace's corpse as an opportunity to make life more difficult for Daisy, and a solid backup for getting her out of the Framework, or at least making it more difficult for her to hide. (I mean, if the Zephyr *had* landed at any stage, you've gotta assume better than 50/50 odds that Talbot would have tried to wake Daisy up by unplugging her even if warned not to). Am I the only one who thinks we'll see an army of Daisy-bots fighting an army of Russian-bots next week? The containment rooms where they were stored seemed pretty untouched by the explosion in "Self Control", and it seems like the kind of all-out madness that AoS loves in its fight scenes (escalating from May vs. May to Daisy vs. Alicias to Daisies Vs. Russians is a pretty natural progression, really). Also, enough good things can't be said about Mallory Jansen. The credibility and emotional heft of this last swerve rested entirely on her performance, and the entire thing (from her initial joy at being human to becoming completely overwhelmed by emotions by the end) was incredible to watch. She's played every different character so well this season, I'm really going to miss her when she's inevitably sucked into hell by Ghost Rider.
  4. That's an awesome theory. Depending on Maveth's usual methods, this could explain Zombie Ward making it through too - if Maveth usually takes over a living host and lets it decay, that may be different in this case due to its panicked jump from a destroyed body into a corpse (Ward looks a lot grosser and more obviously dead than Will did), which would explain why Maveth could jump through the portal this time but hadn't been able to wait at a portal spot at any other time in millenia spent on the planet. Or just having one undead person pass through is sufficient to make the portal usable that time (which would explain Jemma getting through).
  5. Thinking about the episode some more - is there any particular reason "Will" chose to blow his cover with seconds to go before he was home free on Earth? I know it was a little contrived that Coulson just happened to provide another corpse for it to jump into, but the only reason that was necessary was because It decided to just spill the beans to Fitz in the first place.
  6. I kinda hope almost-killing Joey becomes a running joke (after the "He's dead - PSYCH! Just Andrew daydreaming", "He's diving in front of a hail of gunfire - PSYCH! He's functionally bulletproof" two-fer), like Rory on Doctor Who, but with less actual death. I'm also on board with everyone above who prefers him to Lincoln as an Inhuman viewpoint character - his dorkiness is very endearing. While I liked the Will reveal (and the comments upthread about the foreshadowing make me like it more), the whole plot just feels half-baked. Only Fitz can get people back from the blue planet, apparently, for poorly-defined reasons, and Hydra has been worshipping this entity for centuries, for poorly-defined reasons, and Ward is willing to give up basically everything he's been working for in order to try to personally bring it back, for poorly-defined reasons... I don't necessarily mind that they're keeping Ward around (in that it's bad luck and a lack of character knowledge, rather than character idiocy, that's let him escape so far - they've been concertedly trying to kill him for a full season now - which, to my mind, makes him less Sylar-like) I do like where they're heading with an unstoppable Inhuman-killing monster and an unstoppable Inhuman being the two big threats for 3B - lots of potential there.
  7. Not quite letting go of my speculation above - is there precedence in the comics for a different type of Terriginesis inducement causing a different outcome in powers? Because if not, it's awfully convenient that the first person to open Jiaying's secret booby-trapped list of Afterlife alumni is immediately transformed into someone with an overwhelming compulsion to track down and kill said alumni. (I mean, it's far from the *most* convenient thing we've seen on the show, but it'd be up there)
  8. OK, now that we know more, can anyone piece together the Lash stuff in a way that makes sense? He has Jiaying's notes, which is how he has the names of the Afterlife 'graduates'. And possible their e-mail addresses? (Although the idea of Jiaying carefully transcribing g-mail addresses into an ancient-looking notebook cracks me up). And then he finds the hacker guy from two episodes back...somehow? Since SHIELD didn't seem to know about him, could Jiaying have had a list of potential inhumans that the Afterlife crew hadn't tapped yet? And in that episode, he also seemed to just happen to know where to ambush the ACTU van. I'm just having trouble seeing the overall picture that takes Andrew from "I was compelled to track down an Inhuman, and once I was near him I uncontrollably transformed and slaughtered him" to "I can hunt them, sometimes, but other times need a virus and a helper monkey".
