SHIELD has located the silo that seems most likely to have been taken over by Hive, so they head there. Hive is already there, and aren’t concerned about SHIELD; if they fly anywhere nearby, radar will catch them. Of course, SHIELD doesn’t fly in – the quinjet comes out from the water.
The team needs a missile launch kill code, and it takes some fancy lies to get past the bureaucratic red tape: Fitz in a motion-capture suit, plays Talbot’s boss to convince the DOD to give the code over to their man on the ground – Coulson. The kill code has to be inputted on site, so Coulson calls the code in to May, who stops the warhead launch with seconds to spare.
Hive is pissed, and sends Radcliffe to bypass the override while he demonstrates his “rage” on SHIELD. Radcliffe is left with two of the primitives to figure it out. Hive seeks out Lincoln, mostly to mess with his head about how Daisy loved him, but Lincoln couldn’t offer her happiness. Lincoln lures Hive to Mack and Elena, who are readying a booby trap. With a little juice from Lincoln, the device turns on, made of pieces of the memory machine, and fries Hive’s brain. He is in excruciating pain. Lincoln holds on as long as he can, and when he is done, they run. Giyera and James show up and are baffled when they find a confused Hive talking to himself, recalling memories of former bodies he inhabited.
While Elena frees the silo employees being held as hostages, May goes in to fight Radcliffe and his primitives. Radcliffe actually helps May, then begs her to take him with her. A plane disengages the warhead and takes off with it, prompting SHIELD to gather everyone and make a rush to the quinjet. Hive follows them out, and Elena uses her super-speed to drop an item at Ward’s feet. He is vaguely amused, since no weapon has been able to stop him as of yet. But this item isn’t a weapon. It is a beacon, calling a chamber down. It fills with orange gel. They did it. SHIELD captured Hive in a gel matrix chamber.
At HQ, Coulson visits Daisy, still locked away in her room. She is full of self-hatred and believes she belongs in this box for all the horrible things she has done. Coulson tries to explain that Hive was like a drug; these are symptoms of withdrawal. Daisy wants to feel like this forever.
The jet returns to HQ, and the hostages are free. Talbot thought it was stupid to send Inhumans, but overall is very pleased with the outcome. Coulson isn’t: the warhead is still in play. They send Radcliffe to work on a cure for the primitives with FitzSimmons. Coulson congratulates Lincoln on a job well done and says he would make a good agent. Lincoln doesn’t think he wants to be an agent.
Mack breaks protocol and tells Daisy that they caught Hive. She is less than enthused and suggests Mack leave her cell – it is against protocol. He is the only one who has set foot inside her room. Mack insists on forgiving Daisy, despite her pushing him away. In the end he holds her tight, and she sobs into his chest. She believes he is as close to the devil as they will ever see, and worries about the gel matrix container. “He can’t be contained; he has to be destroyed.”
Until they can figure out how to do that, Fitz goes to the hangar to check that the gel matrix is stable for transport. While signing off on it, he notices a huge stack of packages that just came in, with a return address of Absolution, Texas. Absolution is the one phrase that Hive spoke of that they couldn’t figure out. Fitz yells a warning, but it is too late. The boxes explode and a cloud of biotoxin explodes out. Fitz escapes the cloud, but the other two dudes in the hangar are not so lucky. They become primitives almost immediately.
Because HQ is on lockdown, Fitz can’t get out of the hangar. Coulson promises him over the loudspeaker that they are working to get him out. A few more agents rush in and several immediately turn. Fitz manages to drag two of them out of the hazard zone. Simmons figures out a way to override the lock so that Fitz and one of the unnamed agents get out of the hangar. They are safe, and without humans to hunt, the primitives answer the call of the master. They break Hive’s containment chamber, and he rises from the gel.
Mac and Daisy watch this on the TV in her room, and Daisy is scared. She told Hive everything, including the fact that the zephyr can reach very high altitudes. He has a delivery system for his toxin now. Mac rushes to warn Coulson, but Daisy can’t sit still. She hacks her way out of her prison and takes the containment unit up into the hangar.
Almost as soon as she confronts Hive, Daisy drops to her knees and begs him to take her back. Hive is intrigued by this and tries to introduce his sway into her brain. He can’t. Lash made her impervious. She is basically vaccinated against him. He walks away, which angers Daisy the addict. She blasts him with as much power as she can muster.
Coulson estimates that 28 agents and SHIELD personnel have been infected. So far. Then they feel the building shake. Daisy is fighting Ward, and while nothing she throws at him has any long term effects, she does a pretty good job fending him off. Radcliffe says that the primitives have strength, but very poor eyesight – they are essentially blind. And they are in the vents. The group rush to lock down the lab, the armory, and the nerve center. Fitz and May realize that Daisy went to stop Hive.
Daisy tries to stab Hive, but it has no effect on him. When Giyera and James fly in, Hive knocks her out. Along with some primitives, they load into the zephyr with the warhead. Though Hive can’t sway Daisy, he figures having her on board will prevent SHIELD from shooting them out of the sky. A couple of the primitives will stay behind to destroy SHIELD. Hive calls upon his Ward memories to fly the zephyr, and finds that focus is finally soothing his brain. The plan is to fly 100,000 feet up, and drop to safety in the containment module before the warhead blows up. Fitz and May have stowed away.
Primitives have already gotten into the armory, and one of them shoots Mack – but the bullets don’t touch him. Elena, who was following behind him, took all the bullets. He rushes her to meet with Coulson, Lincoln, and Radcliffe. Elena is bleeding out fast. With no other options, Mack uses a blowtorch to cauterize the wounds and stop the bleeding.
Simmons has locked herself in the furnace room. The primitives blast in, searching for her…but they can’t see her. Elena’s screams draw them away, and Simmons realizes that the primitives must use infrared to “see.” She cranks the furnace way up. At 100 degrees, the primitives would be completely blind. Radcliffe realizes what is going on when Elena is so hot they are afraid she has an infection. He tests his theory by slipping into the hall, coming face to face with a primitive. It doesn’t see Radcliffe and moves on. The group goes on the move, and meets up with Simmons who is hiding out in the nerve center.
On the zephyr, May and Fitz come out of hiding. Daisy warns them not to let her out – she is a liability. She feels bad that she tried to kill Hive and failed, but May wants her to help balance the scales. She and May go back and forth like that for a bit, until Giyera knocks May out. Fitz, standing nearby unpacking weapons, is scared and tells Giyera that there is a hidden weapon on the zephyr, that he planted, and Giyera needs him to find it and make sure they don’t all get blown up. Giyera doesn’t believe him…but he doesn’t shoot him. Instead, Fitz shoots Giyera, with an invisible pistol in his hand. He then releases Daisy. The three of them hide out in a lab, trying to figure out what to do next. One of the primitives brings Giyera’s corpse into James and Hive. They realize they have stowaways.
Back at HQ, Coulson orders up a quinjet on his cyber arm. It flies outside the window, allowing them to climb aboard without having to leave the nerve center. Coulson will take them all to safety, but then he is returning with the jet to stop the zephyr. And he is going alone.
The quinjet docks with the zephyr and Hive goes to greet it. He finds Coulson came alone, and is prepared to die to take out Hive. They spar verbally, and Hive decides that he is going to take over Coulson’s body. He sheds his Ward skin, taunts Coulson a bit, and Coulson tells him the difference between he and Hive is that his “soldiers” have free will and frequently exercise that – like when they go against orders. Elsewhere on the zephyr, the entire team has come aboard. Coulson is just a distraction; he is a hologram. Hive is confused, and Coulson uses the opportunity to do something he always wanted: “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.” Hive trashes the projector. The real Coulson is with the rest of the team.
Lincoln fights James, and May steps in for the kill, but not before James latches one of his explosives onto Lincoln. It goes off, but FitzSimmons tell him he will be ok. Daisy takes this time to apologize for turning against him. He doesn’t blame her, and didn’t visit her in her cell because he knew she needed to put herself back together. He understands addiction, and hitting rock bottom.
There is a new plan. Steal the warhead, load it onto one of the quinjets, remotely fly it up into outer space, and blow it up harmlessly in the vacuum of space. Lincoln realizes that Daisy plans to ride with the warhead to make sure everything goes as planned. She will surely die.
Daisy runs to get the warhead, and Lincoln informs the others of what happened. He couldn’t stop her. Primitives come out and start beating up the team, leaving them little time to worry about Daisy. Hive watches them fight, and Coulson advises the team to finish off the primitives. When they are done, Hive is gone. He went for Daisy.
Daisy is securing the warhead in the quinjet. When Hive joins her, she believes that Lash saved her so she could end this. Ward vows to simply override the controls – except that Lincoln is on board and has fried the controls so he can’t change course. Lincoln zaps Daisy off the jet, and soars away.
Frantic, Daisy radios to Lincoln, and realizes that she no longer wears the cross. That cross has had an epic journey throughout this episode, going from Mack to Elena to Mack to Fitz to Daisy. Lincoln took the cross from Daisy to break her idea that this was her fate, to die. Daisy is a mess, and Lincoln tells her he loves her before the communicators go dead. Daisy begs Coulson to do something, anything, to bring him back. But there is nothing he can do.
On the jet, Lincoln tells Hive he can sway him all he wants, but he is not turning the jet around. Hive seems to be at peace with what is happening, and doesn’t try anything. The two of them float in zero gravity, watching the Earth grow smaller. There is a strange peace between the two of them, as death is guaranteed. Hive is actually intrigued to try something that has alluded him all these years: death.
From the Zephyr, SHIELD watches the jet in outer space. There is a bright blip, and it disappears. Their plan worked, but no one is celebrating.
We jump ahead six months to get a little peek into where everyone landed. Daisy went rogue and has been causing quakes all around the globe. Coulson and Mack are staking out an area where they suspect she will meet with Polly Hinton, Charles’ wife. She does, and Coulson, Mack, and the team move out. She is faster, and uses her powers to rocket herself out of the area. Coulson has his agents put up a perimeter, but he knows she is gone. Interestingly, he tells his team to “call the director, let them know she is gone.” Maybe May is the director now?
Radcliffe’s name has been cleared and his trial is over. He was hoping Fitz, now a colleague, would come over to celebrate, but he is doing something with Simmons. So it is just Radcliffe and his computer, Aida (like a really high-end Siri that actually works, or one of the operating systems from Her). Today is her “birthday,” and we see, behind a frosted door, the outline of a woman.
You can watch the 6 Months Later clip below!
