When Lady Sif last appeared on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., it was right before the big twist where it was revealed that S.H.I.E.L.D. was full of HYDRA agents, and Coulson and Co. were forced to go underground. Perhaps that’s why this week’s return of Lady Sif felt in no small way like the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. of old, the more procedural and leisurely paced S.H.I.E.L.D. of season one that was more than happy to rest on its laurels. Despite the concern an assessment like that may invoke, there was something charming about the brief glimpse at the S.H.I.E.L.D. of old, especially since the mythology of Skye, the Inhumans and the Kree took another step forward this week.
Oh boy, all the fan service! Where to begin? Well, for people who haven’t already Wikied the origin of the Inhumans, it’s spelled out in a comprehensive info dump this week thanks to a disguised Kree called Vin-Tak. Vin-Tak, played by former Warehouse 13 agent Eddie McClintock, whose comic timing is well suited for playing a stranger in a strange land. It’s too bad we never see any blue skin though, just so that the subtlety wasn’t lost on those that maybe weren’t playing complete attention during Guardians of the Galaxy.
It turns out that Vin-Tak is the source of Lady Sif’s presence on Earth, and the source of the amnesia that affects her for much of the episode. The Kree is on Earth, meanwhile, to find the source of the signal sent out from the transformation of Raina and Skye. Apparently, Vin-Tak is a “good” Kree, aware that if the “bad” Kree find out that their Terragenesis experiments on Earth were a success, then they’ll be back to collect the results and try again. I assume that means that this isn’t the last of the Kree we’ll see on S.H.I.E.L.D.
We also learn, naturally, that there’s more than one diviner (or obelisk). Vin-Tak uncovers a huge case that’s supposed to house all the diviners from a cave in the same town in Portugal where we saw Agent Carter and the Howling Commandos pick up Whitehall and the original obelisk in the season two premiere. And before you can say, “the case is empty,” we see that the case is empty. It begs the question about the whereabouts of the rest of the diviners. Does HYDRA have them? It would make sense to me that if Whitehall held on to one, he would have held on to them all if he had them. If there’s one thing that HYDRA isn’t about, it’s sharing.
Another question, and purely from a Marvel movie nerd perspective, is why is Sif constantly being sent to Earth to clean up alien messes? We know from the end of Thor: The Dark World that Loki replaced Odin and was ruling Asgard in disguise, so what does he care if a lone Kree is on the loose on Midgard? What does a god of mischief care about a big blue alien monkey wrench walking about the Earth? Is Loki trying to get Sif killed, or has he just thrown himself in the part by caring about every little crisis?