‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ Aftershocks Recap – Season 2, Episode 11

The 11th episode of season two of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. titled “Aftershocks” premiered on March 3, 2015 on ABC. Here’s a detailed recap of the events that transpired in this jam-packed episode:

We open on a boy inside a small room, disappearing in blue vapor and reappearing in a different spot. He’s in anguish. 1983, location unknown. He has no eyes, only flesh where his eyes would be. Jiaying (Dichen Lachman) and a man enter an observation room. They’re worried about the boy. Jiaying enters his room, calling him Gordon and trying to soothe him. He can’t seem to control his teleportation. She draws him in and promises to help him. Back in the observation room, the man tells her how lucky they are that she ages so slowly, that she’s there to help everyone who came through “the mist.”

At SHIELD, Skye (Chloe Bennet) waits in a quarantined hospital room. She awakes to find Coulson (Clark Gregg) on the other side of the glass. She’s grieving for Trip (B.J. Britt). Coulson tells her that Trip died a hero. We see everyone going about their duties, trying to deal with Trip’s death. Skye asks about each team member and how they’re doing in the aftermath. Coulson says the temple collapsed on itself and that they haven’t found Raina’s body yet. Skye blames herself for everything, but Coulson tries to explain that it wasn’t her fault and that Hydra will pay.

At a biannual Hydra gathering, they’re toasting Daniel Whitehall in his death. They discuss who can take his high-ranking place. Dr. Levy (Henry Goodman) wonders about Bakshi (Simon Kassianides), and the others (who include a banker, a sheik and a baroness) tell him he’s been taken by S.H.I.E.L.D. They agree that whoever can wipe S.H.I.E.L.D. off the planet permanently will win Whitehall’s place in the organization.

Meanwhile, down in the temple, a worker is grabbed by something in the darkness. We see his blood and then a discolored hand covered in spikes.

Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) is gathering data from the catacombs with her team. She concludes it’s lava rock and not load-bearing. She walks away, telling them it’s time to get out and flood the place. Then someone (or something) jumps out and slashes the throats of the workers. Raina (Ruth Negga) sees herself in the reflection of a helmet and gasps. Simmons shoots at her, but Raina escapes.

Bobbi (Adrianne Palicki) brings Skye some supplies to get her through her time in quarantine. When Skye confesses she feels like a leper, Bobbi tells her she thinks Skye is a rock star for what she was able to do.

Mac (Henry Simmons) comes on Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) trying to get data from Skye’s biochip, but he’s frazzled. Fitz tries to get Mac to open up about what happened in the temple, but Mac explodes, asking Fitz if he has any idea what it’s like to lose control over your body, unable to stop yourself from hurting your friends. Fitz says, yes, he does. Mac spots Skye in her quarantine and says that he wants to make sure that she’s completely sealed off and that no one else is exposed to the “alien crap.”

Over a comm, Jemma tells Coulson and May (Ming-Na Wen) what happened with Raina and describes her strange appearance. She tells them she wants to come back to headquarters to check on Skye, and they agree. Coulson calls a meeting.

In the meeting, Coulson proposes a hostage exchange. Mac jumps in, furious at Coulson for how things have proceeded. While he’s arguing against the rest of the team, things start shaking in Skye’s quarantined room. She notices, worried, but the argument ends just as she reaches out to stop a can from shaking. Coulson puts Mac in his place and tells the team to get ready.

Down in Bakshi’s cell, Coulson shows Bakshi to Brigadier General Talbot (Adrian Pasdar) using video on a tablet. The general agrees to help Coulson with Hydra in exchange for Bakshi. On the way to the exchange, Coulson and May discuss the wisdom of working with the government. Just as Bakshi is figuring out what’s going on, a truck slams into them.

In a garage, Coulson and Mae get into a shooting match with their assailants. May takes out the remaining shooters. They get Bakshi out of the car, but unbeknown to them, a shooter comes around the car and shoots May. She goes down. Coulson cries out, but they shoot him, too. The shooter yells to Bakshi to get in the SUV so they can get out of there. In their SUV, Bakshi questions the driver, who turns out to be Lance (Nick Blood). Back in the garage, May and Coulson get up. It was all an act. Bobbi takes off on a motorcycle after Bakshi and Lance.

Back at the lab, Mac talks to Fitz about how his head is doing. Fitz is frustrated because the info he retrieved from Skye’s biochip doesn’t make sense. Just as he says he needs Simmons’ help, we hear her plane landing.

