After May shoots Sarge, Team Coulson begins to look into the connection between Sarge and Coulson.
Tropese:
- Big "NO!": Piper lets one out when Izel forces her best friend Davis to commit Psychic-Assisted Suicide.
- Body Surf: Izel slipped away from her ship by possessing Davis and then various agents, including May to shoot Sarge.
- Call-Back:
- When Daisy and Elena question Davis, he mentions surviving "the great puff incident of 2019".Elena: [confused look at Daisy]
Daisy: Don't Ask. - When Deke comments about how the destruction of the three monoliths formed a gateway to a dimension where incorporeal entities exist, Fitz notes that it isn't the first time they have dealt with "spirits" — namely Ghost Rider.
- Fitz also says that if Sarge is anything like Ghost Rider, the containment unit won't hold him, as Ghost Rider also broke out of it.
- When Daisy and Elena question Davis, he mentions surviving "the great puff incident of 2019".
- Complete Immortality: Seems the energy beings Izel and Sarge are a part of are unable to die. Any physical damage they take, they can heal, and it would appear that outside of a Kryptonite Factor there is no way to permanently put them down.
- Continuity Nod:
- Izel notes after possessing Yo-Yo that she could slit all their throats in the blink of an eye, which is exactly how Yo-Yo killed Ruby in Season 5.
- Sarge's shadowy flashbacks of his family are actually moments that Coulson shared with people like May and Daisy in life.
- Did You Just Have Sex?: Inverted; one of the things May remembers before her blackout was that it was clear Mack and Elena were about to have sex.
- Dies Wide Open: Davis, with Piper closing his eyes.
- Don't Ask: Daisy's advice to Elena regarding "the great puff incident of 2019".
- Dramatic Dislocation: How Sarge escapes his restraints.
- Easy Amnesia: May has no memory of shooting Sarge and then confessing to it, because those possessed by Izel don't remember what happened. Likewise, Davis was unaware of Jaco's Heroic Sacrifice from the previous episode thanks to Izel leaping into his body.
- Glamour Failure: As Sarge is ranting to himself about knowing who he is, the skin on his left hand momentarily dissolves and reconstitutes, briefly revealing another form beneath.
- Healing Factor: Sarge's body slowly begins to reconstitute itself after May shoots him.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Yo-Yo intercepts Izel when she tries to possess Daisy, becoming possessed herself, considering it a better trade-off for Izel to have access to her powers instead of Daisy's, since Daisy could destroy the entire Lighthouse.
- Identity Amnesia: It's finally revealed that Sarge is a non-corporeal being from a dimension full of them who desperately want bodies. The Monolith sent a copy of Coulson's body through when he used it to stop everyone's fears last season, and upon possessing it, their memories got mixed up so that he now thinks his lover Izel is actually his mortal enemy, while Coulson's memories of his team (particularly May and Daisy) are confused for being his family.
- If I Wanted You Dead...: Izel tells Sarge that she could've easily killed him long ago — but she wants him to join her.
- Impaled Palm: Izel has Piper shoot through the palm of her own hand to show how serious she is. When this doesn't work, she kills Davis instead.
- Kick the Dog: Izel forcing Davis to commit suicide was really unnecessary.
- Killed Off for Real: After 3 seasons of teasing it, Agent Davis is finally killed off.
- Lampshade Hanging: Fitz mentions they've encountered beings like Izel and Pachakutiq before, the Ghost Rider.Deke: What, he's called that because he's a ... ghost? ... that ... rides? in someone's body?
Fitz: Yeah, I guess.
Deke: That's pretty literal. - Major Injury Underreaction: After being depossessed, Piper, remarkably, doesn't show any reaction to having just had a bullet shot through her hand.
- My Greatest Second Chance: Deke is ecstatic that Fitz doesn't hate him. Annoyed by, yes; hate, no.
- No-Sell: Sarge tries to shoot Izel. It doesn't work. The bullets certainly impact her, and she admits to feeling some sense of pain, but they don't disable her at all.
- Not Quite Dead: Sarge, due to his Healing Factor.
- Oh, Crap!:
- May when she realizes she never made it to her room. The last thing she remembers is running into Davis before she blacked out.
- Davis when he realizes he can't remember anything between being on Izel's ship and seeing May in the corridor.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: May killing Sarge, an unarmed man, in cold blood with a gun, is something that's very out of character for her, since her preferred MO is a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. Everyone notices, and later make the observation that Davis's memory of her being kind and advising him to go to bed is also highly unlike her.
- Paranoia Fuel: In-Universe, Izel's Body Surf makes for a very scary episode, because they have no idea what the rules to it are and have to figure it out on the fly. Davis even lampshades it.
- Properly Paranoid:
- Mack gives Simmons an armed guard when he finds out that Sarge is coming back to life and immediately puts the Lighthouse on lockdown when he finds out about Izel's body surfing abilities; unfortunately, Mack found out a little too late.
- Mack locks up Daisy and Yo-Yo when they're revealed to not be possessed, because in her hands, their powers would make Izel unstoppable. He's proven right when Izel gets Yo-Yo and notes that she could kill anyone she wants in the blink of an eye.
- Izel injures Mack before leaving his body.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Izel forces Davis to throw himself off a high ledge, breaking his neck when he hits the ground.
- Red Herring: The last we see of Izel before the face-off is her possessing Deke and heading to Control to find the Director, so when everyone confronts everyone else, the viewers believe he is the "mole". Turns out Deke saying he has no secrets because he's chatty is a misdirect as well, considering neither Piper nor Deke know who Izel moved to, and accuse each other of being possessed by her. Fitz's comments pique Mack's radar, and Fitz can't answer his question, so Izel is forced to come out into the open.
- The Reveal:
- The Gravitonium Device absorbed the powers of the Monoliths.
- There isn't actually a Fear Dimension as Fitz hypothesized. The rift is actually the Monoliths' power of manipulating Space, Time, and Creation mixed together. The reason why it primarily manifested the heroes' personal horrors is mentioned in the next episode.
- Sarge and Izel come from a realm where the inhabitants have no physical form, but long to experience one. When Coulson went in to seal off the dimensional rift last season, he inadvertently sent a copy of his body through space and time, landing back on this species' home dimension, where it became an unwilling host to one of its inhabitants. With an echo of Coulson's memories confusing him, Sarge's only drive was to hunt down Izel, another one like him.
- Sarge's true name is Pachakutiq.
- Since unwilling hosts are troublesome/dangerous for the energy beings to possess long-term, the purpose of the Shrike is to create billions of hosts who have had their own will destroyed (making them in effect "willing" hosts).
- Sacrificial Lion: Izel kills Davis to show she's not playing around.
- Slasher Smile: An Izel-posssessed Deke flashes an incredibly disturbing grin at Mack when he starts throttling him.
- Something Only They Would Say: Mack realizes they can use this to find out whom Izel is possessing. Izel ultimately outs herself as possessing Fitz when she's unable to answer Mack's question of where Simmons was working undercover when he joined.
- Spotting the Thread: Deke spots the Shrike crystal that Piper (possessed by Izel) is carrying.
- Stop, or I Shoot Myself!: Izel possesses Mack and then threatens to blow his brains out if the others try to stop her. Just prior to this, she had Piper shoot her own hand and made Davis kill himself to prove she wasn't bluffing.
- This Cannot Be!: Sarge's reaction when Izel revealed to him who they really are. He absolutely refuses to believe it.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Sarge learning his true identity and his connection to Izel. While he initially seems to entertain the thought of joining her, he ultimately vows to destroy her, by any means necessary.
- We Can Rule Together: Izel offers this to Sarge after she seemingly reveals his true origins to him and their shared history. He rejects the offer, so she leaves him to stew in his madness.
