S.H.I.E.L.D. tries to figure out what Hive is planning to do on Earth. Daisy and Lincoln reach out to another Inhuman from Afterlife to learn more about Hive. Malick dwells on the deadly vision he has seen.
Tropes:
- Armor-Piercing Response: When Fitz tries to reassure Coulson that he did the right thing killing Ward by asking him if he'd let him live and win after everything he had done to the team, Coulson's response?Coulson: Don't you see? When I killed him, he did.
- The Atoner: Gideon tries to convince Hive that he did everything in his power to bring his brother back. Hive doesn't buy it, because he possessed/consumed Nathaniel on Maveth and has his memories.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Coulson feels this way in regards to his brutal execution of Ward as he let his desire for payback get to him.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- Lincoln looks like he's about to honor his deal and give James the Terrigenesis crystal, but he grabs the alien artifact and tosses it to Daisy before drawing back.
- When Gideon prepares to sacrifice himself to honor the Hive, Hive appears to accept it, saying "we'll always need a Malick at our side." He does this while coming closer to Stephanie, seemingly choosing her to suceed her father... and instead kills her in front of Gideon's eyes and smirks "Now you understand sacrifice."
- Blofeld Ploy: Hive reveals that Gideon continued his father's tradition of cheating at the stone draw, sacrificing his brother to avoid going himself. Gideon freely offers his life in exchange, not wanting to die a coward in front of his daughter. Hive says that he still needs a Malick, then kills Gideon's daughter to teach him the meaning of sacrifice.
- Broken Pedestal:
- Stephanie breaks down into tears after she learns that her father cheated his way out of being sacrificed to Hive. She and her father both choose to let Hive kill him to make it right... but Hive has other plans.
- Nathaniel immediately realizes that Gideon palmed the notched stone into the bag, and it clearly breaks his heart.
- Brought Down to Badass: Coulson neutralizes Giyera's telekinesis by trapping him in a room with nothing he can pick up, but he's still good enough to fight May as an equal without his powers. May only wins because she kicks him in the balls while he's gloating.
- The Cameo: Daniel Whitehall returns in one of the flashbacks to Gideon Malick's past.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The part of Hive that was once Malick's brother believes that Gideon should die for betraying him, but Hive decides that he still needs his services, so he kills Gideon's daughter to punish him instead.
- Cassandra Truth: James found out about Hive and was trying to warn the other Inhumans and potential Inhumans. Jiaying banished him, and Lincoln never believed the story about the second coming of an Inhuman that could raise the dead until he say zombie Ward walking around.
- Chekhov's Gun: When Giyera is first being secured in the containment cell, he starts levitating objects around the hanger of the Zephyr, including the buckle on a seat belt. Though they close the door as soon as they notice, Giyera managed to sneak the buckle in and uses it to pry the door open.
- Cliffhanger: Giyera takes control of the Zephyr and takes the whole team prisoner except for Daisy and Lincoln, who must now gather the Secret Warriors in order to save them.
- Crazy Survivalist: James. He planted a minefield in his front yard.
- Cutting the Knot: Rather than take any further chances with James's personal minefield, Daisy uses her powers to simply trigger them all at once from a safe distance.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Before becoming an Inhuman, Lincoln was an alcoholic who almost killed his girlfriend in a car crash.
- Dirty Coward: Gideon and his father are revealed to have rigged the ritual of choosing who would go through the Monolith by using a notched white rock, allowing him to always pick a black rock (presumably he made sure never to be last). This goes double for Gideon, who promised his brother to play it straight only to sacrifice him when it came down to the two of them.
- Enemy Mine: It took the combined efforts of the ancient Inhumans and normal humans to banish Hive to that alien world.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Played with. While Malick does love his family, he is still willing to sacrifice them if it means he gets away. His brother, at least. When Hive kills Stephanie, he's clearly devastated.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- Whitehall doesn't think much of the cult side of HYDRA regularly sacrificing members to the Monolith. It doesn't seem like he believed anything was on the other side.
- Hive does not like cowards.
- Jiaying deliberately kept Hive's existence a secret from the other Inhumans so nobody would get any ideas about bringing him back.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: It finally seems to be sinking in for Malick that Hive has no loyalty or gratitude to him or to HYDRA in general. His daughter doesn't seem to get it - when Malick thinks that Hive plans to kill him in front of the other HYDRA leaders to make a point, his daughter urges him to "remind him how important you are!" as if Hive cares at all that Malick engineered Hive's return.
- Exact Words: James tells Daisy not to take one more step. She does, and ends up stepping on a landmine.
- Face Death with Dignity: When he's convinced Hive is going to kill him, Gideon refuses to beg for his life in front of his daughter.
- Gondor Calls for Aid: Lincoln reminds Daisy that not everyone on their team was inside the Zephyr when it was hijacked by Giyera. It's time to call in the Secret Warriors!
