S.H.I.E.L.D. discovers what's really going on inside the ATCU and Rosalind's role in it, while Ward finds out a secret regarding HYDRA that no-one else knows.
Tropes:
- Affably Evil: Ward generally aspires to this, and is even polite enough to warn the passengers of the airliner to put on their seatbelts before he blows open a hatch to parachute out, explaining what is going to happen.
- Ancient Conspiracy: HYDRA is actually descended from a cult worshiping an ancient Inhuman, who was banished through the Monolith thousands of years ago, and have been working towards retrieving him ever since.
- Arc Welding: This episode ties together Ward's story regarding rebuilding HYDRA, his wanting vengeance against May, the plotline of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the ATCU dealing with Inhumans, Jemma's sojourn on the alien world, and even the prior season's plotline involving HYDRA and the Inhumans.
- Big Damn Kiss: Fitz and Simmons finally kiss after three seasons of UST, after Simmons yells at him for being too nice about the Will situation, and he admits he is jealous.
- Boomerang Comeback: Bobbi's sticks are modified so that she can throw them and make them return to her using a set of transparent arm cuffs.
- Call-Back:
- The ram sigil comes up again, this time being linked to HYDRA — over the centuries, the ram's curling horns were inverted and morphed into the skull-and-tentacles HYDRA logo.
- "Among Us Hide..." had Fitz browsing Will's record. Here he admits that he found nothing on Will that could make Fitz dislike him.
- Bobbi finds bottles of fish oil capsules in the ATCU lab, the manner in which ordinary civilians were initially exposed to terrigen.
- Bobbi also finds the remains of the stone cocoons of successful terrigenesis subjects.
- One of the items kept in von Strucker's vaults is a piece of the Monolith, which looks like it would fit in one of the many rectangular cavities in the full version.
- Combat Pragmatist: Ward uses a billiard ball and cue in his fight with Malick's Mooks.
- Comically Missing the Point: Hunter and Bobbi walk into the ATCU with Hunter pretending to be a hacker and wearing a shirt reading "Damn the YANKS". The ATCU agent talking to them asks if he's a Red Sox fan.Hunter: Red coats, actually.
- Conspiracy Redemption: Rosalind and the Operations Division of the ATCU are on the level. Only the Sciences division is under the control of HYDRA.
- Continuity Nod:
- The cuffs Bobbi uses to summon back her batons are similar to the electromagnetic gauntlet Captain America uses to summon his shield back in Avengers: Age of Ultron, as well as the wrist bands the Mark 7 Iron Man armor locks onto in the first The Avengers film.
- Ward mentions he had a pyromania problem in his childhood.
- Coulson being a collector of classic spy gear is brought up when Rosalind sees some of the collection in his office.
- Gideon Malick is confirmed to be the same character Powers Boothe portrayed as a member of the World Security Council in The Avengers.
- Dynamic Entry: Ward enters the vault riding the meter-thick chunk of concrete he's blown out of the ceiling.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Rosalind says that HYDRA involvement is impossible, and that the Science Division can't possibly be working against her. It's headed by her good friend Gideon Malick!... Who forbids her entering the facility for fear of "infection", designed the ATCU, and gave her the Tahiti intel... OK, he's definitely HYDRA.
- False Reassurance: Ward calmly tells the passengers of the flight he's on about how the plane is about to make a very sudden dive to equalize cabin pressure after he blows the hatch off.
- Forceful Kiss: As Simmons is yelling at Fitz about how he should and shouldn't be jealous of Will, he grabs her and kisses her.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Simmons yells at Fitz for not being this, and Fitz admits he is — but he's still going to try to bring Will back anyway.
- Hidden Supplies: The late Baron von Strucker had set up a large number of hidden vaults. Ward is tracking them down for their contents.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Ward, after Malick reveals the truth about HYDRA, drinks the alcohol poured for him.
- Internal Reveal: Rosalind and S.H.I.E.L.D. learn what Malick's really been doing behind her back.
- Irony:
- Early in the episode, Phil reveals he was recruited out of college when, as a History major, he started uncovering historical events that S.H.I.E.L.D. had a hand in. At the end of the episode, he's shown that HYDRA's been shaping history far longer than anyone realized.
- Season 2 made a big deal of Whitehall and HYDRA apparently learning about the Inhumans and S.H.I.E.L.D. trying to prevent them from learning more. Not only did the higher-ups at HYDRA already know about Inhumans, they've known about them for millennia.
- Early on, when a grumpy Fitz berates some junior agents who dropped a pile of books, Simmons gently chides him to "be nice". Later, a frustrated Simmons tells Fitz to "stop trying to do the right things". In other words, to stop being nice.
- Locked Out of the Loop:
- Gideon ran the Science Division of the ATCU with no oversight from its ostensible head beyond sending in weekly reports. Since Rosalind primarily focused on the day-to-day activities of the Operations division and never physically inspected Gideon's facilities to see what they were really doing (under the pretense that they were quarantined from nonessential personnel), she had no idea that the ATCU's Science division was secretly a HYDRA subsidiary until Bobbi broke in and reported it to Coulson.
- Given that Whitehall knew very little about the Inhumans, he seemed to be locked out of the whole "ancient purpose" as well.
