TV Reviews: FTN Reviews Agents Of Shield Season 05 Episode 13: Principia

After a (in my opinion) ho-hum 100th episode, it was good to see the team get back to business in tonight’s episode. And yet, the story featured a callback or two to the 100th episode, which kind of bummed me out. However, the way they did it made it more than worth it.

So, remember the “fear dimension” portal that opened up last week? Well, it’s cracking, and to fix it, they need Gravitonium, more of it anyway. This was a nice callback to season one (a better one than Deathlok in my opinion), and one that makes sense to use given that Gravitonium is in the “future imperfect” that they just came back from. To find it though, they needed help from an old friend of Mac’s, which led them to a floating ship in the sky…yep.

I loved that moment when the Candyman asked if they see stuff like this all the time and they all answered with their own version of “yeah”, including 2nd string pilot, which shows that even the lower levels of Shield see some weird stuff.

Anyway, the real reveal here (and point you could argue) was that General Hale already had the large measure of the Gravitonium, which could be used to rip the world apart depending on her intentions for it. Also, Mac got to take out some robots and bring them back to the ship to give Yo-To some robot arms (which is another callback to the Secret Warriors comic).

I think the interesting parts of “Principia” was really the character moments rather than the overall plot. Yo-Yo’s moment of heartbreak when she felt she couldn’t be whole anymore. Mac talking about how he would do anything for Yo-Yo and that her arms “weren’t the important parts”. Zeke finding out the glory of Twinkie’s and figuring out that Fitz-Simmons is his grandparents (sorry, said parents last review, my bad!), stuff like that.

And then, there’s Hale’s side of things. She went and saved the Von Strucker boy (who we haven’t seen in a long time) from getting “lobotomized” in order to get information about him. Turns out, when they used the mind machine before on him, they gave him the ability to remember everything, which can be very useful given that he’s the son of the former head of Hydra. What’s more, Hale knew Baron Von Strucker, and Alex knew Ruby once upon a time.

I still don’t know how this will all play out, what Hale’s real goal is, and how it possibly leads to the destruction of the world, but we’ll find out sooner rather than later…I hope.

In the end, “Principia” was a fun episode that played a lot with the past and present of the show to move certain things forward. But let’s hope it starts moving a bit more forward.