The long awaited episode is here! The Inhumans have arrived, and it seems like they’ll be greatly affecting the entire world for a long time to come.

Let’s start with those very first scenes, involving our blind teleporting man and Skye’s mother — I’m happy to see that she does in fact play a bigger role in everything. From the way they introduced her, I feared that she really wouldn’t have much to do with the main plot, but it looks like I was quite wron: she actually helped to raise Inhumans after their Terrigenesis. These introductory scenes were cool, but a bit held back by stilted, expository dialogue.

We finally saw what Raina became. It wasn’t pretty, and frankly shocking to she her so brutally kill those agents at the temple. I’m interested to see where her story goes, especially in terms of being trained by an existing Inhuman. I have a feeling I should feel worse than I do about her situation, and I don’t think we had enough time with the Raina and Cal dynamic for their scene to pack the punch the writers went for.

Mack was dealing with some serious anger issues in this episode, which is understandable after what happened to him in the last — not to mention everyone being raw after Trip’s death. The big argument was very well done; you could feel the thick tension between everyone, and watching Skye almost lose it was awesome. I really enjoy every scene between Mack and Fitz too, so that early scene between them was a joy.

Then show threw a wrench into everything by letting us know that Bobbi and Mack are keeping some big secret: spying on Nick Fury’s can’t be good. I’m hoping they aren’t secretly Hydra agents; that would be stale, and the wrong direction for the show to go. We already had a entire movie about those betrayals, on top of a well done Ward reveal last season, so they don’t need to retread.

Simmons probably had one of the most drastic character shifts in this episode. After Trip’s death and the destruction at the temple, she focused on getting rid of the “epidemic” that she doesn’t yet know as the Inhuman gene. This shift felt a little too drastic, though. I understand that the writers wanted to have that contrast between friends, but I feel that it should have played out slower. The show certainly has time to even out her character arc, and I hope they will.

We oddly didn’t see much of Skye this week, but what we did see was excellent. Chloe Bennet is doing a great job with Skye’s internal struggles, and I look forward to watching that play out more. Her scene opposite Fitz about her abilities was the standout scene for me. Iain De Caestecker has been doing fantastic work as Fitz this entire season, and he’s only getting stronger. It was a surprise to see him hide Skype’s secret after how he reacted, but I’m sure it won’t be too long however until it’s revealed.

This episode really was a busy one, because on top of all of what I’ve already mentioned, there was plenty of Hydra action. Coulson finally had enough and launched a huge mission to take out the heads of Hydra, and man, was it brutal. It was strange, but very satisfying, to see Shield succeed in such an elaborate simultaneous hit mission. All of the references to Baron Von Strucker were awesome, and his henchman from the after-credit scenes of Winter Solider played a big role in the Hydra activity. It begs the question: will we see Strucker at some point?

Agents of Shield returned with a solid episode that continued to take the show in an awesome direction. While it had some stilted dialogue in the beginning, it made up with some great scenes between the  main cast members. I look forward to seeing how high the Inhuman take this show.

Article by contributor Russ Milheim.