7x10 Stolen

[7.4/10] This is definitely one of those Agents of Shield episodes where it feels like we have ten things going on. Nathaniel Mallick is trying to infiltrate the Lighthouse. Coulson, Mack, Yo-Yo, and Gordon are trying to take back Afterlife. Daisy is interfacing with her mom. Simmons is contemplating the possibility that Fitz is gone. And that’s just the big stuff.

But let’s start with the easiest thing to latch onto here -- I love the performance of the actor playing a young John Garrett. I like what the show is going for overall here, combining a previously deceased Mallick son, an unknown Jiaying daughter, a villainous Chronicon, and a young version of season 1’s Big Bad to create a sort of Legion of Doom bad guy team to face our heroes. Giving them all Inhuman powers is the icing on the cake.

But Garrett takes that cake! The young actor does such a great job at bringing Bill Paxton’s mannerisms into play without just making it an impression. It’s a nice way to pay tribute to the dearly departed Paxton, and his cocky, tweaking, even fun-loving nature makes him a great ingredient in the show.

I was less enamored with the Daisy/Jiaying material. I appreciate what the show’s going for here. Daisy facing her mom after all that happened with them, but getting to meet Jiaying before Hydra changed who and what she was, is an emotionally rich area to explore. The writing is just a little overblown, and Sousa oversteps his bounds a bit there, which rubbed me the wrong way.

That said, I like the taunting reveal of their relationship from Mallick, which has intensity from Jiaying realizing she has the chance to make up for her future self’s actions and Daisy going into a fury over Nathaniel threatening to wreck things with her mom. There’s some explosiveness there that you need the prior scene to set up, so I can give it a pass. It also gives Jiaying a measure of redemption, which I like.

This is also an episode filled with shocking deaths. I was definitely not expecting both Jiaying and Kora to be killed here. I assume one or both of them isn’t fully dead, but it’s still pretty nuts, especially as we’ve officially tossed “ripples not waves” out the window.

Speaking of which, I like the twist that Mallick wasn’t after Jiaying this whole time, but rather after Simmons. The reveal that it’s Fitz who’s messed up Mallick’s plans in every timeline is an interesting one, and the prospect of Simmons and Deke trapped on the Zephyr when it’s been hijacked by Mallick and Garrett has plenty of intrigue. (Are we finally going to get Fitz back with three episodes to go in the series?)

Otherwise, there’s a lot of action and teases here. Gordon making the heroic sacrifice is another compelling bit of mini-redemption given where things ended for him. The fight between May and an “I don’t quite have a handle on my powers” Garrett was solid. And again, the standoff between Mallick, Daisy, and her mom had some cool quaker-on-quaker action.

Overall, this one didn’t hit the heights of last week’s episode, and lacks some of the focus and clarity of the show’s best outings, but is nevertheless taking some big swings, which I always admire.