TV REVIEW: Agents of SHIELD “The Only Light in Darkness”

By Felicia Kudronowicz

This week on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. the team separates in hopes of finding “The Only Light in the Darkness” after Hydra has taken over and is tearing apart the SHIELD agency.

This episode takes a step back into the format of earlier ones by kicking off the action away from the team. A mysterious man is walking in the dark. He approaches a truck, touches the driver, instantly kills him, and steals the truck.

Back at the super secret SHIELD base, Eric is giving the team individual lie detector tests to determine if he can trust them. Somehow even Ward passes the test and they are awarded lanyard security badges that turn out, conveniently, also to be trackers.  After hearing about the fight at the fridge, Coulson becomes concerned about a certain prisoner getting out, Marcus Daniels. Apparently he has the ability to absorb energy (light) and use it as a weapon. Last time he was free, he went after cellist, Audrey Nathan. Despite not knowing her, Daniels calls her his “only light in the darkness.”

Coulson decides to go and protect Ms. Nathan (Whedonverse actor Amy Acker) in Portland. Coulson takes Triplett, Simmons and Fitz, while the rest of the gang stays behind. They find Audrey at exactly the same time that Daniels does and are able to drive her to safety. At first Simmons says they are the CIA, but Audrey knows that they’re really SHIELD agents. She reminisces about how they protected her before and she fell in the love with the agent on her case (Coulson!), whom she still thinks is dead.

The gang  comes up with a plan to use Audrey as bait to lure Daniels out and take him down before he can do any more harm. Luckily the plan works, but only just. and  sadly by the time they leave, Audrey still assumes Coulson is dead, a fact Coulson seems happy to accept, as he wants  her to continue to move on.

The other half of the team is still figuring out how they can help. May decides to leave because she thinks Coulson will never trust her again.  Skye comes up with the idea to hack into the NSA to get footage of what happened at the Fridge. Eric agrees to let her try and work her magic. Ward starts to panic that Skye will find the truth so naturally he kills Eric and hides his body, and then he seduces Skye. Cute.

Skye realizes that Eric is missing so she goes to look for him using the GPS lanyard system. It isn’t long before she finds him dead in a closet. She quickly figures out that Ward is Hydra. Now that she knows, she still doesn’t know what to do about it since they are now the only ones at the base. Ward finds her again, but she pretends nothing has happened. Ward lies and tells her that the team needs their help. They have to go unlock the hard drive of all the SHIELD information Skye was able to save. It is encrypted so that they have to go to a certain location to decode it. Ward makes some lame excuse why they have to go do this for the team and Skye is essentially kidnapped.

Overall, the episode was interesting, but the main purpose was obviously to put distance between Skye/Ward and the rest of the team. No one else knows that Ward is a traitor (well except Eric).  Even if they figure it out, they have no way of getting to them now that Ward stole their ride. Hopefully Skye is clever enough to find her way out of this one.  Only three episodes remain of the season, and I can honestly say I have no idea where this will end.