Bakshi makes contact with Hydra. Lance pulls a gun on him and says his employers need him out of the picture. Bakshi is able to make a deal to save his life.

Back at the lab, Simmons is showing Skye DNA results that show how much Reyna has changed. Jemma breaks down, saying she should never have messed with anything alien because none of this would have happened, and that Trip wouldn’t have died. Skye, however, doesn’t seem to be as against everything alien.

In Puerto Rico, we see Cal (Kyle MacLachlan) paying off someone for helping him hide. Raina shows up, revealing her head and asking what she’s become. She’s covered in thorns and has yellow, cat-like eyes. She yells at Cal, saying that she didn’t turn out how she had wanted. She says that Skye got what was supposed to be hers. Cal gets excited when he hears that Daisy (Skye) is still alive. He starts planning for how she’ll return to him. When Raina begs for help, he turns away.

Lance and Baskhi pull up to the gate of the Hydra contact. When Bakshi gets out of the car, Bobbi hops in. While she and Lance wait, he questions her about the secret she and Mac share. She finally tells him they’re part of a support group that’s helping them deal with the recent turn of events like friends turned into Hydra enemies. He tells her he’s glad she’s getting healthy.

Back at S.H.I.E.L.D., Mac apologizes to Coulson for his outburst, saying he’s having a hard time dealing with Trip’s death and having an alien influence take over his mind. Simmons speaks up, saying she’s worried that what’s happened to Raina could be the start of a plague and that if the S.H.I.E.L.D. forces find Raina, maybe they should just kill her. Everyone walks away, and we see Skye looks worried.

Inside the Hydra house, Bakshi and the Hydra contact (Fred Dryer) discuss how there could be a conspiracy among them. The contact starts to input a code, and Bakshi says that he thinks the man who drove him there should be killed.

We see Raina, out in the night, about to walk out into several lanes of traffic. Meanwhile, Fitz is visiting Sky, trying to work through the data he collected from Skye’s wristband when the temple collapsed. Finally, he says the only explanation is that she was the one who caused it, and that’s there’s something “inhuman” about her. She cries out, exploding the light above her head, and Fitz runs.

May visits Skye to see how she’s doing. Skye was busy picking up broken glass from the light she blew and hides it behind her back. Meanwhile, we see Coulson visit Trip’s mother. She starts crying and Coulson holds her. Behind her he sees the picture of the Howling Commandos, the group Trip’s father belonged to.

Back at the Hydra agent’s house, he inputs an access code that alerts people close to the banker, the baroness and the sheik. Each one is killed. At the waiting car, Lance turns on the backup camera to see four Hydra agents approach the car. He and Bobbi duck down while they’re shooting. He presses a button that opens up secret panels in the SUV and guns down the agents. Bobbi and Lance burst into the house, killing everyone but Bakshi. Bakshi realizes that Coulson played them, having the Hydra agents turn on each other because he couldn’t get to them.

Back at S.H.I.E.L.D., May realizes Skye is bleeding. Simmons comes in, wondering what’s going on. Just as Sky is about to tell them about blowing the light, Fitz runs in and explains he knocked over a lamp and Skye cut her hand cleaning it up. He also shows them that Sky’s DNA is exactly as it was before. May leaves to give Coulson the news.

Fitz sends Simmons off to get clean sheets under the guise of making Skye’s bed. Once he and Skye are alone, he enters her chamber to bandage her hands. When she questions him about the test results, he tells her that her DNA is drastically different, but he changed the results in order to keep her safe while Simmons and the others are so scared of the alien influence. She breaks down, hugging him.

Back on the street, several trucks surround Raina. Men dressed in military garb try to take Raina. Just as she’s preparing to fight, she is surrounded by a dome of blue light. The blind man, who was a boy at the beginning of the episode, teleports in and takes her away with him. (Fans suspect he is Reader from the comics.)

Back at S.H.I.E.L.D., we see the R.C. car Mac made for Coulson kick on and scan the office, finding something in Coulson’s desk. While the group is telling stories about Trip, Mac and Bobbi quietly talk about Nick Fury’s toolbox being locked in Coulson’s office and “making contact.” (Clearly, their secret is not that they’re in a support group.) A silence falls, and Skye points out that, with Trip gone, they will laugh a lot less.