3x18 The Singularity

At what point do we start wondering if Coulson's lost it? I don't mean that he's gone crazy, or that he's under Hydra's control, or that his Kree injection is coming up again. I mean what if he's becoming a bad guy, or at least something less than the man we once knew? In the last episode, he talked about revenge as a motivator, even if he put a fig leaf on that idea by saying that Shield has to be better than that. In this one, he only lets Lincoln go out if he's wearing a "murder vest." He's rightfully rebuked by May for always making her his hatchet man.

The Phil Coulson we know, the one we've seen since Rosalind Price died, is a much colder man than the one we knew before. Sure, he still makes jokes about buckling up when the quinjet's about to go sideways, and he still gets a kick out of the Director of Shield having his own shield, but he's also much more willing to take lives, much more willing to respond to threats by taking them out immediately rather than letting them develop. He is a harsher leader, who seems less concerned with loss of life and the costs of war than we once was.

Except when it comes to Daisy. We probably didn't need Phil and May to make the implicit so explicit when Melinda tells him that he's not her father, and responds that she's the closet thing he has to a daughter. But still, that relationship helps add even greater stakes to the inevitable conflict where Coulson will have to confront Daisy and have to decide whether he can neutralize her for the greater good, as he seemed so willing to do with Lincoln, and as May had to do with Andrew.

Thankfully, things are a little lighter with FitzSimmons. Them having a big grand debate about whether or not to sleep together was kind of cute, but also a bit silly for two grown adults. Then again, they have such a nice rapport, (and Mack's encouragement was the icing on the cake in that regard) that they can make something that little-c conservative and mildly romcom-y work. Their plan to infiltrate the transhuman club and convince the parasite expert is an interesting one, which worked well enough as the weekly "mission" for the team while the larger fireworks were going on.

Finally, I liked seeing HiveWard and Daisy bonding. Having a character who not only encapsulates several other deceased individuals on the show, but whose masterplan is to bring everyone into his collective consciousness by overloading them with happiness (hello Jasmine from Angel) is an interesting one. It allowed Simmons to have a bit of closure with Will in a tense and almost intimate moment, and it distinguishes Hive from some of the more mustache-twirling villains who've comprised the show's big bads in the past.

Similarly, Lincoln going after the multiple copy chick had some cool fight scenes with it (May using a truck as a weapon was especially fun), and played into the larger HiveWard business. Plus it was pleasant to see James again, as they nod toward some kind of end game involving the Kree Tech. They're really leaning into the whole sense of belonging thing with Skye, which is an interesting direction to go, particularly given the contrast with the clunkily deployed idea that Coulson meant for Shield to feel like a place she belonged.

Overall, it wasn't as strong as the last episode, but the stories all hung together well enough, there's a lot of promising stuff as we head into the home stretch of the season, and there were even big details like Hive buying a town with Mallick's money, the Transhuman Doctor helping him edit the DNA, and Talbott taking out Hydra worldwide to raise the stakes. Good stuff.