- Gone Horribly Right: The Kree engineered Hive to be the leader of an Inhuman army, and they succeeded. Unfortunately they didn't consider that he might lead that army against them.
- Groin Attack: Giyera proves to be skilled enough in melee combat that May can't beat him, at least not easily. When he has her cornered and starts to gloat, May takes him down with a swift kick to the groin.
- Idiot Ball: Nobody thought to keep an eye on Giyera while he was locked up? Nobody thought of keep him restrained? Or blinded? It's all the more egregious in that he was restrained prior to being placed inside the containment unit and several people saw him levitate stuff.
- If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Coulson finds himself wondering if this was true in regards to him and Ward... months after having killed him. Fitz assures him that Ward deserved it, but this doesn't allay Coulson's guilt, even going as far as saying by killing him in cold-blood, Ward actually won.
- I Just Want to Be Special: James desperately wants to undergo Terrigenesis and get powers. Lincoln takes advantage of that to get the intel James had stolen from Jiaying.
- I Lied: Lincoln doesn't give the crystal to James despite their deal.
- I Surrender, Suckers: Giyera briefly raises his hands in surrender, then uses his powers to grab the flight controls and send the quinjet toward the ground.
- Internal Reveal: Daisy tells Lincoln about her last vision from Charlie, which was also the flashforward at the start of the mid-season.
- Jerkass Has a Point: James is right — Lincoln did kill somebody with his powers.
- Kiss of Death: Hive plants one on Stephanie...right before he breathes a cloud of parasites into her mouth that kills her.
- Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: Long before he was released, Whitehall was still able to command his HYDRA faction from within his cell at the Rat, thanks to the widespread internal corruption of S.H.I.E.L.D., and even had influence over the Hive-worshiping faction.
- Mind Hive: Hive, fittingly enough, is confirmed to retain the memories and minds of all his past hosts. Malick's brother Nathaniel comes to the forefront during their confrontation.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- It's only when Hive murders Stephanie that Gideon begins to think that HYDRA might have been wrong about his motives.
- Coulson for his killing Ward led to Hive finding a new body to come to Earth, not to mention letting his desire for revenge on Ward get to him that he's left haunted over killing him in cold-blood.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Coulson realizes that if he was able to control his urge for revenge and hadn't killed Ward, Hive wouldn't have been able to come to Earth.
- Oh, Crap!: Malick has this reaction at the beginning of the episode when he realizes that Hive is in his home. He has another, more minor one when he sees that Hive gave his daughter a copy of Paradise Lost, showing he knows what Malick and his father have done.
- Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Whitehall derides the Malick faction of HYDRA for continuing to act as a cult rather than basing their work on science, like him. He calls the Traveler Ceremony a meaningless blood ritual.
- The Paragon Always Rebels: Hive was created to be The Leader of the Kree's Inhuman army, but instead he ended up leading the rebellion against them.
- Puppeteer Parasite: The spores that Hive releases to control Inhumans and absorb regular humans are revealed to be a part of him.
- The Reveal: Hive was engineered to be the most powerful Inhuman of all by the Kree.
- Series Continuity Error: Werner Reinhardt is called Whitehall in the flashbacks even though he didn't take that name until he was released. A minor case that could be easily fixed with an ADR loop session to replace "Whitehall" with "Reinhardt". Given how he Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All, though, this might be explainable...
- Shout-Out: Jemma makes a reference to The Birds.
- Smart Gun: Fitz rigs handprint locks to the team's ICERs so that Giyera can't steal their weapons and fire them telekinetically. Mack notes that this wouldn't stop Giyera from stealing the guns and Pistol-Whipping them to death instead.
- Stunned Silence: Fitz is rendered speechless and left with nothing else to say to help comfort Coulson over killing Ward when Coulson tells him that he feels Ward was the real winner in their Final Battle as a result of letting his desire for vengeance cloud his judgement.
- Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Malick's daughter refers to Hive in Ward's body as such while gushing about how handsome he is.
- Title Drop: The title comes from John Milton's Paradise Lost, which is the book Gideon's father hid the white stone in.
- Turned Against Their Masters: The reason for the Kree abandoning the Terrigenesis project on Earth was not a perceived failure as previously implied, but a full scale revolt by the Inhuman test subjects.
- The Un-Reveal: Hive shows his true face to Gideon's followers, but we only see his Gorgon-like hair, which looks a lot like the HYDRA sigil (and is a reference to Hive's comic book counterpart).
- Vengeance Feels Empty: Coulson feels no satisfaction over killing Ward, having done so out of revenge for killing Rosalind and admitting to Fitz about being haunted over the way he did so. He even go as far as stating that Ward was the actual victor in their final confrontation.
- Villain Ball: Hive killing Stephanie instead of Gideon. It makes zero tactical sense to sacrifice the asset of a loyal follower just to teach a "lesson" to an unreliable follower who is fast becoming a liability.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Malick interpreted the vision of his death from the previous episode as Hive coming to this conclusion. It doesn't happen — at least not yet.
