Visitors descend upon Midgard to hunt and reveal to Skye who she really is. This is my review of episode 2×12 Who You Really are
Let’s start with Sif. We meet her on a balmy Portuguese beach, she doesn’t remember who she is but she can still pack a punch. As a side note that “helpful” guy must have ribs of steel but let’s not go there or our disbelief will be a victime of Skye’s quaking.
Using multiple amateur videos, the team was able to put the pieces back together after the local Portuguese branch of S.H.I.E.L.D. (I assume) warn Coulson of Sif’s arrival. I’m rather amused at the fact that she’s supposedly “undercover” wearing human clothes but still walks around with a Conan the Barbarian sword in her hand. Yes her armour is pretty conspicuous but so is a sword.
Turns out she was hunting a Kree warrior called Vin-Tak who was sent to Earth after they detected one of the deviners being activated. And here’s where we got some more answers about the city. We know Coulson found it from the Kree DNA in his blood (he didn’t mention that part to them btw) since other deviners were activated before the one that transformed Raina and Skye, we can only surmise that the underground city is a Kree city, not an Inhuman city like Attilan. The fact that it was deserted was a pretty good clue too but that explains why Vin-Tak doesn’t seem to be aware of Gordon or any of the other inhumans because their terrigenesis didn’t happen in the Kree city and obviously the Kree still have means to monitor the technology in these ancient ruins.
The explainations of inhumans (not named as such) being Kree weapons that need to be destroyed is accurate but the origin story being the decision to experiment with other species’ DNA left a huge part out which suggests to me either Marvel doesn’t have the rights, or they think it would make it too confusing for viewers. I’m talking about the Skrulls of course as the Kree messed up with human DNA millenia ago in a mean to win the everlasting Kree – Skrull war. Many believe Fox has the rights to the Skrulls attached with the “Fantastic 4 package” (for lack of a better term), I don’t know for sure but this would be a good idicator because as far as easter eggs placement goes, this would have been a really god one.
Eventually Vin-Tak is subdued by Bobbi using his “truncheon” against him (I love how they’re all super evolved species yet still use medieval weapons) and he loses most of his memory. Sif returns him to Hala having somehow recovered her armour along the way (did she hide it in the bush or something?).
I do have a few questions regarding how Vin-Tak got to earth in the first place. The Kree typically travel via space ships as far as I know. The bifrost is convenient to avoid the whole international incident of having a big alien ship land on earth but it typically only apply to Asgardians. So I wonder if he got “dropped off” or if there’s a cloaked Kree ship somewhere still in Portugal.
Moving on to Skye, her inhability to control her quaking powers are becoming more prominent as her gun disintegrates in her hand when she freaks out and can’t keep calm as she’s told how she’s an abomination that needs exterminated. It’s one thinig to have your friend being biased against you, it’s another to have a powerful alien being (nevermind two) telling the same thing. But as one of the opening scene showed, May is still training her, still teaching her control and before the reality of her meeting her father came to the forefront, she was doing pretty well with control (as seen in Making Friends and Influencing People). Based on that, I’m guessing she’ll learn to control her powers somewhat pretty quick,it seems the team will need those powers next week.
However those same powers are creating divisions within the team, especially between Fitz and Simmons and much as I’m liking Fitz and Skye getting closer, I’m not sure what the hell is up with Simmons. She’ll end up all on her own as we seem to have Coulson and May on the one hand who, despite being somewhat scared, are willing to help Skye and on the other Hunter, Bobbi, Mack and Simmons just wanting to lock her up. However Simmons isn’t in on “the other thing” so she may end up going off on her own again maybe.
And as for “the other thing”, well I’m confused. Whatever the thing is, Bobbi and Mack’s motivation seem to be rooted in preventing any further infiltration from the likes of Hydra in the future and making sure their friends don’t turn against each other. But what are they doing? Is it a mission? A vendetta? Are they taking orders from someone? They don’t behave like they’ve been brainwashed and if for whatever reason they’re Fury undercovers, their behavior don’t seem to reflect that. What’s gonna happen to Hunter now? Someone’s bound to ask questions at some point whether it’s him (Mack hasn’t killed him obviously and he joins up their little plot in 2 weeks) but if he’s disabled from duty Coulson will want to know why.
So this again turned out to be a much bigger review than I anticipated but that’s what happens when you bring elements of the Cosmic universe.
