The third episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. kicked off with a bang and immediately got me interested. The beginning action sequence was reminiscent of X-Men: The Last Stand and Magneto’s jailbreak of mutants from a moving truck. That simple sequence, which I’ve seen before, got me interested in what was to come, and forget the lackluster previous episode.

Scientist Franklin Hall is kidnapped by a fellow colleague who wants Hall to work with something called gravitonium, a new element that helps control gravity. Which leads the team in a tough to get him back as they can’t enter the country, so they need to turn to new team member Skye who also needs to learn how to be an agent. The bad gu is, a Julian Assange type character attempting to defy governmental overreach, overall kind of a weak character and nemesis.

There’s some interesting twists and turns as far as story, but for as good as they are, I can’t help but circle back for the need of Skye to chuck her smarts and use her sexuality to entice the bad guy. It demeans the character a bit, especially when she supposedly has all these other talents.

Tonally this third episode is much more reminiscent of the first episode, which is a good thing, because the second deviated and was really bad. The episode wasn’t as good as the first, but much better than the second. A cool moment though is what might be the origin of the classic Marvel villain Graviton during the episode.

An improvement overall, the episode has me back interested in what’s to come.

Writer: Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen Director: Joss Whedon
Overall Score: 6.75