- Meta Origin: The backstory partially revealed here makes the Kree interference with ancient Earth the trigger for much of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A particularly powerful Inhuman inspired the creation of HYDRA, one of HYDRA's leaders unearthed the Tesseract, and its members infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. Anything that HYDRA has touched can now be linked back to Kree creating the Inhumans.
- Mind over Matter: Gideon's Inhuman guard (Giyera) has telekinetic powers.
- Mythology Gag:
- The Retcon turning HYDRA from a Nazi splinter group into an Ancient Conspiracy was used in the comics years ago, particularly in Secret Warriors.
- Bobbi's arm cuffs allowing her to control her batons are something she frequently uses in the comics. Though, there, they're not usually invisible, and are usually used to launch them away from her rather than pull them back.
- Nice Guy: Simmons accuses Fitz of playing this trope straight intentionally, in that he's being far too nice in an attempt to bring back his own romantic rival. He admits he is jealous, but he's decided that he and Simmons are cursed to never get together, so bringing Will back is the next best thing.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: HYDRA had been unsuccessfully trying for thousands of years to get someone back from the planet, allowing them to bring the exiled Inhuman back as well. Now they know that it can be done, and who successfully did it.
- Oh, Crap!: Multiple ones:
- The flight attendant and all the passengers when Ward warns them what he's about to do and then jumps out of the airplane.
- Hunter when he sees Banks enter the computer center and realizes there's no way he can avoid being recognized.
- The reaction of Rosalind when she realizes what's been happening at the ATCU behind her back.
- Rosalind and the members of S.H.I.E.L.D. when Jemma and Fitz lay out images showing variations on the ram's head symbol going back thousands of years and then flipping the oldest one around to show it's also a hidden HYDRA skull-and-tentacles sigil.
- One-Man Army: Ward proves once again that he is one against a group of Malick's men. He uses a silver plate as a shield and throwing object in the manner of Captain America!
- Repeat After Me: Hunter pretends to be a Boxed Crook hacker working for the FBI by repeating the technobabble that Daisy recites to him over a comm link.
- The Reveal:
- It's finally settled that Rosalind and Banks are both on the level, and had no idea of the things Malick was using the ATCU to do.
- HYDRA is revealed to be behind the secret society that was sending people through the portal, in an effort to retrieve or serve the Inhuman on the other side. They long predate the Red Skull and Nazi Germany, and in fact have been around for millennia.
- Likewise, the five holes in the monolith were carved by HYDRA once upon a time, with the five stones extracted shared out among HYDRA leaders across the ages.
- The actions of the planet Simmons was trapped on, actively stopping people from accessing the portal to escape as shown in "4,722", take on a whole new meaning with the revelation the planet was meant as a prison to keep the ancient Inhuman from getting back to Earth.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: When one of the men sent to kill Ward talks to save the one Ward is about to torture, Ward shoots him and congratulates the other for not cracking.
- Saying Too Much: Coulson was on to Rosalind from the very beginning, when she mentioned T.A.H.I.T.I. — something she couldn't possibly know about unless she had a high-level source in either S.H.I.E.L.D. or HYDRA. She just didn't know her source was HYDRA.
- Shout-Out: The episode includes two technophobic characters saying how much they prefer the smell of books over computers.
- Shown Their Work: Ward threatens to torture Malick's guys with a culinary torch and mentions that it burns at 2600 degrees. That's true.
- Sigil Spam: HYDRA apparently can't stop themselves from putting disguised variations of their skull and tentacles/ram's head logo everywhere for millennia.
- Spotting the Thread: When they met, Phil had noted Rosalind referenced T.A.H.I.T.I. and was immediately suspicious because the only people who should know about it was someone high up in S.H.I.E.L.D. or someone who had been HYDRA. When she denies ever having met anyone from S.H.I.E.L.D., he knows the information had to come from HYDRA.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Fitz calls himself and Simmons "cursed", lampshading the various outrageously contrived complications that the FitzSimmons pairing has suffered over the past three seasons.
- The Stinger: Ward visits Andrew in his containment module.
- Unwitting Pawn: It turns out that Rosalind isn't HYDRA, but has been manipulated by Malick into furthering their goal.
- Villain Team-Up: Ward and Malick, HYDRA's two heads, join forces, cutting off a potential Enemy Civil War.
- We Can Rule Together: Malick's offer to Ward consists of offering him joint command of the army being assembled to conquer the world when HYDRA's Inhuman master is brought home to Earth.
- Wham Episode:
- HYDRA, which has been a very persistent force throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is revealed to have existed for millennia, and it seeks the power and/or blessings of an ancient Inhuman.
- On the romantic side, Fitz and Simmons finally kiss.
- HYDRA has infiltrated the Science Division of the ATCU and has been giving Terrigen-infused fish oil pills to employees, one of whom fights Bobbi.
- Worthy Opponent:
- Malick admits that he intended to have Ward killed, but Ward's resourcefulness has convinced him to join forces instead.
- After killing Malick's man who broke about the vault's location, Ward then tells the one who wouldn't talk under threat of a blowtorch to the face that he should be proud, and would have fit in well on Ward's team.
- You Just Told Me: Ward claims to know where Strucker's vault is to Malick. After Malick sends in his guards and Ward defeats them, he interrogates them for information on how to open it. One blurts out the location and insists they have no idea how to open it, which confirms its location to Ward. He already knew the location of Strucker's many vaults, but not which one specifically to search.
