Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. | S05E11
In ‘All the Comforts of Home’, team S.H.I.E.L.D. are back on Earth and on a mission to rewrite the course of humanity’s fate.
Welcome back, True Believers! We’ve managed to survive yet another hiatus and the show’s latest instalment saw our favourite agents back on Earth, back in their timeline, and back on the run from authorities.
SPOILER ALERT!
After much teasing, the episode opens with our first look at Dove Cameron’s mysterious new character, Ruby. The daughter of General Hale (who you may remember from Fitz’s solo episode, where we last saw her murdering her own subordinates), Ruby appears to be just another angsty teenager but right off the bat, the youngest Hale seems just as calculated and cunning as her mother, if not more. It’s clear that there’s more to her than meets the eye and combined with her evident obsession with Daisy, her introduction doesn’t bode well for our dear agents.
Speaking of which, Coulson and the rest of the team are finally back in their own time – but, funnily enough, still in the Lighthouse. Thanks to a video message from General Rick Stoner (Patrick Warburton), it’s revealed that the Lighthouse is actually an underground S.H.I.E.L.D. base that was built back in the ‘70s in case of a dire emergency. May and Fitz make their way to the base’s bunker in search of weapons and meet Noah, a Chronicom like our dearly-departed Enoch (RIP), who watches over the base. He points out that there’s a light coming from the sky and, of course, this is the omen that Voss warned Coulson would eventually lead to the end of the world. Fitz and Simmons, however, are able to slow down the footage and notice that the light is actually coming from Earth. They realise that the source is the same beacon Hive used to summon the Kree to Earth in season three, and the team set out to shut it down while Daisy stays behind to deal with another interesting development.
Remember when Deke sacrificed himself to get team S.H.I.E.L.D. home? Yeah, not the case. The monolith also brought him back and like an excited puppy, he’s having the time of his life living in a world with trees, ice cream, and Zima. Until he’s arrested for not paying a bar tab. Worried that he’ll rat out the rest of the team; Daisy goes to bail him out, posing as his social worker, and hilarity ensues.
The rest of the team manage to track down the beacon and reunite with Agent Piper (Briana Venskus). It’s a nice moment until she pulls a gun on them and reveals that she’s working for General Hale. A group of robots show up, led by a masked woman, and a fight to the death ensues. The masked woman takes her chakram and does the unthinkable, slicing off both of Yoyo’s arms at the elbows. Considering that future Yo-Yo was missing both her arms, it’s a horrifying reminder that our agents are indeed stuck in the time loop.
The masked woman is, as you may have guessed, Ruby. She’s not a rebellious teenager after all, but an assassin who’s been trained since birth. Also, her ‘room’ is a secure bunker complete with robot guards. Is this an American version of the Red Room-training program? General Hale isn’t pleased that her daughter let the team get away, but Ruby makes it clear that her only target is Daisy – so she’ll just keep cutting off arms until Quake shows herself. Not wanting her daughter to have the last word, Hale spits out that Ruby’s a disappointment before noting that at least the beacon will do its job better than Ruby did hers.
What’s the beacon’s job, you ask? To explode! It’s not until the agents take it back to the bunker that Noah realises its purpose and jumps on it just as it detonates – sacrificing himself to save Daisy and Fitz.
In the episode’s final scene, we catch up with Carl ‘Crusher’ Creel (aka. the Absorbing Man) as he’s recruited by General Hale to be part of some Suicide Squad-like team she’s building. We last saw Creel in season three, so now it looks like Coulson and Co. will have to deal with threats old and new.
What an episode! As creative and ambitious as the show’s space arc was, there’s just no place like home. Less than twenty-four hours after their return to Earth, ‘All the Comforts of Home’ hit the ground running and pulled the show in so many different directions. It’s still unclear where this particular arc is going, but I’m excited to find out.
The reveal that Deke travelled back in time as well was a welcome twist. He was definitely the most colourful character from the space arc and it’ll be interesting to see what role he plays moving forward (and his child-like reactions as he discovers other Earth ‘artefacts’).
Speaking of artefacts, the three monoliths sitting in the Lighthouse’s bunker are a disaster waiting to happen and seeing as the beacon exploded right in front of them, it’ll be surprising if the after-effects of that explosion aren’t felt in the next episode. Also, it was only last episode that we said goodbye to Enoch, before Noah was introduced and killed off before the hour wrapped up. The Chronicoms just can’t catch a break, can they?
‘All the Comforts of Home’ also had a few nods to the Marvel Comics. While it remains to be seen if Warburton’s cameo as General Rick Stoner was a one-off, Stoner was the first director of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the comics before Nick Fury took over. The episode’s big nod to the comics, however, was of course Yo-Yo’s arms. In Jonathan Hickman and Stefano Caselli’s ‘Secret Warriors’ series, the character loses her arms during a field mission and is given a set of high-tech prosthetics. Fans have been waiting with bated breath to see just when the show would adapt the infamous storyline but none of them could have ever imagined that Ruby would be the answer. Nevertheless, the show already went down a similar path with Coulson’s hand in season three, so it seems highly likely that Yo-Yo will soon receive her own prosthetics from Fitz and Simmons.
Lastly, it’s only been an episode, but Hale and Ruby already seem like a better pair of villains than Kasius and Sinara ever were. Especially with Hale’s anti-S.H.I.E.L.D. team in play and the fact that in an interview with Syfy Wire, Dove Cameron claimed that Ruby’s chakram is made of vibranium – the very same metal that Marvel fans recently saw in ‘Black Panther’ and what Captain America’s shield is made of.
Next up is the show’s landmark 100th episode and in typical ‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ fashion, it promises a whole lot of angst for our agents. Titled ‘The Real Deal’, Coulson will finally reveal the mysterious deal he made with Ghost Rider; which is said to impact the entire team. The only thing that could make the landmark episode even better than it already sounds is if Gabriel Luna returns to reprise his role as Robbie Reyes, but one can only hope.
Based on the episode’s promo, we’re set to see the return of a few familiar faces as well as a new ominous one. The milestone instalment will see the return of Lash and Hive and seeing as both characters met their demise during the third season; it’s going to be interesting to see how the show brings them back. The promotional video also featured a nun…could we finally be gaining some insight into Daisy’s past and her time at Saint Agnes Orphanage?
With all of the teasing and secrecy surrounding ‘The Real Deal’, there’s a lot we don’t know about the episode; but with the promise of a cataclysmic event, it’s safe to say that fans will not be disappointed.
New episodes of ‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ are updated weekly on Amazon Prime Video.
