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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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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)

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".

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)

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.

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.

"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.

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 .

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.

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.

I was close to yelling this at my laptop last night. Like, seriously, he knows enough to get a burner phone and buy a car in cash from a friend, but not enough to shave, pick up some glasses, dye his hair, wear a hat, anything that might alter his appearance so he can walk down the street without being immediately stopped? Honestly, I thought it was good. I'm in Ireland, not the UK, but all of the slang was actual English slang (much of it wasn't cockney, but then, most English slang isn't cockney) and it felt like an actual conversation, rather than awkward "Here's the slang we googled!" dialogue. Within the show? The differences in the Inhumans' DNA were introduced by aliens (the Kree) to use them essentially as bioweapons. There are also people the show calls "gifted" who have obtained powers through some kind of intervention or accident (Scorch, Donnie Gill, etc.), but the show hasn't used the word "mutant" given copyright issues, and to the best of my recollection there hasn't been anyone on the show who, like the mutants, has had their DNA change spontaneously to give them natural powers with no outside agent. There's some dialogue in the middle of season 2 where Simmons explains that the "gifted" people they've encountered are fundamentally human, while the Inhumans (at least once they've gone through Terrigenesis and been 'activated' as Inhumans) are biologically distinct, to the point of almost being a different species. More general episode thoughts - I'm already bored of Lincoln. I actually liked him and found the character refreshing last season, in that he was a relatively bright spot as the show got darker. It was interesting to see someone who had come to terms with his powers, embraced them and enjoyed his new life balancing medical studies with his role among the Inhumans. Now, he's just another brooder with a tragic backstory (and added alcoholism, because sure, why not). And while it's a totally understandable character shift given everything that happened at the end of season 2, that doesn't make it any more interesting to watch. And while the romantic subplot was obviously coming from a mile off, that was still a hugely awkward moment. If I were Daisy, I'd be beyond furious with Coulson. He changed their plans mid-mission for stupid reasons (seriously, why is it a problem if her face is on the news? She lives in an underground base and already only leaves for missions) with no warning and could easily have gotten all of them killed. And it's a shame, because I really liked his scene mid-episode where he shut down her off-base frustrations and reminded her that the situation had changed since he asked her to set up the Secret Warriors, so to have that good "Coulson growing as director" work undermined by him being an idiot 20 minutes later is annoying. I do like Coulson and Ros though. It's nice for Coulson to have another 'adult' to interact with, given that most of his scenes with Daisy, Mack and co. have him in a very father-figure type role - it's nice to see him get to do something different with someone who's shaping up to be a female version of him. (And awkward though it was, I loved her commitment to the hand puns). My love for Mack continues to grow. More characters should partake in his video game therapy sessions.

Hypothesis: They knew she had a shiv, but she's in a secure room where only Fitz is present, and he just risked everyone's lives by breaking off from the group plan to try a solo rescue mission, so they're all like "Meh, worst case scenario she shivs Fitz, NBD".

Word. I'm excited about where the show is taking the Inhumans storyline, and the idea of them being able to do that without being bound by the restrictions of a script for a 2019 movie is only a good thing as far as I'm concerned. While the Winter Solider-related developments were the turning point of season 1, the tie-ins in season 2 were inconsequential and just felt like fanservice. The TV universe and movie universe feel like they've diverged enough to each stand on their own, with a few inside references but no significant plot points crossing over; an Inhumans movie would require significant TV show tie-ins, so if they've scrapped that plan, all the better.

I'm torn on the Jemma thing. It felt extraordinarily easy, but then, it didn't feel like they were even trying to pretend that she wasn't immediately coming back all along. I mean, the non-Fitz characters seemed borderline "Jemma who?" and the entire science division was being run by a character who's talking about being back in the field in a few weeks. It's understandable given the breadth of stuff that needed to be covered last week, and there's still a chance to course-correct next week, but like...this week, the second-most emotional reaction to Jemma being rescued after theoretically being assumed dead for months was Hunter, who was in a different subplot* and has, as far as I can recall, barely interacted with her in their time on the show. And in that context, I'm fine with them just hustling things along - if they weren't going to use Jemma's absence to explore what she meant/means to the team, then there's no point in keeping her gone. We can see what happened on the planet in flashbacks, and hopefully get a better-realised story about her PTSD and everyone's reaction to her being back. I like Brett Dalton a lot, but I just can't sustain interest in his character any more. My only regret is that only one of the people with very good reason to kill him will get to actually kill him. Daisy's 'Secret Warriors' plot is, name aside, by far the thing I'm most looking forward to seeing this season, and I like that they're trying to make it as 'realistic' as a subplot about secret alien DNA superpowers can be, with an actual psychologist reviewing people and a minimum period of months of review being required before they even decide to let these people leave, let alone sign them up to be new agents. I hope a bit more of it plays out on screen as we go along. *Related: Big HELL YES for characters on an ensemble TV show actually relaying useful information to each other and reacting to what's happening in their world and team even if they're not directly involved in it. One of my pet TV peeves is when characters feel like they're in entirely different shows to people who are theoretically their colleagues and close friends.

