Agents of SHIELD: Paradise Lost – Family Tradition (Review)

Before looking at the Malick family tradition of cheating death, perhaps a moment should be taken to address the bad idea of taking Giyera prisoner.  “Agents of SHIELD: Paradise Lost” has a couple of  bad ideas in it.  Giyera is one, but that is made by Coulson’s team.  The other one is Gideon Malick’s lifelong cheating of the Hydra lottery.  At least Gideon has an excuse, cheating  runs in the family.

However, the Giyera move has to be the worst idea since the inception of SHIELD.  Allowing the righthand man, who is a veritable powerhouse of inhuman power and tricky to boot, inside a plane with most of the agents easily accessible, takes the prize as a catastrophically poor move.

As Coulson says, the inhuman is dangerous without his powers, Special Ops background,  and Giyera proves it by nearly kicking Melinda May’s butt inside that special room. Keeping the Hydra operative in the little room is akin to keeping a cobra in a very small basket. We know this is going to end badly.

The three pronged storyline in “Paradise Lost” sees two of the agents, Daisy and Lincoln approaching James (Axle Whitehead); an inhuman candidate who never got his powers. The bitter, and very anti-social, man offers up a Kree artifact in exchange for a dose of power which Lincoln withholds. 

Storyline two is the capture of Giyera, and the guilt/frustration of Phil Coulson over  killing Grant Ward and allowing the parasite Hive to exist on Earth.  On the plus side, it also looks like the lab that the prisoner was attempting to destroy may give Phil’s agents a “chink” in Hive’s armor.

The third prong of the tale is “Paradise Lost”  itself, the book that hid the marked lottery stone which allowed Gideon and Nathan Malick’s father to cheat death which Gideon then used to the same end.  Gideon (Powers Boothe) learns that there are worst things than your own death, which he saw in the vision last week, there is witnessing your only child first turn on you and then die in your stead.

Hive, who earlier revealed its true form to the circle, then showed that it contains all the memories of those it has absorbed; even Gideon’s betrayed, and dead, brother Nathan. It  then kills Stephanie Malick (Bethany Joy Lenz) after exposing her father as a life long coward and who has repeatedly cheated death.

Lincoln and Daisy share secrets, his is a backstory of too much vodka and almost killing his girlfriend, and her’s is that disturbing vision of death that she believes means one of the team will die.  Giyera gets lose.

In a matter of seconds the Hydra agent takes control of the plane and everyone on it. Daisy gets a call from May and Lincoln talks her into activating the Secret Warriors Initiative.

Hive/Grant Ward tells Gideon that they need to head to the plane that Giyera captured and that now Malick understands the meaning of sacrifice. “Now, you have nothing left to fear,” says Hive. The vision that Gideon had reveals this to be a lie and the man’s face shows it.

The use of “Paradise Lost” as the title of this week’s episode of “Agents of SHIELD” is appropriate, with Milton’s theme of man’s disobedience. Malick’s father and then Gideon both disobeyed the rules of the Hydra lottery.  In the latter’s case, this has cost him dearly, living the lie caused his daughter to be sacrificed in front of him.

Malick may have seen his own death but now that he has seen his daughter drained of life,  this horror he felt, the overwhelming fear of his own painful demise, may just pall enough that Gideon may turn on his “leader.” Time will tell, if the man really is a coward or not.

The plot thread of Coulson (Clark Gregg)  with his mixed emotions about killing Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) only to have him return as a parasite, was interesting in that it shows Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) to be the more cold-blooded of the two.  Phil has had a hard time of it since his “rejuvenation” and it looks like things will not get better in the foreseeable future. 

Daisy activating the Secret Warriors guarantees that things will get very interesting in a hurry and it also shows Lincoln and her as more equal partners.  The moths must be the key to Hive’s vulnerability (it must have to do with cocoons and transformations) and it would seem that once the majority of Coulson’s agents are released they will have to race to learn the secret of the destroyed lab.

This is going to get exciting.

“Agents of SHIELD” airs Tuesdays on ABC.