Leap

If you've been waiting all season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for them to explain who Sarge really is, why he looks like Coulson, and how he's alive, then the latest episode was the one for you!

The team learns that Izel survived the destruction of her ship, by using an ability to possess the body of an unwilling host. Now she's hopping between hosts and loose on the base. She's already shot Sarge -- who, surprisingly, did not die of his injuries -- and what she's up to next can only be assumed to be "no good."

Not only was this the big Sarge/Coulson reveal episode, it was the first episode to air following the announcement that next season (being filmed already) will be the final one for the series. It freighted the episode with extra meaning... an episode that was already carrying a lot. Like, a lot.

It turns out that to keep a big plot twist from legions of guessing fans on the internet, the secret has to be pretty complex. Fitz made a somewhat implausible leap of intuition (not the "leap" of the episode title) to conclude that the monoliths gathered in the Lighthouse last season control creation as well as time and space, and this somehow led to the formation of a Coulson duplicate.

If the explanation had stopped there, that might have been good enough. After all, the upshot is that Clark Gregg is still on the show, so we're all good with a bit of hand-waving there, right? But Izel took things one step farther (or two or five) with a massive exposition dump explaining what kind of life form she is, that "Sarge" is one too, and that the two belong together. In a scene stuffed full with villain monologuing, we got her real nature, her evil plan, "Sarge's" real back story... everything short of a recipe for chocolate chip cookies. It was too much, especially after a season that spent several episodes not revealing any information of this kind at all.

And I'm not even entirely sure it all adds up anyway. If the shrikes are really Izel's way of bringing her people over into our plane of existence, then haven't the previous planets she's destroyed (like the Chonicom homeworld) already done this job? At the very least, shouldn't there be more of her people "crossed over" by now than just her? Did she shoot Sarge hoping that his rapid healing would jog his memory or something? I mean, it's possible there were answers to some of this in her lengthy speech; it was so much I may have lost some of it there.

Which is a shame, because there was some decent suspense in the rest of the episode. The characters were faster on the uptake than they have been most of this season, suspecting immediately that something was off with May, and figuring out in short order about Izel's body-leaping abilities. Mack responded smartly by locking down the base, figuring out tests to verify people's identities, and locking away Yo-Yo and Daisy for everyone's safety.

In the midst of it all, we got to see many actors play "just a bit off" as an Izel-possessed version. This would have been stronger if Izel was a longer-running character with better established behaviors the actors could mimic, but in most cases, having an actor play generally elusive and weaselly was good enough to make the point. Certainly, there was menace to it all, as we saw just what Izel could do while in someone else's body. Alas, poor Davis. (We should have known he was toast when we first heard about his family a few weeks ago.)

I suppose the show did need to thin out a few characters, though, as we're losing track of some of them. No sign of Snowflake this week, who must have just spent the hour watching her big screen TV. Also, I'm missing Dr. Benson, who I'd really like to see interact a bit with Fitz and Simmons, overburdened as he was in their absence. (Also... not a great look to actually add an LGBT character to the recurring cast and then have him disappear without explanation.)

The "locked in with the villain" aspects of this episode worked, even if the giant exposition dump was a little rocky. Even then, I suppose the alternative to that was not getting any answers at all -- so it's hard to be too down on it. I give "Leap" a B.

So... if "Sarge" is possessing Coulson like Izel possesses other people... we're getting back an actually real Coulson at the end of this season when Sarge presumably departs. Right?