Agents of SHIELD Season 4 Episode 13: BOOM Review

If you would like to read my review of the last episode, click here.

Synopsis: An explosive Inhuman surfaces and the team are tasked with containing it. Elsewhere: Coulson and Mack encounter Radcliffe’s inspiration for Aida. (IMDB)

Writers: Lila Zuckerman and Nora Zuckerman

Director: Billy Gierhart

Rating: TV-PG

Running Time: 45mins

After what we’ve gone through the last couple of episodes, a filler episode was inevitable and here it is. We didn’t learn anything new this episode and it did not really advance the plot but it was still interesting to watch.

Knowing about the Russians and the Superior and the threat they posed to inhumans, SHIELD devised a plan to move their locations but they still had to contend with Nadeer and the Sokovia Accords which gave her the right to know their location. In order to better root out the inhumans, Radcliffe created more terrigen crystals.

Thinking that Nadeer may have the same inhuman gene as her brother, one of the Superior’s henchmen Terrence Shockley (John Pyper-Ferguson) broke one of the crystals, hoping to prove that Nadeer was an inhuman but his plan backfired as he was the inhuman. Unfortunately for Nadeer, Shockley’s new power was that he could blow himself up so he did, killing Nadeer.

Posing a threat to SHIELD and other inhumans, they tried to catch him before he hurt anyone else.  Of course being an inhuman didn’t sit well with the Superior but Shockley devised a plan to bring SHIELD to him. Shockley was having fun with his powers, blowing himself up using sound waves and his kinetic energy and then putting himself back together. Daisy tried to contain him but she couldn’t keep up with him blowing up and putting himself back together.

Ever since the reveal that Mace was not an inhuman, he has been struggling to find his place within SHIELD. The serum and his strength was what defined him but it was also killing him so any further use would prove a great risk to him. He kept trying different positions but nothing felt right. Kudos to Jason O’Mara as he did a great job portraying Mace’s inner conflict. When the Superior’s men were coming for them while trying to capture Shockley, Mace offered to try and keep them at bay using more of the serum from a new suit Fitz built for him but he ended up getting captured because they still believed him to be an inhuman.

The other half of the episode was more compelling and involved Coulson and Mack finding Radcliffe’s inspiration for Aida. His inspiration was a fellow Australian scientist named Agnes (also Mallory Jansen who is Australian). They worked together for many years but then had a falling out. She was dying from an inoperable tumor so she wanted to live her final days living in Spain. Kudos to Jansen for excelling at the dual roles. She told them she couldn’t help them but Coulson’s determination to find May forced him to press further, too far for Mack.

Coulson told Agnes about what Radcliffe did to them and to May and offered to help. She was able to contact Radcliffe and they arranged a meeting. Playing it safe, Radcliffe spoke to her on a cellphone and there we learned that the reason he was doing what he did was to try and save her and that he had now found a way to do so, or at least he believed he did. He told her he had devised something called a framework that he can use to save her which we now know was the virtual reality system he had been testing on May. The episode ends with Radcliffe hooking up Agnes but not before Aida taking her necklace, perhaps implying a deeper connection.

Overall, this was a good episode which didn’t really go anywhere but it was nice to hear about the story behind Aida and Radcliffe’s inspiration.

Score: 8/10

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.