I think I'm correct in saying that Joey is the first acknowledged LGBT person in the MCU, right? If so, then twelve movies and 70-odd episodes of television in, I think we were due a little diversity. While the later 'coming out' scene was a little anvillicious, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing (it's not like LGBT people all over the world don't still face a truckload of problems in coming out), and I thought the first scene was actually pretty natural. I mean, if Bobbie had said "ex-girlfriend", the scene would have played out exactly the same, and would have been an entirely normal character note to drop in (not least to exposit that the attractive new male character is single) that no one would have blinked at. If it feels unnatural or forced when it's done with a gay character, that's probably more down to the general heteronormativity of society than down to stilted writing. More directly on-topic: Yay! New gay character who looks like he may stick around for a while! I'm keeping every digit crossed that the show pays the numerous hints about Mack last season and does something there. Even outside of that, though, I'd love to see Daisy and the team training new Inhumans and taking over from Afterlife as a sort of bridging station for the newly transformed, and he seems like a decent character to start with. I fully appreciate what others are saying above in terms of this show feeling completely different to how it was in season 1, but honestly, I appreciate that. I like that they've been willing to completely retool things as needed, and I think it's kept the show more interesting than it might otherwise have been during its rockier patches. That said, I'm curious to see how the broader structure of this season emerges, both in terms of a Big Bad (the ACTU seem extreme, but a step down from "genocidal superhumans" or "terror-Nazis", and Lash is just one (massive, blue, pointy) guy) and in terms of what the bulk of SHIELD actually does now. If Hunter chasing Ward is basically a solo mission, and Daisy's secret warriors are technically a side-project of SHIELD, are the rest of the team (once Simmons and May are back) going to be facing off against other random non-Inhuman-related threats of the week? Or will it be all Inhumans, all the time?

Totally agree. The reaction that both she and the show had, and continue to have, towards Ward and his "oh, my tortured past forced me into Nazi terrorism" nonsense, is one of the most endearing things about them. Bonus points for repeatedly shooting him in the back the second she had the chance and again for later expressions of regret that she didn't shoot him in the head. I'm interested to see how her role evolves as this season goes on. It's fun to see her so in control of her powers and her team, and the fact that she seems to be taking up the better parts of her mother's vision (in terms of maintaining and protecting Inhuman culture) is a really nice touch, but I hope they keep her human (so to speak) and acknowledge from time to time that she must feel several leagues out of her depth, especially considering how far she's come in just two years.

The word "Hell" and the concept of an afterlife that punishes people for their sins both predate Christian mythology and are in no way tied to monotheistic religions or post-hoc rationalisations of evil. That's (sorta) how Hell works in Christianity, but (as in so many other things) Christians didn't invent the concepts, just glommed onto them. And "large black dog that acts as a guardian between the worlds of the dead and of the living" goes back to Cerberus, if not further. (And, it should be noted, the afterlife that Cerberus was guarding wasn't "Hell" in the Christian sense, but a more all-purpose 'underworld where pretty much all souls go') The afterlife has existed in Teen Wolf since season 2 when Peter's ghost was wandering around getting him resurrected, and Lydia's power seems (at times) to involve communicating with the dead. However good or bad the Parrish-Hellhound reveal is, it in no way limits, defines or clarifies the Teen Wolf mythology or universe any further than any other revelation would have. (NB: This doesn't mean that the writers did put any thought into any of that, just that this has not "randomly positioned the show within a Catholic mythology") For what it's worth, I like the hellhound reveal. I wasn't expecting it, it makes sense given that he's been effectively ferrying the supernatural dead to a supernatural location and keeping the two worlds separate, and the fact that the Black Dog is a recurring bringer of death in a lot of folklores (in the same "see one and you die" sense as the banshee) ties him and Lydia together nicely. Their relationship still skeeves me out to some extent (the extent to which she is still in high school, specifically) but it's actually a nicely positioned reveal in a way that, for example, 'phoenix' wouldn't have been. The rest of the finale though...oy. The thing is, I think Theo's plan actually makes sense (inasmuch as anything in Teen Wolf ever makes sense) up to the point where he's needlessly Eeevil about it. He had Liam ready and willing to kill Scott, and totally unaware he was being manipulated. He had Scott weakened and actively poisoning himself every few minutes. He had Stiles manipulated out of the way (implausibly, but still), Kira gone, Malia distracted fighting a chimera. He may have needed to kidnap Lydia (given the wildcard nature of her powers), but there are ways to do that that don't involve looking her in the eye, saying "I'm super-evil, FYI! Lol!", and punching her in the face. If he had just let things play out it might have worked like he wanted. Let Liam kill Scott, be the person a broken and traumatised pack rally around, figure out another way to take Liam's alpha status and slowly turn the pack to evil. And, if it hadn't worked, he'd still be inside the pack, able to try again. Instead...well, instead this mess happened. In spite of myself, I'm moderately intrigued by the various plot threads set up for 5B, but when I think about it rationally, I know they're going to be shambolic. A pack faceoff could be interesting, but in practice will just mean lots of poorly shot fight sequences between near-identical pretty-boys (I mean, the fact that no one even seems quite certain which of the interchangeable male chimeras were resurrected speaks volumes). The Bete could be cool, but given the lack of any Argents left on the show it's inevitably going to fall flat. The Dread Doctors potentially having an actual motivation for creating their perfect chimera (set it fighting against something?) could be good, but the fact that they have a secret mural behind a wall in their secret water-treatment-plant laboratory does not bode well.

