Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D - Recap: Eye of the Storm

Credit: ABC

The episode centers on Coulson's mission to track down his former protege Akela Amadour (Pascale Armand), who has resurfaced following a diamond heist on a subway train. Akela is a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who'd fallen off the grid, presumed dead following a disastrous mission in which her decision to disobey Coulson's orders led to the death of her teammates, and despite the general feeling that Akela "sold out" her team, Coulson is determined to find her and get some answers. To this end, he rounds up the team so they can tackle the mission themselves, rejecting Agent May's (Ming-Na Wen) insistence that they need a strike team for this. While a full-on strike team might have been a bit excessive, May wasn't very far off the mark in her assessment that Akela was more than they could handle alone. Not only are her combat and reconnaissance skills honed from years of field work, she also has an optical camera that allows her to see through surfaces. The rookie team is hardly a match for the former agent, who takes the group off-guard by ramming a surveillance van containing Skye, Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge). However, while Skye and FitzSimmons face difficulties, Coulson and May are quickly able to take charge of the situation, deducing Akela's location from items observed through the hijacked feed of the camera in her eye. They confront her at the hotel in which she's staying, and after a brief clash, are able to subdue her with tranquilizers.

Credit: ABC

With Akela in captivity, we finally learn just how desperate her plight is, as she's essentially being held hostage. Following the botched S.H.I.E.L.D. mission, Akela was imprisoned for four years, and eventually had her inactive right eye replaced with a camera rigged with a "fail safe" that will trigger if she disobeys her orders. She has never met her handlers, doesn't know what their motives are, and is uncertain what their endgame is. The only concrete data she has is what she can infer from the messages they send her via the optic camera, and it's this data that S.H.I.E.L.D. uses to track the criminal mastermind behind Akela's acts. Coulson feels a duty to liberate Akela from her captors, as he feels guilty about her circumstances. As he explains to Skye, he felt he pushed Akela too hard, and tried to force her along the right path instead of simply allowing her to grow and mature as an agent organically. And so he wants to help Akela in any way he can, and that includes getting that pesky camera out of her eye.

What follows is a pretty terrific sequence of events that cuts back and forth between the S.H.I.E.L.D. plane and the mission on the ground, as Coulson searches for the source of the feed while FitzSimmons operates on Akela, during which Skye hijacks the feed to Akela's camera and redirects it to a pair of glasses Ward (Brett Dalton) is wearing. This allows Ward to continue carrying out Akela's mission without her handler being any the wiser. The idea is that if they can continue the mission on Akela's behalf, maybe they can figure out what the hell the person on the other end wants. The bits with Ward are some of his best so far, as the mission is a gradual pile-up of complications, from Ward attempting to avoid reflective surfaces so the person watching the feed doesn't recognize that it's not really Akela operating the camera, to the complications that arise when he is tasked with seducing a guard. Ward rarely gets any moments of real levity, even when he's running-and-gunning, so this was a fairly welcome diversion from the character's robotic norm.

Credit: ABC

The action on the ground is helped by being intercut with the squirm-inducing surgery on Akela's eye. Both Fitz and Simmons are squeamish, and neither is really an expert on surgically removing false eyeballs or the bombs embedded inside, and their nerves show, even with Akela being cool as the proverbial cucumber. But the real tension of the sequence doesn't come from FitzSimmons' nervousness, it's from the possibility of the bomb being detonated should Ward, in his mission on the ground, is discovered by Akela's handler. -- which is exactly what happens, when Ward accidentally spots his own reflection in a window during a crazed shootout. Luckily, FitzSimmons are able to cut the wire at the last moment, just before Akela's handler triggers the explosive "fail safe." Ward escapes with Skye's help, while Coulson finally tracks down Akela's handler, only to discover that the man in question is, himself, a hostage. When Coulson flashes his S.H.I.E.L.D. identification to the handler, the bomb inside his eye camera detonates, and he falls dead to the ground, the mystery of the mastermind's true identity preserved.

Ultimately, Coulson is able to save Akela from her handler, and even promises to testify on her behalf, in order to get her a lighter sentence. It's clear that he's attempting to make amends for whatever poor decisions he feels he's compelled her towards. Akela is grateful, but there is still a certain aura of mystery around the entire situation, as she pulls May aside and asks her what has happened to Coulson over the past several years. "What did they do to him?" she asks, a question which May misinterprets, assuming Akela is simply wondering about the circumstances surrounding his "death" prior to the Battle of New York. "No, what did they do to him?" she states again, convinced that something more is going on beneath the surface. Now that the teammates have X-ray specs in their possession, they might be able to get to the bottom of it, assuming that something was done to Coulson's physical biology.

Credit: ABC

"Eye Spy" was far from the best Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been, but it retains much of the same fun energy as the last three weeks. While some may want more from this series, fun is all I really ask for from an action drama on a Tuesday night.

Thanks for reading my recap and review of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Season 1 Episode 4, "Eye Spy"!