Hale's true allegiance is revealed.
Tropes in this episode:
- Academy of Evil: Turns out, HYDRA ran a boarding school-like training facility for its younger members. Hale, Wolfgang Von Strucker, and Sitwell were all students.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Hale refuses to believe that Team Coulson was in the future, despite the fact she regularly uses a device that transports her across the galaxy to talk to aliens, and despite that her own team determined Deke was related to Fitz and Simmons in a previous episode. Ruby is more open-minded.
- Armor-Piercing Question: After Daisy admonishes Fitz for betraying her, saying that unlike HYDRA, S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't turn its back on its own, he cruelly (but accurately) retorts with:
- Beneath Notice: Talbot is completely oblivious to Hale being HYDRA when he comes to arrest General Fischer; justified because she was looked down upon by her fellow HYDRA agents for being a woman and as such there would be no evidence to connect her. But Talbot still should've considered the possibility since she was talking to Fischer seconds before he walked in.
- Break the Cutie: When Hale is summoned to meet Whitehall on her graduation day, she's understandably nervous given her attacking Von Strucker the day before. But when Whitehall begins to praise her strength, it obviously makes her day. However this then spirals into despair when she realizes that for all her success, the only real value Whitehall sees in her is that she has a uterus.
- Broken Ace: Talbot is a real mess after being continuously tortured by Ruby.
- The Bus Came Back: In addition to several characters reappearing via flashback, we find out what happened to Talbot.
- Call-Back:
- General Hale had a dog when she was at the HYDRA Academy. Graduation day comes, she no longer has a dog.
- We know General Hale doesn't much care for HYDRA, calling it an old boys club. In the flashback we learn why; she was excellent, and they turned her into an incubator, giving not a single shit about her strengths.
- Call-Forward: In the flashback, Ruby is shown skipping class by going back to sleep after she woke up. In "All the Comforts of Home", her mother called her out on it.
- Comically Missing the Point: Simmons tells Fitz that Deke is their grandson in order to show him that they survive together into the future. All Fitz gets out of it is that their future daughter must have hooked up with a real loser in order to give birth to someone like Deke, which earns a chuckle from Jemma.
- Continuity Cameo: In the flashbacks we see Talbot, Sitwell, and Whitehall. On Graduation day, Sitwell has a placement in S.H.I.E.L.D. as a HYDRA mole. We also see the machine that Strucker used to empower Crusher Creel. With regards to the larger MCU, we see young Wolfgang von Strucker.
- Continuity Nod:
- In Season 1, we saw Garrett make Ward bond with a pet dog and then kill it in order to teach him a lesson that Love Is a Weakness. It turns out that all HYDRA operatives had to do that. And funny enough, the dog Hale herself had to kill was even another type-Chocolate Labrador Retriever, just like Buddy, the dog Ward had to put down.
- Young Strucker brings up the Tesseract from the Phase One movies, noting that Schmidt had used it and that HYDRA has access to it through SHIELD. Incidentally, he'd later perform his own superhuman experiments with a different Infinity Stone (the Mind Stone, in Age of Ultron).
- When Hale is presented with being artificially impregnated, she asks if she has any other options. Whitehall tells her "You always have the option whether or not to comply" - "comply" being used in Season Two as a trigger word for HYDRA brainwashing. Hale understands the implied threat and gives in.
- The Purge that was initiated by Gideon Malick giving up his intel to S.H.I.E.L.D. is briefly shown in a flashback, with Hale's immediate HYDRA superior (and the highest-ranking HYDRA agent in the Air Force) committing suicide rather than be taken into custody.
- A Day in the Limelight: Most of the episode is devoted to Hale, and to a lesser extent, Ruby.
- Defiant Captive: Talbot is dismissive towards Hale and her "squid-billy" plans. Sadly, he still breaks under her torture off-screen.
- Defiant to the End: General Fischer exclaims "Hail HYDRA!" and eats a Cyanide Pill before Talbot's men had a chance to arrest him.
- Designer Babies: Ruby was engineered by Whitehall to be the perfect specimen for his infusion program.
- Distinction Without a Difference: Hale asked Whitehall if she had an option to utilize her skills elsewhere rather than being artificially inseminated. Whitehall coldly answers that she had the option whether or not to comply.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- Coulson sarcastically comments that something tells him an organization calling itself "The Confederacy" is not to be trusted and will probably end up enslaving everyone. Hale dryly notes that the thought has occurred to her.
- Daisy asking how it's possible that they are still fighting Nazis, referencing Hale's ties to HYDRA.
- The Easy Way or the Hard Way: Whitehall all but explicitly threatens Hale into following his orders, otherwise he'd be more than willing to make her comply.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: After Hale shoots Ruby's instructor, she tells her daughter that the two of them are quite literally the last remnants of HYDRA (everyone else is either dead or imprisoned).
- Everyone Went to School Together: Baron Von Strucker, Agent Sitwell and General Hale were all in the same graduating class of a secret HYDRA academy.