  9. THIS. Delighted to see Offscreen Joey onscreen, and surviving (nearly threw my laptop out the window at that fakeout), though I'm a little disappointed at how they're handling the Secret Warriors thing in general. So there's a whole off-site training facility? Where they train some people? And this training is done by someone other than Daisy, I guess, since she's always off on missions? I mean, they've said there are other new Inhumans being kept at SHIELD, but given that the last we heard of Joey he couldn't open a door without melting it, it's weird that they've jumped to "Pretty much in control and with a whole new element to his power" in a few weeks, and that we haven't heard of any of the rest at all - powers, names, mental states, anything. I don't exactly miss the snail's pace of season 1, but it feels like a lot of missed plot opportunity to show someone actually going through the change in a SHIELD context - not like Daisy last year, but with a support network that isn't secretly genocidal and in a context where they're explicitly being asked to go from "random schmoe" to "super-soldier" by dint of having alien DNA. That said, if it gets Joey into the main plot faster, it's all good. (And yes, I know that I'm putting more thought into his plotline than anyone actually involved in the show is, but honestly, I am so on board for an LGBT superhero that I will cheerfully take this, and if that means I end up paying a bit less attention to the multiple "I love you, but my [secret past/dubious political alliance/evil side/gung-ho revenge deathwish/marooned space boyfriend/mangsty facial hair] is causing us drama!" heterosexual couples on the show, I'm cool with that. I do love Ming Na Wen more with every episode though, and I'm very much hoping Ros doesn't know Powers Boothe and his terrifyingly sculpted eyebrows are Hydra, because her and Coulson give me a total "Ooh, old people can be so sweet!" feeling)
  10. I think it's realistic that her powers have hit something of a peak. In Afterlife, she was vibrating water, sure, but she also blew up the glasses, and her training ended pretty abruptly when her mentor turned out to be evil and got killed. It also kinda fits with her "Must get the Secret Warriors up and running, at all costs" mentality this season that she's focusing on offensive effectiveness rather than fine-tuned control. That said, she did manage in the second episode of the season to produce a very precise vibrational frequency based only on having felt that frequency produced by a machine for half a minute, which is pretty decent control of her power.
  11. When did Joey kill someone? I know he caused some mayhem in the season premiere, but last we heard from Bobbi in that episode there were no reported casualties. (And because this was posted a bunch of times already - the ash-y human shape in his kitchen was his Inhuman cocoon, not a dead roommate/boyfriend) This actually rings kinda true. One thing I found jarring about last week's episode is Simmons' PTSD, which feels a lot stranger when you see that, up until two minutes before she left she had actually adjusted relatively well, and was making jokes about seeing the next sunrise. And I know the way she left was traumatic, but her barely-verbal state in episodes 3 & 4 feels a bit off after that reveal, especially since she went from that state (end of episode 4), to significantly better here, even though this is, like, two days later in-universe. Could just be poor character continuity, but it'd be awesome if it were a hint that she's not quite what she says - given how strong Elizabeth Henstridge was in her solo episode, I'd love to see her play evil for a while. While this episode is him at his least flattering, it's...kinda all true. He was brought in as a merc when they were desperate for anyone who was remotely competent. He's never demonstrated a massive amount of combat or tactical prowess compared to the likes of Bobbi or May; his role in the first half of season 2 was mostly as comic relief and to bring Bobbi in, and in the second half he spent a good chunk of it captured and, while useful as Coulson's sole ally against Real SHIELD, wasn't exactly coming up with plans or being a one-man army. His character is consistently rash (cf that cold open where Coulson is trying to finagle his was into an SUV and Hunter just steals it), technically unskilled (cf "Face My Enemy" where he acknowledges that he's less skilled than basically everyone else on the team in that department) and mostly there because he cares about the people. But he's still a merc at heart, and I'd be really interested if they play that out a bit more to show a divide between him and a growing team of dedicated SHIELD agents. (That said, the conflict tonight was a bit cheap - I buy that everyone would be annoyed with him because, while Andrew would have been attacked anyway, his plan was reckless the whole way through, but I think that was articulated poorly tonight and made everyone look a bit simple and shallow in their assessment of the situation) Other stray observations: * Totally agree that Hunter is a monster, and potentially Fitz too, for considering stranding a man on an alien planet for the sake of avoiding a rival for Jemma's affections * I think the ACTU solution is pretty monstrous, even if there's 'consent' - I don't know if consent can truly be given when someone's in a complete state of shock and being given incomplete information by the ACTU (not necessarily maliciously, just that the ACTU don't seem to know the full story behind the Inhumans). And I find the idea of a "cure" implausible when the Inhumans have, post-Terrigensis at least, fundamentally altered DNA, but I guess it could be possible with comic book medical science... * The recap post loses 10 points for being mystified by a number of things we knew already (the name for the 'dwarf' drone, the batons having tasers) and gains a million points for the excellent Tom Lehrer reference * I stand by what I said last week - this doesn't ring true at all with what we knew of Andrew, and is a really disappointing reveal considering that it isn't just taking May's love interest away, it's turning him into a serial killer. Even with the best of intentions in terms of "saving" the Inhumans from the pain of their existence, he still slaughtered some random security guard while hunting Lincoln for absolutely no reason, and could easily have killed a van full of agents two weeks ago. I may be proven wrong depending on how they justify it, but for now it feels exceedingly cheap and done for nothing more than a "shocking" reveal that half the board called as soon as it was teased.
