Violet recaps Season 3 Episode 7 of Agents of SHIELD, titled Chaos Theory, where we find out more about the origins of Lash! Following the recap, both Violet and Josh share their thoughts about the episode.
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Episode Recap of Agents of SHIELD, Season 3 Episode 7: Chaos Theory
This episode begins with a flashback to 6 months ago when May and Garner were in Maui together. She suggests not going back to SHIELD right away, so that things can work out better between them, but he says he doesn’t want to lose her. When they get back home, Garner is on the phone with Coulson, who has sent over some of Jiaying’s things, and tells him he doesn’t know when May is coming back. After he gets off the phone, he opens up a book, and some mist comes out, encasing him in the transforming stone.
In the present, Daisy argues with Coulson about the ATCU’s treatment of Inhumans. Garner follows and listens in, offering his perspective. It seems that Coulson is going to meet with the President later that day, along with Rosalind. He tells Daisy to talk to Rosalind before the meeting and try to convince her of her side of things. Garner says he’ll check in on Joey Gutierrez and send over his report to show an example of an Inhuman that’s not extreme.
Garner runs into Simmons on his way out, and assures her that she did the right thing by telling the truth, that secrets can eat you up from the inside.
Simmons goes to see Fitz in the lab and asks him to recover the data on her phone.
Bobbi and May talk, and Bobbi tells her about the big monster they’ve been tracking, Lash. When they get back to HQ, May looks up Garner’s records. She runs into Daisy, who tells her that Garner is doing a psych eval at a training facility offsite.
At Garner’s psych eval of Joey Gutierrez, where Joey displays that he now has more control, Garner fantasizes about becoming Lash and killing Joey. Then he snaps out of it.
Hunter goes to see Bobbi in the locker room. She tells him it’s not a good idea to go after Ward, and that Hunter has been reckless and stupid. He says it’s because he loves her. But she says she doesn’t want to lose him, or become obsessed with revenge and turn into monsters like Ward.
Fitz succeeds in recovering the data from Simmons’ phone and begins looking through the pictures. He sees a picture of Simmons and Will and gets angry. Then he hears an audio recording of her talking to him.
May interrupts Garner’s psych eval. Security takes Joey away so that May and Garner can talk.
Mack secretly meets up with Lincoln. Lincoln says his friends who aren’t missing are dead. He also tells Mack that Lash is in SHIELD.
Daisy gives Rosalind a tour of the plane and the containment units they have for the Inhumans. Rosalind admits that she’s afraid of people like Daisy, because for everyone like Daisy, there’s a Lash.
May tells Garner she tracked his flight logs and pulled his medical records. She reveals what Von Strucker told her. She questions Garner, which agitates him, and he ices her.
Fitz continues to listen to Simmons’ audio messages to him, and then gets to a video message where she is afraid that she won’t find water. She recalls when she first met him, and says that she wonders about the two of them a lot. She signs off to conserve the battery, but says she’ll continue to talk to him, and that she’ll always be with him. Fitz can’t help but cry in response to what he’s just heard.
Garner brings May to an old administration building, and has her handcuffed to an air compressor tank. He says that he panicked. She starts to struggle and he tells her to stop, because he doesn’t know what he’ll do, as instinct will take over. He says he didn’t know what he was doing at the convenient store. Garner then explains to her how this happened. He then says that he felt compelled to be near Inhumans. When he finally met one, his body took over and he lashed out. He tells May that he wanted to tell her, but he wanted to protect her. He says he’s still in love with her, but he needs her help.
On the plane, Rosalind assures Coulson that she hasn’t told anyone about Daisy. She helps him put his tie on. She asks about his hand, and he says one of his men had to chop it off to save his life. Just then, Daisy comes in and says another quinjet has requested to dock. It’s Mack and Lincoln. Lincoln says he has intel on Lash. Lincoln tells the others that Jiaying’s ledger had a list of Inhumans, and Mack says that Garner was the only one who had access to it. Mack reports that he saw May access Garner’s flight logs, and Coulson says that he has just learned that May and Garner are missing. Coulson reroutes the plane to try to find them. Lincoln breaks the news that Garner is still in transition, and that eventually he won’t be able to switch between human and Inhuman — he’ll permanently be Lash.
May asks Garner if she was going to hurt Joey if she hadn’t shown up. He says no. She brings up Lincoln, and Garner says that kid has a dark side. Garner also brings up May killing the little girl in Bahrain. He explains that he doesn’t want to do what he’s doing, but he has to. He insists that he hasn’t lost himself, and talks about their first apartment together. He says he never gave up on her, and asks her not to give up on him. They share a kiss. Just then, Coulson enters the room, apologizing for interrupting. He warns Garner that he’s not alone.
Meanwhile, the team, including Rosalind and the ATCU, get in position to put Garner in a containment unit. Garner tells Coulson he’s trying to sort the good from the bad, and reminds Coulson that he gave him this job. The others listen in. Lincoln, against orders, enters the room, aggressive against Garner. This causes Garner to change into Lash. Lincoln shoots electricity at Lash. Coulson tells May that their goal is to capture, not kill, and gives May some keys. Lash throws Lincoln against a wall, and Mack shoots Garner in the back, preventing him from killing Lincoln. Lash is about to kill Mack, when Coulson uses his robot hand to stop him. The ATCU soldiers fire shots at Lash, and lash runs. Rosalind herself takes several shots at Lash, but he picks her up by the neck and holds her over the balcony, then drops her. However, Daisy uses her powers to slow Rosalind’s fall, and places her gently on the floor.
