Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ‘The Well’

This episode is the one with the supposed tie-in to Thor: The Dark World.  And while yes, it does reference the second installment of the Thor franchise, the episode really has nothing to do with it on any level other than a superficial one.  We find the team cleaning up after the mess that Thor made when battling his own baddies, trying to find potentially dangerous artifacts that they can store away before regular Joes pick them up and start wrecking havoc.  Then the show moves on to another artifact, one that does happen to be Asgardian in nature but is completely unrelated to Thor: The Dark World in any other way.  Thus, we quickly say goodbye to all tie-in elements other than Coulson dropping Thor’s name every now and again.

So off they go to find The Berserker’s Staff, a vicious piece of nasty that causes whoever touches it to go nuts with rage and get all sorts of strong.  A crazy Nordic cult is collecting the three pieces of the staff and promising some major destruction if they succeed.  Coulson and company head out to talk to an expert and find the pieces before their rivals do.  Along they way, they discover that the expert is actually an Asgardian and then Ward ends up touching a piece of the staff and going roid-rage on everyone.  Eventually they fight the evil Nordic folks and both Ward and May are forced to use the staff’s power - a power that messes your head up - to defeat the baddies.

This one definitely took a turn for the darker, particularly with regards to Ward’s state of mind.  Almost every other character was ignored in favor of developing Ward, which I didn’t mind at all.  By the time the episode ended, I felt like he was a real character instead of just one member of a team that I don’t really know or even care much to know.  Further, there was a little bonding moment between him and May that will, if the writers are smart about, be used in the future to further flesh out their characters.  All-in-all, one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s better episodes and one that I hope future installments will echo the tone of, if not quite the execution (particularly that tie-in nonsense).

For a look at next week’s episode, ‘Repairs’ head to this site and check out the trailer.

Photo Credits -

The Well courtesy of comicbook.com