“Agents of SHIELD” took a turn for the Nazis in a clever, intense and revealing episode, “Rise and Shine.” Coulson is confronted by General Hale about the true nature of her mission to take down SHIELD and is faced with a horrible revelation. Daisy’s refusal to trust Fitz leads to trouble for team SHIELD.
The Future of HYDRA | Can we take a moment to appreciate how well structured this episode was? Pretty much every return from commercials began with a character waking up, creating a cool thread that obviously ties into the title of the episode. First up, flashbacks to 28 years ago reveal a young Hale in HYDRA Academy, (Yes, that’s a thing) where students are forced to kill their pet dogs a-la “Kingsman” and a young Sitwell gets initiated into SHIELD. Also, Hale is picked by Daniel Whitehall (Good to see Reed Diamond again) to be artificially inseminated to give birth to HYDRA’s future leader. Eeeeeviiilll!
Top of the Class | Two years ago, after SHIELD took down Malick, Hale’s superior, General Fisher, tasks Hale with taking over a HYDRA project before committing suicide to avoid arrest by Talbot. After Talbot is shot by LMD Daisy, he is taken by Hale to try to get him to spill the beans on HYDRA contraband. Talbot refuses to talk and is hauled away.
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In present day, Hale tells Coulson that after the New York Chitauri battle- man, this is getting complicated- HYDRA made contact with the Confederacy, who promised to save humanity from an incoming invasion in exchange for Inhumans being enslaved. Neither Coulson nor Hale are too thrilled with this, so Hale proposes to Coulson that they dust off an old HYDRA project to infuse someone with Gravitonium to destroy both the Confederacy and the invaders. But here’s the kicker: the project is called Destroyer of Worlds.
Coulson tells Hale that the project leads to mankind’s extinction, which she naturally doesn’t believe, even ordering Coulson to get Daisy to become infused as opposed to the original choice, Ruby. Ruby seems to believe Coulson’s story, but tells him that Talbot gave up the location of the contraband.
Invincible | The final ten minutes were shown to the crowd at WonderCon Anaheim 2018’s “Agents of SHIELD” panel, so, yes, I’ve seen the end of this episode twice. Dedication, man.
May tries to get the imprisoned Fitz to deduce Coulson’s location and Hale’s HYDRA plot. Daisy refuses to let him access SHIELD files and tells May that they can find Coulson without him. She then heads out to find Robin to find out what the future shows, which May objects to. After attaching Yo-Yo’s robotic arms, Simmons tells Fitz that Deke is their grandson, which Fitz is initially upset at, seeing as it’s Deke, but Simmons is pleased, knowing that the two of them will get through their hard times.
“Agents of SHIELD” airs Fridays at 9pm on ABC.