'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.' Recap: 'The Return'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has accomplished a great many things, and from that giant list of accolades, what the entire MCU needs to be proud of the most; is the fact that their stories feature consequences. That's important when it comes to character growth and respecting your audience but most importantly adding consequences to a character's actions makes for a dynamic and powerful story and last night on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., consequences took the center stage.

Because 'The Return' picked up immediately where last week left off, with everyone emerging from the Framework and working to acclimate themselves to the real world once again and alas...there was also some physical and immediate fallout from everyone's actions within that magical and terrible place. May was suffering from atrophy in her muscles for being inside there for so long. Yo-Yo was struggling with the fact that Mack refused to leave the Framework and to top it all off, Coulson and May still had to deal with multiple LMD's of the Superior and Aida was in possession of Fitz and making quite the attempt to woo him and control him as easily as she did within the Framework.

But, the real world certainly doesn't work the same and oddly enough, Aida/Ophelia or whatever the heck she wants to be called this week, dealt with the biggest consequences of all for her actions. For starters, a fully functioning human body comes with fully functioning human emotions, including guilt; which she felt in spades for more or less abandoning Fitz's friends and surrogate family and despite helping the team out and saving Mack from a watery grave, Aida's new emotions were dealt another blow when she and the team returned to what was left of S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ when Fitz revealed that there is not enough room in his heart for two loves, and that Aida has to deal with the fact that Jemma is the only woman he wants in his life. 

That moment was enough to break her and that's when things got ugly. Because Aida made great use of her new Inhuman powers and went on a tear throughout the base, violently murdering anyone she came in contact with and well...this was simply a stunning sequence to watch since Aida is more or less a child emotionally and dangerous because of that since she is able to wield incredible power without an understanding of how or why she's doing something in particular and really...the greatest part about this whole storyline is that this is the amalgamation of consequences for everything that's happened in season four. From the Darkhold, to the Framework, and the LMD work that Radcliffe put together, this is the price that everyone pays as their world continues to fall apart and S.H.I.E.L.D. will have to figure out how to save the world from this creation without its usual resources available to it.

However, there is some good news when it comes to the fight. Because in the closing moments of the show, the portal that brought Fitz and Coulson back from that strange place between worlds opened up once again...and the Ghost Rider came through and since Aida was created by the Darkhold, perhaps this being with ties to the supernatural will serve as the perfect way to stop her. Either way, I loved this episode through and through. Once again the story was cooking and not a single minute was wasted and it's wonderful to know that Fitz is going to do his best to set those bad memories and digital actions right and this was simply an incredible setup for next week's season finale and I cannot wait to see how this ugly mess that the Darkhold created, gets resolved. Until next time.

---