Agents of SHIELD Season 4 Episode 19: All the Madame’s Men Review

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

Synopsis: Daisy teams up with an unlikely partner; Aida prepares to put her endgame into effect. (IMDB)

Writers: James C. Oliver and Sharla Oliver

Director: Billy Gierhart

Rating: TV-PG

Running Time: 45mins

While the framework episodes have been the best of the series so far, they now look to be coming to an end with the episode setting the stage. The team is almost back together with evil Fitz being the only hurdle left but his time will come. The end of the last episode foreshadowed the teaming of Daisy and May and it definitely did not disappoint despite not lasting nearly as long as it should have. Daisy did get her powers back but being Ophelia, she saw this coming and was prepared for it. However, it was still nice to see Daisy quake her through the glass and onto the pavement below (with her not dying of course).

This episode gave us the longest look at outside the framework with the Superior and Aida plotting towards her endgame. The Superior was a little apprehensive considering his wanting of revenge against Coulson but he would get that chance but first he would need to find where Daisy and Simmons were hiding. With Mace gone, someone had to take charge and why not Coulson? He acknowledged that he was a leader in the other world but taking charge here would make up, in his mind, for not stepping up earlier.

Fitz was obviously upset with what happened to Ophelia and wanted revenge with his father continuing to put these evil ideas in his head. He still wouldn’t tolerate failure and that included his father. Radcliffe called him out on his real purpose in the framework but that only got him beat up since he had no reason to live. He did, however, figure out that Radcliffe told Daisy something and proving that they conspired together. Ophelia wanted Fitz to finish Project Looking Glass and he did.

Tripp showed Simmons the plans for Project Looking Glass and she immediately recognized them to be the same as Eli Morrow’s matter creating machine from earlier in the season. She knew that this machine would need a lot of power and also connected it to the Superior’s oil rig when Tripp told her that parts were being shipped to one. They took a team and found the oil rig in question but there was nothing there because all the work was being done on the other side. We learned that the reason for all of this was because Aida wanted to build herself her own body.

With Daisy back in the fold and knowing where the exit was, she wanted to start heading there because all the drama in the framework didn’t matter but they still needed help. Coulson thought that maybe helping them may also help themselves. May brought body cam footage of the enlightenment centre collapse which went against the narrative of terrorists being responsible so their plan was to highjack the Hydra TV station and broadcast the video to the world. Coulson also made a speech about how he shied away from speaking up against Hydra until now but was glad he now did while also showing at the end that he was a SHIELD agent. This show managed to attract a considerable following of people willing to fight against Hydra.

The episode ended with the Supreme finding where Daisy and Simmons were hiding, which was on a Zephyr One flying around somewhere. Once they are able to lock on, they will shoot it down.

Overall, although a slight step down, this was still a great episode which helped to set the stage for the end of the framework arc. Aida’s plan was revealed, the characters, except Fitz, came together and also framework characters were coming to terms with their existence and saying goodbye. I wish this could last longer but all good things must come to an end. The title of next week’s episode, “Farewell, Cruel World!”, so that should give us a pretty good idea of where things are going.

Score: 8.5/10

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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.