Lincoln says that he’ll get Lash where he needs to go. May jumps in, telling Garner to stop, before he attacks Lincoln. She calmly talks to him, and he turns back into a human. She fires shots at him, backing him up into the containment unit. Coulson asks how she knew that wouldn’t kill him, but she says she didn’t.
Fitz has Bobbi and Hunter take a look at his latest theory. He compares a photo of a symbol carved on the castle chamber door to the logo of Will’s space program. If you turn the logo upside down, they look similar. He thinks that the group that sent Will through the portal is the same group that carved the symbol, and that it goes beyond NASA.
It seems that Lincoln is going to take Coulson up on his offer to stick around for awhile.
Rosalind tells them that if they keep Garner in stasis in human form, it’ll slow his transformation, giving them more time to find a cure. May asks Daisy what she would do. She says that Garner helped her, so she’d do whatever it takes. May tells Rosalind to do it.
Rosalind offers to buy Coulson a drink, and he accepts.
Fitz finds Simmons looking out the window waiting for the sun to rise. He tells her that he may have found something to help them open the portal. He also admits that he fixed her sim card, and listened to all her records and watched her videos. She tells him that she was as clearheaded then as she’s ever been when she said those things, and asks Fitz what he thinks they should do about it. He says, “For now, let’s just watch the sunrise.”
As May is on a plane watching the sunrise, she thinks back to Maui, when she told Garner that she never thought that she deserved happiness, and he replied that of course she does, that they both do.
We see Ward talking to Gideon Malick, one of the HYDRA heads. Gideon advises that revenge only provides a temporary pleasure, and that he should think on a grander scale. Ward says he’s going to cut off the head of SHIELD, because without Phil Coulson, SHIELD won’t grow back. Just then, Gideon gets a call from Rosalind, who apologizes for missing their meeting at NORAD, and that she’ll bring him to him soon enough. When she hangs up, we see that Coulson is with Rosalind. It seems that he has spent the night. They discuss where to go for breakfast, and share a kiss.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 3 Episode 7 of Agents of SHIELD: Chaos Theory
In this episode we get to see the background story of how Garner became Lash, see him revealed as Lash, and presumably see the last of him for awhile. It sounds like he’ll be in stasis until they find a cure — if that ever happens. It’s also possible that he and other Inhumans being held in stasis will be broken out at some point. But I think it might be a little while before that happens. In any case, I felt bad for May. It seems like she never gets to just have happiness for any extended period of time. She had it for a little while with Garner, but then he turned into Lash and everything went downhill from there.
What I thought was kind of weird was that Garner said that it was his instinct to kill other Inhumans when he was Lash. That sounds kind of counterproductive, evolutionary-wise, for an Inhuman to want to kill its own kind. The question is whether Garner’s own opinions about Inhumans influence his instincts as Lash, or if his instincts as Lash influence his opinions about Inhumans.
I am wondering about Lincoln though. Garner seemed to think that there was something off about Lincoln. But was he just saying that because he knew Lincoln was a threat to him, or because there actually is something wrong with him? Lincoln seemed pretty adamant about going after Garner, but that would make sense considering what Lash did to all of his Inhuman friends. I guess we’ll find out since he’ll be sticking around at SHIELD for awhile.
The end of this episode seems to suggest that there could be hope for FitzSimmons after all! Maybe all this time away from Will is reminding Simmons of her love for Fitz, and making her realize that she only clung to Will because he was literally the only man in the world for her while she was on that alien planet. I’m glad that Fitz got to hear what Simmons really thought about him, and that Simmons made it clear that she meant what she said, and that it wasn’t just her exhaustion talking. Hopefully we can progress on this storyline soon, as it continues to be the one I’m most interested in.
Finally, it appears that Coulson and Rosalind are hooking up. But is it a strategic thing for one or both of them, or could it be real? Also, what’s the deal with Rosalind and this HYDRA guy? Guess we’ll soon find out!
Josh’s Thoughts: Agents of SHIELD, Season 3 Episode 7: Chaos Theory
When Garner comes clean about being Lash, I was glad to finally see the mystery over. But I had some questions about his motives for being Lash. On the one hand he kept saying he has a compulsion to take out the Inhumans, but on the other he also was saying he wanted to do it. For me, those are two different things. A compulsion you don’t really want to do, but more like are forced to do. So I guess I would liked to have seen more clarification on the motives for what he is doing.
Lincoln surely seems to have gotten darker since we last seen him. I guess being hunted would do that to you. I am wondering, even though he is playing nice with SHIELD for now, if he will eventually turn on them. Or if maybe someone from the ATCU turns on him, making him go rogue again.
Fitz’s story is still heart breaking. He seems to be doing everything he can to save Will, despite it being obvious he really doesn’t want to. At the same time, I wonder what Fitz feels he needs to look into with regards to Will. He seems to be compiling a lot of information about him for just having to rescue him. Maybe there is more to Will than we know now? Characters are already speculating that these ancient cults might have more to deal with the NASA mission Will was on, which would make sense. The cult probably didn’t simply vanish.
As for Rosalind–what is her deal? Does she know she is working with HYDRA? My first inclination is no, but I would think that she would know this guy she is working with is not completely on the up and up. I wonder if perhaps she is playing double agent, for her own ends? Either way, I was happy that Coulson was finding some love, but now I want him to wake up and smell the roses. He needs to get to the bottom of this Rosalind, and right away!
Scenes from Agents of SHIELD, Season 3 Episode 8: Many Heads, One Tale
Here are scenes from the next episode of Agents of SHIELD, titled Many Heads, One Tale:
