Agents of Shield season 2 episode 8 got its strength from the villains of the show, rather than the heroes, which isn’t something we have really seen before in the past. Normally the villains have weak development, and the heroes take the front and centre. Episode 8 of Agents of Shield brought us some great moments from the current villains of the show including Ward and Skye’s father, ‘The Doctor’. (Warning for episode spoilers)
A weakness in a lot of the past episodes of Agents of Shield, were the under developed villains. We got a lot of bad guys, with pretty ambiguous or cliche motivations. But season 2 episode 8 of Agents of Shield, showed us that good things come from those that wait. Because now we have an awesome trio of villains, all teaming up, with their own individual motivations, motivations that will come into conflict in the future.
Now of course this trio of villains includes Ward, The Doctor and Whitehall. Whitehall is probably the weakest of the three when it comes to character development. We know he is ruthless, and likes ‘experimenting’ but so far he is pretty much just evil because he is evil. Ward on the other hand has gone from being my most disliked character on the show (because I thought he was boring) to one of the more interesting characters on the show. In the episode Ward confronts his brother, Christian, and makes Christian admit that it was him that made himself hurt his younger brother. We get a confession from Christian, detailing that his mother loved his younger brother so he wanted him to feel the pain him and Ward felt, but didn’t have the courage to inflict that pain on him. So of course he forces his other brother, Ward, to hurt his youngest brother for him.
The hypocrisy in Ward becomes clear in this episode. He forces his brother to confess, forcing his brother to admit to himself that it was his fault. However Ward can’t admit to himself his own faults. Ward’s got the classic case of self-serving bias. All the failures in his life are because of external factors, nothing to do with himself, and all his successes are because of himself. Ward of course then ends up killing his brother, just when we thought they were going to have a cute brotherly moment.
Then you have the other side of the villain trio, Skye’s father. We learn that Whitehall murdered his love to get him his youth back. In comes the revenge plot. I love revenge plots. I will never get over seeing a character go full force out for revenge. And this is exactly what the doc is doing. He is playing nice now, but ultimately he is out for revenge, and to reunite his family again (in the after-life!).
The you got Whitehall. He loves knowledge. He loves experimenting. The difference between Whitehall and the doc becomes clear when Whitehall outlines the purpose of the obelisk as a weapon. The doc responds saying that that is a very simple minded view on such a powerful item. You know how Alfred tells Bruce in The Dark Knight that some men just want to watch the world burn, Whitehall seems like one of those men. Of course he is out looking for knowledge and what ever, but he comes off as being evil just because he likes being evil. And because of this he isn’t as interesting to me as Ward and the Doc are, but the three of them together can be really great. And it’s really interesting to see the dynamic between the trio. The Doc just comes off as wild, Ward isn’t very good at hiding his inner insanity, but Whitehall keeps calm and collected even when talking crazy! (And remember it’s always good to look your enemy in the eye)
Moving on from the villains, the heroes of episode 8 weren’t that engaging this episode. Except for Bobbi and Hunter, who have quickly become two of my favourite characters. And we also saw a bit of Agent Carter again, teasing us for her solo series.
So what did you think of Agents of Shield season 2 episode 8? Are you liking the direction they are going with the villains this season? Let me know!
Categories: Comic book tv shows
Girl-On-Comic-Book-World 
The show really stepped up, big time. I didn’t really expect them to move forward on the whole hidden city plot that fast, but that they do is very refreshing in a TV landscape in which “will they or won’t they” can be the main arc for 8 seasons or more.
Happy that Fitz is getting better. And I liked the heist-like mission in the end. I am such a big fan of capers, you can always get me with a clever one.
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Yeah everything is moving a lot quicker in this season which is awesome. Haha agreed! Those end scenes were done really well
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At the moment I’m enjoying AOS even more than Arrow and The Flash, and a lot of that comes down to that ‘unholy trinity’ of Whitehall, Skye’s Dad and Ward. It’s been such an impressive turnaround.
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I love this new trio of villains, it’s so good to see Agents of Shield improving every week. But I can’t say I like it as much as Arrow or Flash yet haha
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Haha fair enough. It’s great to see three great comic book shows doing so well
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So far, season 2 is blowing the first one out of the water. The story is moving faster and with stronger links between episodes, it feels more personal for the characters and it’s not relying too much on the movies. It’s also more entertaining. And now it’s pretty much confirmed to have some sort of Inhuman connection. I never said this with the first season, but I can hardly wait for the next episode.
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Completely agree, the biggest problem with last season was that it only had good episodes after the events of a film, now they have their own strong story arc going on which is great. But yeah I’m loving all this Inhuman and Kree stuff, looking forward to the rest of the season
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