ABC
Mission Briefing
That conniving ne’er-do-well, Ian Quinn is up to no good once again, so it’s time for the S.H.I.E.L.D. team to put a stop his plans in their tracks, and maybe catching Quinn will get Coulson that much closer to finding the Clairvoyant. The team goes undercover on a passenger train traveling through the Italian countryside, in order to intercept a costly package that Ian has ordered from a tech firm called Cybertek, the belief being that Quinn wouldn’t pay a whopping 10 million dollars for something that didn’t do something super evil.
The Agents
Everyone’s on deck for this week’s mission. Each member of the team infiltrates the train with a different alias: Fitz and Skye are backpackers making their way through europe on couch at at time (Instead of both sticking to their respective nationalities, they both try on terrible accents, before deciding in favor of Fitz’s awful John Wayne impression over Skye’s Lucky Charms rendition of a Scottish accent), Ward and May are lovers (oh, that’s a little uncomfortable), and Coulson and Simmons are an estranged father and daughter, whose relationship was broken due to distance, infidelity, and many, many prostitutes.
Mission Fallout
The S.H.I.E.L.D. team boards the train with their new undercover identities, and begin working to locate the package which is encased in a black box and guarded by a security detail, but things go south quickly when it’s revealed that the Italian authorities that gave S.H.I.E.L.D. the intel are in Quinn’s pocket. In a bit of narrative trickery, the story ping pongs back to the moment where things go wrong for each group of the team, and shows the mission from their perspective. Ward dresses up as a conductor to infiltrate the train and find the package, but is made by the guards. He bumps into Coulson, and both go tumbling out of the train, but not before getting hit with a fancy grenade that uses the same technology as the night night gun. May traverses to the top of the train to track the package, but has to bail when one of the guards start shooting at her. Once on the ground, she finds a frozen Ward and Coulson. She tries to help, but is captured by the corrupt Italians.
Meanwhile, Fitz and Skye hide out in a deserted luggage car to run communications, but are caught in a shootout that ends with Simmons getting hit with the same grenade that hits Coulson and Ward earlier on. Skye and Fitz track down the package to Quinn’s hideout. Skye infiltrates Quinn’s compound where she finds none other than Mike Peterson in a hyperbolic chamber. The Cybertek package turns out to be a fancy cybernetic limb that replaces Mike Peterson’s missing leg. Peterson has been tasked by the Clairvoyant to kill someone, and goes off to slaughter the Cybertek agents. Meanwhile, Quinn, doubtlessly tired of S.H.I.E.L.D. meddling in his plans, shoots Skye twice in the stomach with a pistol. The rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. team finds an injured Skye at the compound. She’s clinging to life, but just barely, and agent Ward is looking to blame Coulson for what happened. Why is an untrained hacker doing field missions in the first place?
The Most Valuable Agent Award
Skye gets the Most Valuable Agent Award this week for taking two bullets for the team. We’re sure she’ll survive but getting shot is nothing to sneeze at.
Mission Highlights and Other Observations
— For an undercover mission, the team seems to be doing a lot of talking about the fact that they’re on an undercover mission at full volume on the train. No wonder they were made.
— Simmons’ elaborate backstory for her undercover alias should be it’s own Lifetime movie called My Dad and His Prostitutes
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— Mike Peterson is now officially the Marvel villain called Deathlok.
