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TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews Agents of Shield Season 04 Episode 15: Self Control

February 22nd, 2017 by Todd Black Comments

Let me set the scene for you. A few hours ago I watched Flash, and it was good. Then, I watched Legends of Tomorrow, which was a freaking fun episode. But then…I watched Agents of Shield, and it was a masterpiece.

“Self Control” was the “finale” for the first part of the LMD story, and sadly, we won’t pick up the show until April. But, at least we got a dang cool ending that’ll easily go down as one of the top AOS episodes EVER. Period. End of story.

Why? Because it delivered on the premise of what the LMD’s were, and what made them so terrifying. The fear that ANYONE could be an LMD, the horror of having to “kill” something that looks just like your friend or family member to survive, even though you know you have to do that. It would’ve been easy to make that cheesy, or meaningless, but Agents of Shield rocked it hard, and delivered many surprises along the way.

The reason this worked, is that it focused the emotions of the horror down to two characters. You thought it was FitzSimmons, until Fitz turned out to be an LMD, which caused one of the most heart breaking scenes ever as Simmons had to kill him. Then, Daisy, who we all thought was an LMD because of last episode, turned out to be real! And though I have no idea why they made 20 of her…I’m not going to let that weigh down the amazing performance she gave in this episode.

Seeing these two almost kill each other because they thought the other was and LMD, all the while us knowing they WEREN’T LMD’s was very powerful, as was that hug that proved that they weren’t. Done any other way, it would’ve lost impact, but they sold it, oh boy, did they sell it.

Another twist was the May LMD, who went from confused robot, to willing accomplice, to freaking savior in the course of an hour.Props to Ming-Na Wen for showing that just because you’re an LMD, doesn’t mean you’re evil.

And how about Aida? Who took yet another step into her role as ultimate villain by using a “paradox” a the reason to kill Radcliffe. Now yes, you could argue that it wasn’t “evil” that she “saved” him from pain, but it was still pretty cold. And that’s not even talking about what she did to the Superior. Wow…

Oh, and that ending!!! While many will make callouts to the Matrix, or even Eureka (to those who remember the shows final season), you kind of knew this was the way they had to go. But man, those twists in that final minute or so. Ward is alive, and with Daisy, Coulson is teacher who is saying that Inhumans should be feared, Mac has his family back, Simmons is dead, and May works for Hydra!…

WHAT IS GOING ON!?!?!??!?!

Again, we have to wait for April for the story to return, and that sucks, but, at least we got an epic sendoff to what could be the best season of Agents of Shield.

Todd Black is reader of comics, a watch of TV (a LOT of TV), and a writer of many different mediums. He's written teleplays, fan-fictions, and currently writes a comic book called Guardians (guardians-comic.com). He dreams of working at Nintendo, writing a SHAZAM! TV series, and working on Guardians for a very long time!