TV REVIEW: Agents of SHIELD “The Writing on the Wall”

By Felicia Kudronowicz

After a week off, SHIELD came back with a promising Coulson centric story that pushed the ‘alien writing’ subplot to some interesting conclusions.

The episode opened with the mystery man who was getting the alien writing tattooed on his body at the end of the last episode. When we next catch up with him he’s on a date with a woman. She keeps repeating that she knows him from somewhere but can’t figure out the connection. Tattoo guy just looks creepy and listens. Eventually he agrees that they do know each other and he mentions the symbols and shows her his tattoos. He then attacks her and carves the symbols in her forehead, killing her. This is definitely one of the more brutal cold opens.

Back at the SHIELD base, one of Skye’s hacker friends comes across pictures from the murder we’ve just witnessed. They look at the covers and discover that not only was the  woman painting the symbol herself, but she’s a former SHIELD agent who supposedly died five years ago from cancer. Coulson is getting frustrated by not having answers so he decides to take a visit to Tahiti put himself under the brain torture device that Raina put him through last season.

In the meantime, May, Bobbi and Hunter are on the hunt for Ward. They find him at a bus station but quickly learn that he’s wearing a bomb making it impossible to approach him. Eventually Ward makes his way to a bar in Boston, under SHIELD’s watchful eye. There he meets one of the head members of HYDRA. He tells him he will get him a meeting with Coulson. Ward knocks out everyone in the bar and leaves the HYDRA agent tied up with duct tape on his mouth that reads “For Coulson.” He kept his word, but probably not in the way the HYDRA agent was expecting.

Meanwhile, Coulson is putunder the memory machine and essentially tortured into remembering what the alien transfusion has caused him to forget. He recalls that six agents were experimented on with the GH 325. They all went crazy and their memories had to be altered. Coulson is able to figure out all the names of these agents before they bring him back to consciousness. He finds out that only two are still alive, the tattoo guy and another man by the name of Hank Thompson. Skye goes to lock Coulson in a cell in case he starts attacking people like tattoo guy did but he traps Skye in the cell instead.

Coulson runs off to find the other survivor, Hank Thompson, who is now a welder. It looks like he’s going to kill Thompson but instead demands the remaining pieces of the alien map puzzle. Tattoo guy comes looking for him too, attempting to do a little Coulson carvingbut just in time, they discover that Thompson has completed the map with his welding project. It is a three dimensional model and Coulson figures out that it is a blueprint of a city. Seeing the complete puzzle automatically cures the two men from having to obsessively write the symbols.

At the very end, we see Ward shaving his face and hair and donning on a tux. He calls Skye and tells her that they will be in touch. It seems like maybe – just maybe – he is going to make amends. Call me naive, but I still have hope for Ward yet. Especially when I saw him in that tux… hard to hate him in that.

So while this episode did answer a lot of questions, it also poses many more.  Where did this alien device come from? Why did they think it was a good idea to inject it into people? Where is this alien city? Why doesn’t Skye have any symptoms? Whose side is Ward on anyway?

Next week promises to be just as crazy. It looks like Skye’s father will be back in the picture along with the obelisk.