We go back to Garrett, Coulson, Fury and Peterson, and I’m just going to copy this dialogue out entirely:

Garrett: Do you remember that speech you used to give us, Nick, about how one man can accomplish anything once he realizes he can be something bigger?  Well, now I am.

Fury: A part.  A part of something bigger.

Garrett: Is that how it went?

Coulson: Not a great listener.

Fury: If you tell me this whole HYDRA path thing you took is because you misheard my damn one man speech…

Garrett: I am the key to the future of the universe. I am the origin of all things…

Fury: (to Coulson) You got it, right?

Coulson: Totally.  Loud and clear.

Garrett gestures to Peterson to take out Fury and Coulson, and he raises his arm and activates his missiles, preparing to fire at them.

Skye, comes up to the “dealer” and opens the bomb backpack, revealing that it just contains a Hulk action figure, which she gives to Ace, much to the “dealer’s” chagrin.  She gives the toy to Ace, and tells him that she needs him to give her a message to send to his father.  Something Mike would know could only come from Ace.  The “dealer” reminds her that there’s no way to communicate with Deathlok from there, but Skye says she doesn’t need to because she’s been tapped into him this whole time on her phone.

Coulson tries to lecture Garrett about how he only ever thinks about himself and how this is the difference between the bad side and the good side and why the good side will always win.  Peterson is really struggling with himself over whether to fire, when he gets a message in his eye that says, “Dad, what are we?”  He turns to Garrett as the message continues, “We’re a team.”  He launches his missile, blowing a hole right in Garrett’s chest.  He slowly walks over to where Garrett lies on the floor, trying to order Mike to stand down.  He even screams for Coulson to stop Mike, but Coulson simply says, “Mr. Peterson is free to do whatever he wants.”  And what he wants is to crush Garrett’s skull under his robotic leg.

After the break, we see Garrett’s lifeless body loaded into a container, presumably for study.  Coulson fills in the remaining General on how the Centipede soldiers will return to normal now that they’re not getting injections.  May shows up with Ward in handcuffs, and I’ll just copy this dialogue out too:

Coulson: Did you get a chance to express all your feelings?

May: Is he still breathing?

Coulson: (to Ward) Guess she kept some of it to herself.

May: He’s having trouble speaking.  I think I fractured his larynx.

Coulson: Oh, good.  (to Ward)  Your attempt to cross off Fitz and Simmons failed, but Fitz may never be the same again.  So I’m going to invent new ways to ruin the rest of your life.  And we’ll do whatever’s necessary to get HYDRA’s intel from you, but your torture is gonna be internal.

May: And a little bit external.

Coulson: Sure, some of that.  But you devoted your entire life to a deranged narcisist who never gave a damn about anyone, and now he’s dead.  You’ve got the rest of your life to wrestle with the question: who are you without him?

Outside the Cybertek building, Mike Peterson watches from afar as Ace is reunited with his Aunt, as Skye joins him.  She asks why Mike doesn’t go to his son, but Mike doesn’t want Ace to see what he’s become.  Skye says that Ace won’t care about his burns, but that’s not what Mike means.  Skye tells Mike that Coulson wants to bring him in, but Mike tells her to just use her link to watch his every move.  All she’ll see is him trying to make amends for his actions.  She points out that everything he did was for Ace, and he counters by saying that everything he does from now on will still be for Ace.

We cut back to the Cybertek lab, where the container that held Garrett’s body is overturned and empty.  We see a bloody hand grab onto the table of the Deathlok device, as Garrett hoists himself into position and activates the machine.  He screams in pain as it replaces his legs with mechanical ones.  It places a chest piece over his torso and gives him mechanical arms.  He rises to his feet, almost entirely mechanical, ready to unleash new mayhem in pursuit of his vision.  “There’s a reason why they say ‘cut off the head,'” he says.  “Now, I’ll be unstop-”  And he explodes into a billion particles.  Coulson appears behind him with the 0-8-4 plasma weapon and calls out, “Hey guys, I found it!  I told you it’d be in here.”  He then casually walks out with the weapon under his arm.

Onboard the bus, Coulson and Fury are finally having that discussion, which begins with Coulson shouting “stupid, stupid, stupid, and cruel, and very stupid” at Fury.  He wants to know why Fury brought him back when he was so clearly against the project.  Fury says that May’s been on top of the situation and says he’s fine, besides “it was a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ situation.”  Coulson knows, but insists that that emergency was only supposed to be for the fall of an Avenger.  “Exactly,” says Fury, looking deep into Coulson’s eyes.  A million emotions go through Coulson’s face in an instant, from shock to pride to humility to being overwhelmed, because he can’t think of higher praise than that.  Fury’s glad that he brought Coulson back, because Coulson is the strong foundation of what Fury was trying to build.  Coulson admits that Fury can count on one hand the people he trusts.  “And I’m not afraid to cut off fingers,” Fury adds.

