SHIELD “The Asset” Review: “Everything Powerful is Dangerous”

By Felicia Kudronowicz

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD enjoyed its third outing, “The Asset”, last night. The episode served as a test for SHIELD’s newest member, Skye, to see where her loyalties lay and if she could really work with a team. Let’s see how she did.

The episode opened with a SHIELD scientist, Dr. Hall, getting kidnapped by an invisible force. As the gang gears up to investigate who or what is responsible, they deduce that he was kidnapped by a rich baddie named Ian Quinn. Instead of keeping things from the public like SHIELD, Quinn wants to reveal them and make money in the process. Apparently, Dr. Hall has created an element called graviton that changes the rules of gravity – something that might prove interesting to the world, and quite lucrative to Quinn.

Meanwhile Skye and Ward continue to butt heads during a basic self defence lesson. As stated before, Ward has little to no people skills and it seems like a dead end for this project. (Unless we’re meant to infer current snark = future romance somewhere down the line for these two?)

Back to the real mission at hand, the team needs to find a way to infiltrate Quinn’s headquarters without breaking international law. Skye volunteers because she isn’t an official SHIELD agent – yet. Everyone is pretty dubious about her being successful, but ultimately decide it’s their only option.

Skye manages to use her hacking skills to get invited to Quinn’s party where he is releasing exclusive information about graviton. She socializes with Quinn but is quickly caught sneaking around and immediately gives up that she is working for SHIELD. However she does it so secretively that Fitz and Simmons can’t hear over the wire she’s wearing. What’s this? Is Skye really turning her back on SHIELD? Quinn certainly reflects her previous convictions about public knowledge where the SHIELD team are concerned, and she seems so captivated by him to boot. False alarm. Skye proves she had a plan the whole time and still manages to get Ward and Coulson through security. WHEW!

(ABC/Justin Lubin)
DAVID CONRAD, CHLOE BENNET

Coulson gets in to save Hall, but realizes that the doctor actually wanted to get kidnapped. We discover Hall’s purpose was to create graviton on a giant scale and then destroy it, taking the island they are on with it. He explains that taking a few lives is better than seeing such power in the wrong hands. But as typical villains do, Hall ends up monologuing and is promptly sucked into his own creation, never to be seen again… maybe.

Overall “The Asset” was strong without being overly complicated. Skye is finding her footing with SHIELD. We can’t say yet that we can completely trust her motivations, but she has definite potential and I’m enjoying her character especially when she shares a scene with Ward.

Also of note are the little character background notes thrown in. Instead of doing big flashbacks, we get little hints. This episode we learn that Skye was in the foster system and a high school drop out. In true Whedon fashion, fans are rewarded for paying close attention to the dialogue.

Tune in for next week’s episode, “Eye-Spy” on ABC at 8/7c and catch up on Hulu or ABC.com.