Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D: The Magical Place

"I trust the system. They keep secrets for a reason."

This is quite obviously the big, mid-season "event" episode; the status quo is temporarily changed with Coulson captured, and Centipede are further built up as the season's Big Bad, with the mystery deepening over the identity of "The Clairvoyant". There are also further hints that S.H.I.E.L.D is not an entirely cuddly organisation; Agent Victoria Hand, now the teams boss, cares a lot about "taking down" Centipede but very little about Coulson.

This is, essentially, a Skye episode, though, confirming her status as the series' favoured character as she gets to save the day by being not only brilliant but independent, as Agent May has kindly arranged for her to get chucked off the plane. Skye is so cool here: she follows the money trail, bluffs her way into interrogating a dodgy lawyer and gets not only information on where Coulson is being held but also a rather swanky car.

Coulson, at first, is horribly tortured for information on his resurrection, but the Clairvoyant is clearly not impressed; he has the torturer casually killed and replaced with the familiar Raina, our woman in the flower dress, who gets what she wants through more civilised means. That is, before the team arrives to rescue Coulson and arrest Raina. Her interrogation is bound to be interesting.

We learn some little bits of information about Coulson's interrogation from a doctor played by Ron Glass; the false memory of Tahiti was implanted in order to blot out the unimaginable agony of his resurrection. He was dead for days. His resurrection was a strange decision, made because for some reason he was deemed important. Samuel L. Jackson gets the briefest of cameos as Nick Fury.

This still leaves many questions. Why was Coulson deemed worthy of resurrection? How was it done? Who ordered it? What was the price, for the trope has it that immortality always has a price? They're stringing us along, the bastards. And now I want to know about the Clairvoyant, too.

And if that's not enough, Mike Peterson is still alive. And Centipede are controlling him through his eyes...