With Daisy released from Hive's control, S.H.I.E.L.D. rushes to stop Hive's plans to dominate the planet.
Tropes:
- Addled Addict: Daisy is effectively this during the entire episode. After days and possibly weeks on a continuous high from Hive's spores triggering the pleasure centers of her brain, the removal of the spores cause her to suffer a massive crash. She's wracked with self-loathing over what she did while under the influence, but when she learns that Hive is on the loose in the base, she immediately goes back to him for another fix.
- Arc Words: "Absolution", which Hive mentioned last time while Daisy was still under his control, and which a now-recovered Daisy is trying to decipher.
- Bait-and-Switch: When Simmons is planning a vacation, she tells Fitz they'll do something that will take his breath away: snorkeling.
- Be All My Sins Remembered: Daisy refuses to let herself be forgiven for what she did under Hive's control. When Mack does so anyway, she breaks down sobbing in his arms. So does he.
- Brought Down to Badass: SHIELD may have scrambled Hive's memories, but it still has thousands of years of experience and the memories of ... hundreds? Thousands? of people, including expert combatant Grant Ward.
- The Bus Came Back: Giyera returns after an unexplained absence from Hive's army in the last few episodes.
- Cardboard Prison: When Daisy decides it's time to leave containment, she gets out in about five seconds.
- Co-Dragons: With Alisha dead and Daisy's brainwashing cured, Giyera and James are now this for Hive.
- Continuity Nod:
- Daisy's traumatic experience of being enthralled by Hive is extremely similar to Jessica Jones' traumatic experience of being enthralled by Kilgrave, which is itself an allegory for sexual abuse.
- Due to the effect of the memory machine on his brain, Hive quotes lines from several previous characters, including many of Ward's.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- Much as in Jessica Jones (2015), Daisy's experience after leaving Hive's thrall is used as a metaphor for recovering survivors/victims of sexual abuse as well as recovering addicts.
- Hive's taunting Lincoln reeks of him being a better lover/provider to Daisy than "the ex".
- Easily Forgiven: Everyone is willing to forgive Daisy for what she did under Hive's sway — except Daisy herself.
- Explosive Leash: The explosive vests meant to kill Inhuman agents if Hive sways them make a return. Both Lincoln and Elena are happy to wear them now that they've seen what Daisy did under Hive's sway.
- Fake-Out Opening: The opening scene looks like another Flash Forward with Coulson and Daisy trapped in a detention cell on Hive's prison planet. There are comments about them never realizing her vision of someone on the team dying meant everyone else on the team being killed, and Daisy is wiring up some electronics that she thinks will take them back to Earth. Then Coulson tells her that they are on Earth. Then she wakes up.
- A God Am I: When Simmons asks Daisy about the connection between Hive and "absolution", Daisy states that Hive sees himself as a god-like savior.
- Heel–Face Turn: Radcliffe jumps at the chance to go over to S.H.I.E.L.D., as he has long realized how insane Hive is.
- Hollywood Healing: Coulson stops using the crutch too quickly for real-life healing.
- Human Popsicle: S.H.I.E.L.D. manages to contain Hive in a gel-matrix cube, but his Primitives free him once the Trojan Horse plan gets into motion.
- I Shall Taunt You: Hive tries to bait Lincoln by taunting him with his inability to provide Daisy with the emotional connection she needs. Lincoln doesn't take the bait and runs instead, though the implication still gets to him.
- It's All My Fault: Daisy blames herself for what she did under Hive's control, in spite of the others trying to talk her out of it.
- Literal-Minded: When trying to get the Primitives to help him, Radcliffle mentions "tools". They immediately grab some hand tools, which they hold wrong.
- Memento Macguffin: Mack tries to give Yoyo back her necklace, she says "It's not a rabbit's foot! It's a symbol of faith!" so he shoves it in his pocket. It falls out of his pocket and gets left on a chair; Fitz then picks it up and shoves it in his own pocket so he can give it back.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Radcliffe defects to S.H.I.E.L.D. since Hive threatens to eat him whenever anything goes wrong.
- Motor Mouth: Coulson has to read off an entire page of alphanumeric gibberish, which Fitz then has to type in to an uplink console, in thirty seconds in order to abort the missile launch.
- My Skull Runneth Over: The team disassembles the memory machine and turns it into a portable version which they trick Hive into walking into. Once active, it causes every host he's ever taken over to surface all at once, driving him insane. Ward's personality, being the most recent, provides him with some stability, but he struggles to focus.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Coulson has one when he opens up the code to disarm Hive's missile with twenty seconds to go and realizes it's a page-long alphanumeric code. Luckily Fitz's Rapid-Fire Typing can keep up.
- Fitz's reaction when he realizes the meaning of "Absolution"; it's the town in Montana where the parts to the hangar are manufactured.
- When Hive is released, Daisy realizes that he can use the Zephyr to deliver his warhead since it can fly into the stratosphere.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Averted with Radcliffe. Hive orders him to undo the missile override, even though he complains that he lacks the engineering or technical skills to do that. When he realizes Hive will kill him if he can't do it, he grabs the missile manual and just stalls, then defects to S.H.I.E.L.D. the first chance he gets.
- Play-Along Prisoner: Daisy only stays in her cell because she feels she belongs there. When she sees a chance to get to Hive, she easily lets herself out.
- Red Shirt: The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that are turned into Primitives are nameless (save one) and two of them just walk in blindly.
- Scully Box: In-universe, Talbot remembers that General Andaz, the man Fitz will impersonate using a faked video chat and mo-cap suit, is taller than both of them. Fitz quickly fixes the problem by standing on a thick book before their video chat starts up.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Elena gets a wordless one in when she uses her speed to plant a beacon at Hive's feet, allowing a gel-matrix cube to drop on him.
- Techno Babble: Meta-technobabble, as Simmons suggests technobabble that happened off-screen when they were at the academy. "Professor Vaughn's third-year compiler theory?"
- Trojan Horse: A batch of the Primitive gas is hidden in the shipment of parts to the hangar doors at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, turning several agents into Primitives.
- Vengeance Feels Empty: Coulson tells Daisy that vengeance against Hive wouldn't help her, just make it worse, as he already had the experience with Ward.
- Villain Ball: Instead of just taking control of Lincoln and then Elena from the get-go, Hive decides to take a Menacing Stroll and ends up right where they wanted to have him.
- Villainous Breakdown: Hive has one of these when the missile is stopped by S.H.I.E.L.D. typing in the kill codes, seething in rage and yelling at Radcliffe. He also gets into it when the trap laid out for him makes him relive Ward, Will, and Nathan Malick's memories, unable to tell the past from the present.
- Wham Line: When Daisy uses the containment module to reach Hive, the viewer is under the presumption that she wants revenge. Then she kneels and says "Please... take me back."
