Six months ago, May and Andrew were enjoying tropical drinks on a beach in Hawaii, and May decides not to go back to SHIELD, at least not right away. A few days later, they are home and Andrew gets to work looking over Jiaying’s research. One of them is booby trapped with terrigen mist and he becomes entombed in a stone-like cocoon.
Now, Coulson is preparing for a meeting with Rosalind and the president to discuss enhanced humans. He wants Daisy to come along and talk with Rosalind beforehand, get her take on the inhuman storage facility she is running. While they do that, Andrew is going to go reexamine Joey to see if he can be used in the field. May returns to home base and, after hearing Bobbi talk about how they have been tracking Lash, checks Andrew’s flight records and medical files.
Joey has been moved to an off-site facility, and he proudly demonstrates to Andrew the control he has over his powers. He is hopeful that he can join Daisy’s team; Andrew daydreams of Lash-ing out and killing him. All he vocalizes is that Joey may be too powerful to be useful for good. May barges in with a couple of agents, who take Joey away, leaving May with Andrew. She confronts him with what Von Strucker told her. She begs to know what happened, but Andrew simply shoots her with icers.
May wakes in an empty building, handcuffed to some hulking piece of equipment. Andrew just wants to explain. He warns her that he doesn’t know what will happen when instinct takes over, and tries to describe how he felt after his transformation. He was compelled to be near Inhumans, like there was a “hunger on his skin.” When he met one, his instincts took over and he would kill him and feel normal. Andrew begs May to understand, that he wanted to tell her but was a coward. Now he needs her help.
Meanwhile, Daisy has been tasked with showing Rosalind around SHIELD’s flying base. They clash over the treatment of Inhumans. Daisy believes they should be observed and trained; Rosalind is scared of people with powers. “For every Daisy, there is a Lash. It’s ignorant of you to think otherwise.” Coulson gets a call about the Andrew/May problem at the off-site facility, but before he can do anything about it, another ship wants to dock.
Lincoln and Mac are aboard that other ship. Lincoln had sought out Mac, eliminating him as a suspect since he had been present at Lash’s last attack. He thinks Lash is a member of SHIELD, and wants Mac’s help proving it. Once they meet up with Coulson, Lincoln tells him about his suspicions, knowing without a doubt that Lash was operating off of Jiaying’s ledger. Andrew was the only one to have access to it, and Mac saw May access Andrew’s travel logs. Matching up all this with the phone call he just received, Coulson reroutes the plane. “The president will have to wait.” Lincoln also reveals that shifting from monster to human form isn’t an Inhuman trait, which means that Andrew is still in transition. When that is complete, he will stay Lash forever.
Coulson interrupts May and Andrew in the midst of a kiss. He wants to see everyone walk out alive, but he warns Andrew that he didn’t come alone. Rosalind is moving her people into place and warns them that this is Coulson’s op; they are not to make a move unless he gives the order. Lincoln and Daisy are moving into place, and Coulson is trying to talk some sense into Andrew. Andrew is trying to do the same to Coulson, explaining that they have an outbreak on their hands, that he has a moral responsibility to kill these Inhumans. He insists that he has only killed those who deserve it, but Lincoln begs to differ when he enters the room. He is accusing and angry, and May begs Andrew to calm down, and Lincoln to leave. Neither do, and Andrew transforms to Lash right before their eyes. Lincoln blasts Lash back and the two get into an all-out Inhuman war.
Mac finds them and shoots Lash. It doesn’t slow him down, but it does annoy him and lures him away from Lincoln. While Lash goes for Mac, Coulson intercepts with his bionic hand. That doesn’t last long, and Rosalind’s men fire on Lash. He pursues, killing several on his way to Rosalind, who he throws over the balcony. Daisy happens to be positioned on the ground, several stories below, and uses her powers to slow Rosalind’s fall and set her safely on the ground. Daisy didn’t even know she could do that.
Lincoln baits Lash and May throws herself between them. She has thought about her death many times, but never imagined it would be by Andrew’s hand. She refuses to walk away again, so Andrew either has to stop this or kill her. Her words touch Andrew, and he returns to human form. May shoots him several times, forcing him backwards and into the containment unit. Coulson asks how May knew that wouldn’t kill him (leading me to believe she shot him with regular bullets, not icers). May didn’t. She agrees to have Andrew, in human form, put into stasis. It will slow down his transformation, hopefully until they can find a cure. Lincoln has decided to stick around SHIELD, at least for a little bit. After all, all his friends are dead.
Back at home, Simmons asks Fitz to try to recover the data she had on her phone during her ordeal within the monolith. He agrees, and at first is fascinated to see photos of a world with two moons. Then he sees a selfie of Simmons and Will, and he gets crazy-jealous. But the more videos and audio notes he sifts through, the more comfortable he becomes with the idea that Simmons loves him. At one point, just before she found water and thought she was going to die, she waxes poetic about the first time she met Fitz, and how she remembers seeing a little house in Scotland that would be perfect for them to settle down in. Able to get his head back in the game, he notices that the patch on Will’s space suit looks a little too similar to the symbol on the temple to be a coincidence. He doesn’t share that with Simmons, but her descriptions of the solar and lunar habits of the planet make him believe that he can find a way to get Will back. By the episode’s end, they talk a bit, and Simmons makes it subtly clear that it is Fitz she wants, not Will. Rather than kiss, they watch the sunrise together. I wish they would just hook up already.
Well, there is someone who is getting a hook-up: Coulson, with Rosalind. No surprises there. But there is one surprise (well, semi-surprise) left. Ward is talking with Gideon, and laying out his grand plan: he wants to kill Coulson. By doing so, that is cutting the head off of SHIELD and without Coulson, SHIELD could never rebuild. Gideon pauses the conversation to take a phone call – from Rosalind. She was bringing in Coulson to meet Gideon, not the president, and she promises to bring him in soon.
Check out a preview for next week’s episode, “Many Heads, One Tale.”
