During the first season of ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’, one of the best episodes was ‘Yes Men’, which featured guest star Jamie Alexander reprising her role as the mighty Lady Sif from ‘Thor’ and ‘Thor: The Dark World.’ That episode completely lived up to all the hype surrounding it by delivering an exciting adventure with a ton of action and strong story points. However, when Sif returned to the Midgard and crossed paths with the Son of Coul once again, I can’t really say that the season two episode had the same level of success.

After an awesome mid-season premiere that saw the status quo of the Marvel Cinematic Universe change in a big way, this week’s episode continued to showcase the fallout of Skye and Raina’s Terrigenesis. After being released from quarantine, Skye and Fitz attempted to hide her new powers from the rest of the team. But doing so became a little harder when they had to venture into the field when their Asgardian ally showed up without her memory and looking for someone.

Don’t get me wrong, it was so great to see Alexander back in the role of Sif. The actress is quite passionate about the character and it shows in her performance. Plus, there were some memorable moments like Sif and Agent May fangirling over Thor or her fight scenes with the Kree operative Vin-Tak. Nothing was wrong with Sif being in the episode at all, but it just seemed like her presence was a necessary buffer to soften the blow for all the exposition that was dumped in this episode.

I’ll admit that Sif’s bout of amnesia was an inspired way to get this information out there, but a good portion of the episode was spent sharing the backstory of the Inhumans and the Kree. Though the show came under a good bit of criticism for taking their time with some storylines last season, this felt like something that should have been stretched out for a few episodes, especially since it involved seeing a living Kree on the show for the first time. Of course, it’s possible that I’ll end up looking back on this at the end of the season and changing my tune just as I did last season, but right now I’m saying that regardless of the inclusion of a fan favorite guest star, this episode was a few steps above filler.

Also, though I know that the chances of Chris Hemsworth appearing on ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ are slim to none, why couldn’t Thor have gotten involved along with Sif? After ‘Thor: The Dark World,’ he’s living on Earth and probably just hanging out in Avengers Tower. If Sif came down to Midgard for some Asgardian business, then you’d think that the God of Thunder would be the first one that she’d call. Of course, there’s a possibility that Loki had something up his sleeve by sending Sif and not informing Thor based on the ending of the last adventure we saw in Asgard, but really I just want Thor to pop up some time so Lady Sif and Agent May could goofily smile in his presence before the three of them kick some bad guy’s ass.

Aside from furthering the Inhuman storyline (and basically turning Skye and those like her into the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s version of the X-Men thanks to all the animosity towards them), another interesting aspect of this episode was Mack and Bobbi’s extracurricular activities. Though we didn’t get a slow burn on the Inhuman stuff, we’re definitely getting it with Mockingbird here. Who do they really work for? What’s their plan? And what’s going to happen to Hunter now that he’s onto them? There are so many questions surrounding this subplot and we’re only getting little tastes of it each time. These teases haven’t gotten excruciatingly painful yet, but I really want to know what the deal is here. But while we find out, I’m glad that their characters are getting more flushed out along the way.

At the end of the day, though I may have been overly critical of some aspects of the storytelling, this week’s ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ was still pretty good. It wasn’t great like the last time Lady Sif appeared on the show, but it wasn’t terrible like the ‘Thor: The Dark World’ tie-in from the first season either. This episode fell firmly in the middle of the spectrum, but the heat should be getting turned up next week as Kyle MacLachlan’s Cal seems to be assembling a team of his own, so hopefully that’s a really good one.

Final Score:

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‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ starring Brett Dalton, Ming-Na Wen, Iain De Caestecker, Elizabeth Henstridge, Adrianne Palicki, Chloe Bennet, and Clark Gregg airs on Tuesdays at 8:00pm on ABC.