  12. "Earl Grey and his skin-crawlingly posh English accent" Possibly intentional, but this is pretty hilarious if you know UK accents. Lucien Laviscount has a northern accent, it's pretty much the opposite of posh.
  13. When Daisy brought the information about the virus to Coulson, she said that she asked Offscreen Joey (in his Offscreen solitary confinement cell where I assume he's just been hanging out, staring at the walls and slowly going insane) if he'd gotten the same e-mail as two redshirts from the opening sequence; he hadn't, thus ending his plot involvement for this week .
  14. Lash theory - he's a failsafe of Jiaying's. He knows the names of a bunch of Inhumans who were at Afterlife, to give to Frye to track down. We don't know if the Inhumans he killed off-screen pre-season were pre-fish-oil or post-fish-oil, but my guess is they were all Afterlife alumni. He also has the names of some people like Frye who the Afterlife team were either planning on recruiting, or had assessed and found unworthy of being brought in. Jiaying has had him in place for years; it would fit with her fanatical beliefs that she also believes the Inhumans are better off being mercy-killed if she isn't there to 'protect' them. That's why he calls it "necessary", and that's why he spared Daisy - not because she's so super-special, but because he knows it's what Jiaying would want.
  15. To be fair, they showed Victoria Hand's face when she got shot, at which point she fell offscreen and was shot twice more, and they later showed a hand that was identifiably hers (in context) covered in blood. There, the off-screen death seemed more about discretion and 'what you can show on TV' than about a misdirect. Here, they don't show any attack on Andrew, and the shot of 'his' body starts low enough down that you can't even see his hand. I can't imagine they wouldn't mine his death for a lot more drama, and I can't imagine that they're unaware enough of how these things work that they're not intentionally hinting that he's not dead. (I think they'll use it to get some excellent scenes out of Ming-Na Wen, and to develop tension between her and Hunter, but I don't think he's gone for good) As for why/how he's still alive - I don't think he's Lash. It makes a lot of sense plot-wise, but none character-wise unless we're going with "total disassociative Inhuman side, who still also recognises and likes Daisy", and even then Andrew seems smart enough to notice if he's regularly losing hours of his life. If he's keeping it a secret, or if he's knowingly killing Inhumans, then it's very much a 180-degree turn from what we know of him already. And while that's admittedly not much, everything we've seen points to him being a good, conscientious doctor who cares a lot for his patients. His total lack of guile or secrecy makes him a really interesting contrast to May, which is a big part of what makes their relationship interesting. Ditching that to have a big "Ooooh, Andrew's actually a bit of a bad guy!" reveal seems cheap, and unnecessary in a show that's already had 11 million "One of team is keeping secrets from the rest of the team, potentially murder-related" plotlines. (I mean, I know the Ward one in season 1 worked well, but surely they have to stop going back to that well at some point?) Also, on a totally logistical note, Lash's power seems to be some kind of matter disintegration thing, judging by the way he makes holes in doors/vans, and the way his attacks leave a burned out hole in the person. What we've seen so far is that it very definitely doesn't leave the kind of massive pool of blood that we saw at the end there. So I'm rooting for Andrew being an Inhuman, and May knowing this, but not Lash, just someone else with freaky and violent powers to save himself and scare mini Von Strucker. (Or, alternatively, given that May clearly suspected Ward was going to hunt down her family, that she's had Deathlok watching him, and when she said "Coulson, you need to get to Andrew", she wasn't hoping he'd re-route his support team halfway across the country in 20 seconds, but calling in the terrifying cyborg she already knows is on hand) Exactly this. In this episode alone, she flipped the ACTU van because she blasted Lash while inside it. I know it's TV, where no one ever dies from a minor vehicle flipping, but she could easily have killed herself, Mack and the ACTU team by using her powers in a confined space. (Also, on the point of her specifically arming herself while searching Frye's house, she's seen already in the hospital that Lash seems marginally more phased by being repeatedly shot than he does by being hit with her blasts, so makes sense to have that weapon ready on a Lash hunt) ETA: The repeated mentions of Offscreen Joey give me hope that he's coming back at some point. If they actually introduced the first openly LGBT MCU character to make a strained point about intolerance in two scenes before disappearing forever, I would be mildly ticked off, to say the least.
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