I can't even imagine how painfully difficult it would be to read a book backwards. I also can't comprehend how, when the point of the book is that it's a 'language trick' designed to spark buried memories, reading it in such a way as to deliberately avoid that language trick would still work, but whatever. That scene with Kira being experimented on was sufficiently creepy to make it mostly worthwhile. Though it does raise more questions of just how unfathomably powerful the Doctors are, and whether they can still pull that "operate right in front of people but without anyone there seeing what's happening or even noticing anything's wrong" trick on people who have read the book. In retrospect, I wish they had gone a more definite Silence/Ben-is-Glory route after Tracy's death. Having Malia emerge from the basement with a dead kanima, but not totally sure what happened or why, would have made for a much more plausible explanation behind the growing split in the pack, and would have kept their powers as a more consistent "You can't see or remember them until you've been forced to see/remember them" thing. It seems like we're only just going to have caught up to the premiere by episode 10, so I guess the "Valack running Eichen House" plot is going to be the arc for 5B? And/or the Desert Wolf? On which point, if she knows Malia was being raised by the Tates, it's really not going to be that hard for her to find her again, given that she's still in the same house. That final Theo scene with all the hugging - I'm not wrong that Tyler Posey was trying to convey "suspicion" there, right? I mean, it is a little convenient that Theo was able to press for just the right information, though I'd expect Stiles or Lydia to be the ones sharp enough to pick up on that, not Scott.

Yeah, I guess that's entirely possible. Can anyone remember 3B well enough to remember if it was clear at the time that her mother & sister died from a coyote attack rather than the crash itself? I guess I was assuming that they wouldn't have retconned the cause of the accident if they weren't also retconning the immediate aftermath of it, though it's still relatively unclear. On the other hand, 900 years of learning how to fight using your supernaturally enhanced strength, agility and healing powers, plus (based on Kira) swordsmanship that comes from intuitive knowledge rather than actual training, might almost hinder you if you're trying to use those same skills in what is effectively a much less powerful body. (I guess I'm just griping about my long-standing issue with how poorly they've explained anything about Kira's mother's powers, or current lack thereof)

I dunno - I mean, he did just fine in "The Maze Runner" where one of his main co-stars was a GoT actor. And I'd imagine people would have said similar things about, for example, Vincent Kartheiser pre-Mad Men. I mean, I wouldn't exactly be throwing Emmys at him for his work here, but he pulled off the wordless opening scenes last week quite well, and is an obviously strong actor even when given some pretty poor scripts. I'd go with that a lot more if we had any inkling why she doesn't want to "tell on herself". I have trouble even fanwanking a reason why she'd keep it from Stiles. And I think her scenes with Theo last week indicated pretty strongly that she's aware of the fact that he's trying to play her - granted, she doesn't know if it's for eeeeeevil reasons or to worm his way into the pack for non-eeeeeeeevil reasons or if he's just legitimately trying to bone her, but she was on to his "casually working out shirtless, whatevs" act, so she should be at least a little suspicious. On the "blue eyes" thing from this week - given that Malia had blue eyes even though we now know she didn't kill her family, what does that mean for the mythology? If they are going with guilt (which, sigh, but they dropped that in this week so it's a possibility) then could her eyes have turned blue because she thought it was her fault? Does killing 'innocent' animals count, from when she was a coyote? Did she kill some other random human at some point? (Worrying) Or did she mercy-kill her mother and/or sister right after coyote-ing out, or lose control and attack them post-crash? On Theo, my guess is what Sakura12 said above - Theo isn't a 'real' werewolf, so he's not bound by normal werewolf rules. On the actual substance of this week's episode, I have no words. I love this show, but everyone on it is so dumb, from Mama Yukimura's "Attack the bringer of death just to confirm it's in there, then panic when it actually is" strategy* to Scott's "Use fragile technology to defeat the enemies who have so far shown mastery over any and all technology they encounter" approach to fighting. Also on this list are the Dread Doctors, who are aware these kids are powerful (based on sending the first chimera to steal Scott's power) and that they're trying to stop them (given how often they've run into them) and yet show no interest in easily disposing of an obstacle when said obstacle is trapped in a fever dream and lying helpless on the floor in front of them. Honorable mention to the writers, for the fact that the school is now located on a Hellmouth 'ley lines'. *Also, I guess she is still a kitsune? Or just very talented with swords even without her powers? Anyone? Anyone at all?