Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 'A Hen in the Wolf House' Review: The Gang's All Here

Season 2 of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. continued Tuesday night with "A Hen in the Wolf House," one of the best hours the show has delivered so far this year in what has been an incredibly strong start to the show's sophomore season. By the end of the hour, the S.H.I.E.L.D. team was reunited, though all was not well.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been seeding mysteries since it began, and one of the biggest questions has always revolved around Skye's lineage. All we know for sure is that she's an 0-8-4, an object of unknown origin. We also knew her father was still out there somewhere and now that we've met him, he seems like the last person Skye needs to meet.

We said earlier in the season that the show had set up several different parties for the fledgling S.H.I.E.L.D. organization to face. Between Talbot, Skye's father and Hydra, Coulson and his team certainly had their hands full. So it was interesting in this episode to hear Skye's dad act with such ruthless aggression toward Raina and for him to essentially play a game of Bad Guy Hot Potato with Daniel Whitehall. By the end of the episode, the show had streamlined its villains by teaming Skye's father with Whitehall, with the former chillingly remarking that it's time to use the Obelisk/Diviner to kill everyone.

Skye's dad has clearly been a player in the game for a while, He knows far more than he's letting on, and he's also apparently capable of feats of brute strength if he loses control. Skye witnesses his handiwork and calls him a monster, which drives him right toward Whitehall. She had always wanted answers, and now she got a few. But all this has done is set her squarely against her father, a man whom she still has not met.

Coulson has also looped Skye in on his alien carvings, and she theorizes that the symbols represent a map of some kind. It's unclear how she came to this conclusion, but we'll likely find out more next week or shortly thereafter. Perhaps the more interesting development is Coulson's working theory that Skye is actually of alien origin. This has been a popular theory among fans ever since the show first started cultivating this mystery way back in the beginning of the first season, but now Coulson is on board with it, too. The appearance of the blue alien creature in the series only supported this theory, so we'll see how the show pays it off down the line.

And it will be pretty far down the line, because Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to have adopted the serialized approach for Season 2. The show is slowly, almost agonizingly so, pulling back the curtain on its different plots to give fans a glimpse at the answers before moving onto something else. It's a tactic that will keep viewers coming back to find out what happens, but the payoff has to come or else fans will lose patience.

Elsewhere in the episode, Bobbi Morse aka Mockingbird finally debuted and kicked a whole lot of ass in a very short time to get Simmons out of Hydra and back to S.H.I.E.L.D. Adrianne Palicki was great in the role, as expected, and she's a part of the team for the foreseeable future. In fact, the extremely thin roster at the start of the season has been beefed up quite a bit in just a few episodes, and it feels like S.H.I.E.L.D. is finally gaining some traction.

Simmons' return to her old team was a welcome sight, thought it would have been interesting to see her in Hydra a while longer. Her reunion with Fitz went about as awkwardly as you'd expect. Fitz has been one of the best parts of Season 2 thus far, and Simmons' return is a big moment for both of them. It should be fascinating to see how the show portrays the effect of her return on him. Will her presence help him, or will he regress and give up the progress he has made?

This was a packed hour of television that set the table for the rest of the season. Whitehall and Skye's dad are working together (with the Obelisk, no less), the S.H.I.E.L.D. team is back to full strength and Skye might be an alien. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has done a lot of things right this season, and I'm genuinely excited to see what happens next.

Notes:

-       Nick Blood is fantastic as Lance Hunter, and his reaction to his ex-wife's arrival on the team was priceless, as was Triplett's response. I'm very much looking forward to more interactions between Hunter and Bobbi.

-       Seriously, Mack is a tank of a human being. That's not even fair.

-       Coulson left Raina to twist in the wind, and now he's following her straight back to Daniel Whitehall. Whitehall doesn't seem to have much use for her now, so will Coulson's plan work?

-       Simmons has gotten cold! She planted that evidence in her co-worker's desk and one can only imagine what Hydra did to him as a result.

What did you think of "A Hen in the Wolf House"? Let us know in the comments section.