- Evil Is Petty: For ridiculing him, Strucker has two boys put additional weights on Hale's bench while she is lifting it up.
- Exact Words: Whitehall tells the young Hale that the HYDRA leadership sees the future of the organization in her. She's flattered until further explanation makes it clear he means it literally.
- Freudian Excuse: One of the reasons for Hale's Arbitrary Skepticism about Coulson's warning is her belief he's talking down to her because she's a woman, based on her long history of dealing with sexism as a member of HYDRA.
- Godzilla Threshold: Hale tries to invoke this to both Talbot and Coulson in order to stop the Confederacy. Her Stupid Evil tendencies end up sabotaging her own argument.
- Green-Eyed Monster: There's a reason why Ruby is obsessed with killing Daisy. Her mom thinks Daisy is more worthy to be put through Whitehall's superhuman program than her. So if Ruby kills Daisy, she'll prove herself to her mom.
- Honor Before Reason: Steger the HYDRA Academy instructor insists that Ruby had to uphold tradition by killing her dog for her to graduate, despite HYDRA being on the verge of downfall at the time. Ruby disagrees, and so does General Hale. With her sidearm.
- Hypocrite: Daisy angrily tells Fitz that as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents they shouldn't turn on each other. Fitz nonchalantly asks if she'd like him to recount all the times that she did. Daisy stops talking and leaves his cell.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Fitz says this to Daisy over taking off her inhibitor. She reminds him that he drugged her, restrained her, and performed invasive surgery. When he's still unrepentant, she blasts him into the wall with her powers.
- Idiot Ball: Talbot. He brags to Hale that, while he has the information, it is firmly locked in his mind. Cue the torture. Then again, she already knew he had the info (since she knew he had personally led the destruction of much of HYDRA), so there wasn't much point in hiding that fact.
- If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: The graduation test for HYDRA school has the students being forced to kill a pet dog that they have raised and bonded with, to demonstrate that they aren't bound by weakness. Hale goes through with it, but spares Ruby from doing the same.
- Inadequate Inheritor: Hale feels this way about Ruby. Despite being genetically engineered to be the perfect candidate for the infusion machine, she's too temperamental to be trusted with the power she would gain. Hale thinks Daisy would be a far better choice.
- Internal Reveal: Fitz finds out Deke is his grandson. He's less than pleased, since he doesn't really like Deke all that much.
- Lame Pun Reaction: Daisy groans at General Hale's Punny Name.Daisy: Hale is HYDRA. [Beat] "Hale HYDRA". Seriously?
- Like Mother, Like Daughter: Just like Hale, Ruby is an exceptional HYDRA student and is more than willing to beat up boys who look down on her. Unlike her, though, she isn't so willing to obey orders, rejecting and not seeing the point of the "kill your dog" tradition.
- More than Mind Control: Unlike the USSR's Red Room program that brainwashed and malnourished their cadets, HYDRA instead influences their trainees' mind by feeding them misinformation, such as how the US Government was oppressive. And no, they don't use the Faustus method to control their trainees, unless they refused to comply like when Whitehall threatened Hale.
- Mythology Gag: Hale refers to Coulson as one of "Earth's mightiest heroes", the tagline for The Avengers. It doubles as a Call-Back to the end of the first season, where Nick Fury implicitly classifies Coulson as an Avenger, since the T.A.H.I.T.I. program was meant to revive them if they died.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Coulson notes that a group called The Confederacy is probably not to be trusted, because they likely enslave people.
- Nepotism: Aside from Hale kicking his ass, Strucker didn't seem to get punished for the bullying he did to her and he's already considered the future leader of HYDRA, likely because of his inside connection, to the point that Sitwell called Hale an idiot for picking a fight with him.
- No-Sell:
- Coulson refuses to play Hale's mind games. When she tries the usual breakfast method, he just grabs a box of cereal and a bowl to eat it in his room.
- Though it's still debatable about how much of it is caused by his brain injury or just his regular personality, Talbot is similarly snarky and resistant towards Hale's attempts to sabotage his rehab for a time.
- Not Helping Your Case: Hale does a fantastically bad job of convincing people she wants to save the Earth; abducting your commanding officer and torturing anybody who disagrees with you is not how one gains allies. There's also the fact she intentionally suppressed all evidence exonerating Daisy and S.H.I.E.L.D. of Aida's and Anton Ivanov's crimes for no logical reason, other than pure spite.
- Not a Morning Person: Ruby, in the flashback, would much rather go back to sleep than "rise and seize the future".
- "Not So Different" Remark: Hale insists that HYDRA and the educational system that formed Talbot are the same sort of indoctrination.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Young Hale quickly realizes that HYDRA doesn't give a single damn about her strengths, they just want to use her a as a brood mother.
- When Coulson hears that Whitehall's project was called Destroyer of Worlds, he drops the sarcastic and easygoing attitude he'd had so far regarding his capture and quite justifiably freaks out, begging Hale not to go forward and shouting that she has to listen as he's being dragged away.
