Agents Of SHIELD Season 6, Episode 5 “The Other Thing” Recap And Review

Last week it was revealed what Deke Shaw had been up to during the past year. We also saw Yo-Yo forced to make a painful decision when the SHIELD base was attacked by a deadly parasite. May confronted “Sarge” and his crew, only to end up captured and taken away.

Warning: There will definitely be spoilers for Season 6, Episode 5 of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, “The Other Thing,” below.

(All images courtesy of ABC Studios).

May With Sarge And Coulson

May has been captured by Sarge. After being drugged because of her violent tendencies, she has flashbacks to her time with Coulson, before his death, on Tahiti. While on the beach, they have drinks and laughs until the Coulson’s pain acts as a reminder to the situation. Coulson does tell her she should consider running a SHIELD academy because she’d make a great teacher. She says that sounds like hell, but Coulson replies, “You know what they say, every dream is someone else’s nightmare.” Strangely enough, Sarge says these same words.

Sarge is determined to turn May onto his mission. His intrigued by her because he’s been on other worlds, and no one’s recognized his face. He wonders if Coulson was a shapeshifter or something.

Arriving at a location, Snowflake goes out and returns with another of their targets. He tells May it’s an initiation and she should stab him under the rib cage with a knife he’s leaving her. When May tells the man he won’t be hurt, Sarge shoots him and leaves. The man then comes back to life because of one of those bat-like creatures that killed Keller. May evades and fights the man until he starts to crystalize. She has no choice but to stab him. Sarge is impressed.

Sarge reveals the creatures are from another world and are called the Shrike. They take over hosts and turn them into energy, which then deconstructs. The easiest way to find them is to track things that “don’t belong” on the planet, which is why Deke registered on their scanner. The Shrike are the end of everything and serve their creator, who is a monster.

Sarge has been hunting them for as long as he can remember. He tells May he’s been alive a hundred years before she was born and will be around a hundred years after she’s gone. “Your man may be gone but for me, the tick of the clock is only getting louder.” This is another thing Coulson said to her on Tahiti.

Enoch Tries To Fix Things

Enoch ponders over being decommissioned and hunted. Daisy, Simmons, and the others are getting tired of his complaining while they try to find out where the bounty hunter might have taken Fitz. When Enoch laments over losing his only friend, they try telling him they’re his friends too. They saved the human race because of him.

Suddenly Confederacy ships are in front of them and it appears they’re about to be boarded. Enoch notes they didn’t try slicing their ship in half as the other ship did before. He lets them in and recognized a woman. She’s also a Chronicom, like Enoch, and is called Atarah. She was his superior, but it seems they were a little more intimate than that. She says they’ve been pursing him for some time, and he’s to be judged for tampering with the universe.

It turns out the Chronicoms homeworld has been destroyed. All remaining Chronicoms are on board the Confederacy ships they liberated. There were “distortions” that spread like a plague and consumed their planet. She’s decided that Fitz should use his knowledge of traveling back in time to save their planet. When they say they don’t actually know how, Atarah figures they’re lying. Fitz appears, but he’s a hologram being held on another ship. If they don’t know how, then they have no use for them.

Enoch later convinces her not to kill them. He says if anyone could figure out time travel, it’s Fitz. It’s possible he made the time travel device in the future. Simmons could be used to give him motivation to succeed. When Atarah orders the others to be killed, Daisy quake-blasts her and they make an escape. Simmons stops and says Fitz could probably solve the problem with her as his partner. Daisy is reluctant but returns to Earth with Davis and Piper.

Thoughts

We’re starting to see how some of the pieces of this season are falling in place. It’s likely the creatures that Sarge is hunting are responsible for the destruction of the Chronicom homeworld.

Seeing more Chronicoms has been interesting since we never really knew Enoch’s full motivation for sending the agents into the future last season. We also never found out the origin of the monolith and how it worked with time travel. It could be possible that Fitz was the one to figure out how to make them work. With Doctor Benson interested in seeing where the monoliths were first found is another intriguing development. Is there a connection with the monoliths and the creatures? The crystals grown from the host bodies are similar to them. One controlled space and the other time. We never found out what the third controlled.

Who is the “creator” of the bat-creatures? Sarge described him as a monster. Why did Enoch gas Fitz in his cell?

This season has a nice pacing. Unfortunately, part of the reason is because it’s a shorter season. Things are happening quicker, but it also means the season will be ending sooner. There is also a continued sense the writers and showrunners are continuing to take risks in order to push the show further. They keep trying out new things that catch viewers off guard. Each season has pretty much had a different vibe, and this season’s episodes are following that model as well.