Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Parting Shot Review

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. taught everyone a little something about sacrifice in the emotionally charged episode, “Parting Shot." As it turns out, characters don’t have to die in order to exist on the show in a meaningful way. The episode started innocently enough, with Bobbi and Hunter hot on the heels of Malick and his crew. They ended up in Moscow where a secret meeting was happening. As they tried to learn more about the situation they shared a nice moment reminiscing about all the times they didn’t go on a vacation together. They both realized they’ve sacrificed all their free time in favor of being SHIELD agents. Even their honeymoon was cut short by a mission. Just as they were about to get a closer look at the situation, they got caught by Russian officials. The whole episode jumped between flashbacks and the present, which was fine, but not that necessary. It took away from the intensity of it, because it kept abruptly changing the timeline. I’m just going to focus on the chronological order of things. Once Bobbi and Hunter were captured, they went into attack mode and got free. Then they had a little team meeting to determine what to do next. Bobbi went undercover since she is the only one who can speak Russian and the rest went in to try and gather more information about what was going on at this secret base. They appeared to discover that the Russian Prime Minister was actually arriving to meet with Malick at this secret location, but it was actually a trap. The Minister of Defense was actually an Inhuman trying to assassinate the Prime Minister. The Minister of Defense possessed an extremely unique power: he could control shadows and make them solid, but impenetrable. So the only way to take him down was to kill him, which Bobbi did, just as one of his shadow beings was about to kill Hunter. Both Hunter and Bobbi were taken into custody again. Only this time it was much more emotional since they both thought the other was dead. The Russians questioned both of them separately and then together trying to figure out if they were working for the United States government or SHIELD. They stuck to their story that they were just on vacation trying to find rare mushrooms. Eventually the Russians brought in Coulson is see if he would try to save them and therefore prove they were SHIELD agents. Coulson came in, but Bobbi and Hunter already made up their mind that they would give up their lives as agents to protect SHIELD from being discovered- the result of which would most likely start another Cold War. In the end, Bobbi and Hunter were let go, but they can never be agents or work for the government again. They finally got the vacation they never had. The ending really packed a punch. Bobbi and Hunter were at a bar talking about their next move as civilians while the bartender kept delivering shots until they had one from every member of the SHIELD team. They called it a “spy's goodbye." Everyone stared at each other from a distance with tears in their eyes. It was really one of the best scenes this season. It was the perfect send off for these two agents. As a cliffhanger in the very last scene, Malick showed up practicing his hunting shot with his daughter (Bethany Joy Lenz). They cryptically discussed someone, who it’s safe to say was new Ward aka Hive. Malick’s daughter creepily says he’s going to change the world. It’s probably not going to be for the better though. Final Thoughts:

• This episode had a clear goal and theme in mind, which really helped. It didn’t get distracted with bland secondary storylines. It was a nice change to have a very focused episode with everyone in the same place.
• I’m really glad they didn’t kill off Bobbi and Hunter. The whole time I was worried that one of them was going to get the ax. I’m glad they got this ending and that they were able to go together. This is as good of a happy ending as any character has gotten on the show thus far. However, even though I’m really sad to see them go, it will be kind of nice to have less characters to to keep track of.
• I'm still not sure how Malick keeps getting away with everything, but apparently no one else sees that he is evil, which is very concerning.
• I actually didn’t miss seeing Ward/the Hive at all. I didn’t even notice he wasn’t there until they briefly mentioned him at the end.