- Origins Episode: This episode is primarily this for Ruby; while Hale's past is explored, we don't know much other than that she was in the HYDRA academy. This episode also explores the lives of both Sitwell and Baron Von Strucker, although we don't learn about anything beyond their time in the HYDRA Academy.
- Pet the Dog: After being portrayed as a pretty Abusive Parent before, this episode finally shows some scenes where Hale actually acts nice towards her daughter. Also, said daughter refuses to kill her dog like her classmates did.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Hale is forced by Whitehall to be artificially impregnated to create the perfect superhuman, since she's the only female HYDRA recruit that fits their requirements. He does try to frame it in a pleasant way by saying that she can still serve in the Air Force and even be an astronaut (which is her dream), but that when it's time, she will be expected to comply immediately. As her conversation with Ruby over breakfast shows, she ultimately did not get to be an astronaut, though it's unclear as to whether she was never considered for the program or had to withdraw when Whitehall's timetable interfered with her selection.
- Pragmatic Villainy:
- Despite being an enemy as both Nazi and HYDRA, Whitehall doesn't talk about Captain America as his enemy, instead using his status as a Super-Soldier to instill inspiration into HYDRA cadets so they can be a better soldier for HYDRA. It's possibly justified because HYDRA (aside from Alexander Pierce, who personally wanted him released) probably doesn't even know Whitehall's Nazi roots and Whitehall had to keep the masquerade.
- The trainees in HYDRA Academy look considerably healthy, well-fed, and don't even seem to be brainwashed. Compare that to the Red Room who brainwashed and malnourished their cadets.
- The Reveal:
- Hale's secret base is revealed to be an old HYDRA training academy. Ruby's "spy school" is the same academy. When they were talking about her skipping class in "All the Comforts of Home", they weren't talking about the present since the school is no longer active, but about the past when Ruby had a habit of being Not a Morning Person.
- Talbot woke up from his coma, but Hale intentionally sabotaged his rehab to "recruit" him to her crusade... by kidnapping him to her secret base. He also actually believed in Daisy's innocence, but in his damaged state nobody would take notice.
- HYDRA cut a deal with the Confederacy to protect Earth from destruction, but they want gravitonium and Inhumans as payment. Hale doesn't trust them and plans to use one of Whitehall's projects to give a person the power of gravitonium, allowing that person to fight off any invasion.
- The Rival: Hale was one to Wolfgang von Strucker while the two were students at a HYDRA indoctrination academy, albeit she didn't have much of a chance against him from the start as it had basically already been decided that he would one day be the leader of HYDRA.
- Rule of Three: Hale and Ruby have this weird mind game they play on their prisoners: when the prisoner finds the room with the breakfast buffet, Ruby walks in and completely ignores him. When Werner and Talbot are each subjected to this ploy, they try to communicate with Ruby, to no avail. The third time, with Coulson, he merely grabs his favorite cereal and tells Ruby that he'll be in his room when Hale is done playing games.
- Running Gag: Ruby has by now greeted three unwilling guests the same way (Werner, Talbot and Coulson), just calmly walking towards the breakfast buffet and acting as if they weren't even there.
- Spotting the Thread: Talbot is not an idiot and immediately figured out that the Daisy that shot him was an LMD.
- Take That!: Daisy wonders how S.H.I.E.L.D. is still fighting Nazis in the present day, a not-at-all veiled jab at the Real Life resurgence of Nazi ideals in the U.S.
- Too Dumb to Live: Talbot storms in on a HYDRA leader destroying documents and doesn't think the other person (Hale) is also a member of HYDRA.
- Upgrade Artifact: Before his death, Whitehall was developing a chamber that could infuse a person with the properties of any element. In the present, Hale wants this machine to infuse a person with the power of gravitonium, giving that person the power to fight off any alien invasion.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Daniel Whitehall is a respected figure among the children in HYDRA. They probably don't even know that he was Nazi German officer Werner Reinhardt.
- Villainous Friendship: In the flashback, Hale seems to have a good friendship with Sitwell. They sit together at every meal.
- Villainous Legacy: Hale wants to use an old superhuman program of Whitehall to help save the Earth.
- Wham Line: The codename for Whitehall's project for infusing a human with the power of gravitonium? "Destroyer of Worlds". As Coulson and the audience know, the title is due to become literal.
- What You Are in the Dark: Talbot, as soon as he realizes he's being held by HYDRA, insists he's not on HYDRA's side, and also realizes the Daisy who shot him was an LMD.Talbot: I would rather die on my two legs than slither on eight with you.
- Whole Episode Flashback: Half the episode is dedicated to Hale's backstory.
- You Can't Fight Fate: After hearing from Mack about how Yo-Yo survives into the future, Simmons jumps on the bandwagon of herself and Fitz being fated to get over their problems and have a daughter, who in turn will have Deke, their grandson.
- You Have to Believe Me!: Coulson desperately tries to convince Hale that she may bring about the end of the world, but Hale won't hear it.
