TV Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Season 3 Finale "Absolution/Ascension"

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

EPISODE 21/22: "Absolution/Ascension"

SYNOPSIS: It's a showdown a season in the making as S.H.I.E.L.D. takes on Hive, and when his master plan is finally revealed, the team must spring into action. Who will live and who will die?

REVIEW: 1Over the first two seasons of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the Marvel Studios offshoot of THE AVENGERS showed glimmers of greatness despite an uneven and overlong run of two dozen episodes each year. After slow starts, the series would hit a peak around mid-season before heading for the homestretch and leading into the next season. With this third season, the show was split into two narrative halves. Like fellow ABC series Once Upon A Time, this afforded a shorter, cable-like run for plot arcs that didn't have to drag on for too many episodes. But, like Once Upon A Time, this led to some repetitive plot devices and way too many convenient story elements that left the show feeling safe and predictable. With a character death foretold during the mid-season premiere, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had the chance to really blow audiences away. Instead, we were left with the most anticlimactic ending imaginable.

With Hive's master plan in full swing, this two hour finale opens with a thrilling race to disable the nuclear warhead in the Inhuman villain's control. Using the best parts of the series, we are given multiple pairings of our heroes in different locales as they use gadgets, fighting skills, and witty banter to pull out the save in just the nick of time. It is a well edited and written fifteen minutes of television that would sadly be the lone highlight of these two episodes. Aside from the final fifteen minutes, the rest of this finale was spent showing our heroes wallowing in self-doubt and depression. After somewhat easily capturing Hive and putting him in stasis, Skye laments her role in Hive's plan and shows symptoms of drug withdrawal. The rest of the team begin to wax philosophical about everything this season, but we all know what is really coming.

That's right, Hive was just fooling! Rescued by his Swayed Inhumans, Hive takes over the S.H.I.E.L.D. ship and plans to use it to detonate the warhead in high orbit to transform the planet into his slaves. Of course, we know this cannot happen. So, the bulk of the episode is devoted to characters passing Yo-yo's crucifix, seen in Daisy's mid-season vision, which is meant to make us question just who is going to die. Clearly, Daisy and Coulson are safe and Fitz and Simmons have already gone through enough. That really leaves a bunch of minor characters that we truly don't care too much about which already reduces any impact this death scene may have had. In fact, once we finally learn who it is, it feels incredibly ho-hum compared to what could have been. This series has a big issue when the most emotionally resonant episode was the send off of Bobbi and Hunter for their planned spin-off which is not moving forward.

By now, you know the "Fallen Agent" as they have been marketing these final episodes, is Lincoln. Lincoln's role this season has really been that of bitchy outsider who really never fit in. He was never quite the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent he was meant to be nor did he have that much charisma. He just wasn't that special of a character. Because of that, his death doesn't really carry much weight. Even the emotional goodbye between Daisy and Lincoln as the radio fails was underwhelming. In fact, the entire conversation between Hive and Lincoln in the moments before their ship explodes felt ridiculous. After months of planning the conquest of Earth, Hive seems calmly accepting of his death. I really enjoyed Brett Dalton's resurgence as Hive and his power as a bad guy seems woefully underused. Even the big reveal of what he looked like was used for just a brief scene with Coulson's hologram when it could have been better served in a bigger capacity for the past six episodes instead of hints and teases about it.

The explosion of the ship carrying Lincoln and Hive registered as a silent flash and nothing more, which is exactly how this episode landed for me as a viewer. After so much build-up and hype, none of the narrative for these past twenty-two episodes felt worthy of how this season ended. The bad guy, like almost all Marvel villains, was all talk and then easily defeated. The losses for the S.H.I.E.L.D. heroes were superficial at best. In the closing moments of the episode, a forlorn Simmons says "so what do we do now?" only to have the scene abruptly cut to six months later. Setting up the fourth season, we find Coulson no longer director of S.H.I.E.L.D.. His successor is not named, but I would anticipate the time jump will be addressed in flashbacks, the lazy writer's cliche. Coulson and Mack are tracking Daisy who is back to disguising herself. Newspaper clippings show Daisy's comics alter ego, Quake, is causing disasters around the globe. Does this mean she will be a villain next season?

But the real tease comes in the stinger sequence. Dr. Radcliffe, the man helping Hive with his plans, returns from some sort of hearings about his involvement with the season's events. Talking to his computer, named AIDA, Radcliffe mentions Fitz and Simmons and his desire to bring them in to his new project. As the camera turns, we see that AIDA is actually an LMD, a Life Model Decoy, which is something Marvel Comics readers should be very familiar with. But, the tease this is promoting (see reference section below) could end up being another misfire, like the hyped Secret Warriors who ended up being a joke. This entire season had a lot of promise but was quickly eclipsed by too many episodes and lackluster payoffs. The influence of Inhumans over this season seemed to be heading towards something much bigger than what we actually got and now with Hive destroyed, will they remain the focus moving forward? As a Marvel property, I am invested in seeing where else the writers plan to go, but with the bar raised by Daredevil and Jessica Jones, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has a lot of work to do if they plan to keep my attention much longer.

MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE REFERENCES: The LMD AIDA is a reference to the superhero team, Squadrom Supreme. Could we be seeing these heroes next season?

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