He reminds Coulson that SHIELD was founded on the principle of protection, whether one man from himself or the planet from aliens.  “It’s a broad job description,” Fury admits.  Regardless, the belief that drives them all is the same, that both one man and all mankind are worth saving.  Fury tells Coulson that he was the heart of SHIELD, and says that now he’ll be the head.  He offers him a small black cube, which he calls a “toolbox” that he’ll use to rebuild SHIELD from scratch.  “Take your time and do it right,” Fury tells him, and he makes sure that May will still watch Coulson’s back (in a good way).  Fury says that there’s no one he’d trust more with rebuilding SHIELD, and when Coulson asks how he should proceed, Fury says, “That’s up to you, Director.”  May asks where Fury is headed, and he says that he wants to trade his bird’s eye view for two feet on the ground, and that they won’t be seeing him for a while.  Coulson wonders if Fury will disappear and be nowhere to be found, but Fury laughs at that, finally lowering his sunglasses to say, “You know me better than that, Phil.  I’ll be everywhere.”

The Bus lands and the ramp drops to reveal Simmons, to whom Skye, Coulson, May and Trip rush for hugs.  She tells them that Fitz is alive, but has no better news than that.  May wonders where they are, and Coulson tells them that he found the coordinates in Fury’s toolbox.  He wonder’s if it’s another secret base, as a familiar voice says, “I call it the Playground, although technically it doesn’t have a name because technically it doesn’t exist.  It being a secret base and all.”  It looks like Eric Koenig, complete with lanyard, but he tells them that he’s Billy Koenig, Agent of SHIELD.  Everyone looks confused as he launches into a familiar spiel about how great it is to finally have company and that he’ll get Coulson a lanyard right away while the rest will get them on a case by case basis.  He says he’s here to “get you back up and running, fighting the good fight.  Which is gonna be cool!”  The music swells as the team surveys their new home base, and we get a shot of the five of them, the beginnings of the new SHIELD.

It’s not over yet, as we see Raina walking down a dark, dilapidated street.  She is led to a room by a musclebound man, in which sits a solitary figure.  She cautiously approaches the figure and sets a picture on the table beside him, saying “I know you thought you’d never see me again, but I found your daughter.”  A hand covered and dripping with blood reaches over and lifts the picture, and we see that it’s of Skye.

After the credits, we see Coulson lying awake in his bed at the Playground, staring into space.  He gets up and walks around, finding the lab door on which Garrett scratched all of those alien symbols.  He runs his hand over them before picking something up.  He heads to an expanse of gray wall and uses the knife he grabbed to begin carving something in it.  We watch as his work grows and grows, eventually covering the wall with similar alien figures.  The symbols, which look like meaningless schematics or equations, fill the frame, with Coulson in the center carving away, as the screen fades to black.

Holy crap, that was seriously fantastic.  It was balls-to-the-wall exciting, made me cry on multiple occasions, made me laugh out loud repeatedly and made me cheer more than once.  I had high expectations from this finale, as the show had built itself up so much since the HYDRA reveal, but even someone as optimistic and enthusiastic as I couldn’t have imagined how well they’d deliver.  This was without a doubt the best episode of the series thus far, and it was a great way to end the season.  There were many resolutions, but of plot and emotional ones, with new mysteries dropped for next season and a great setup going forward.  Nick Fury’s appearance was perfect, much more than a simple cameo, and it really helped make this episode bigger.  The show didn’t take the easy way out, and didn’t give us an all around happy ending, but the happy endings that we did get felt earned and well thought out.  I’m still processing so much of this episode, and I have approximately 80 billion things running around in my head, but this recap has gone on for far too long so I’ll leave you with my normal S.H.I.E.L.D. thoughts and I’ll post another article later in the week with a collection of my thoughts about the season as a whole, this episode in particular, and where I think the show will go from here.  So be sure to check back!

 S.H.I.E.L.D. Thoughts

So many things to say, where to start?  I guess I’ll start at the end, with how things were left off for next season.  It looks like the driving force in the fall will be Coulson’s mission to rebuild SHIELD as its new Director, with a new base, the Playground, and a new Koenig to help.  (I’m absolutely thrilled that they brought Patton Oswalt back, but now I have a million questions.  Is he a clone?  A twin?  A life model decoy?)  I think that will give the show a nice foundation for season 2, with Coulson trying to recruit new SHIELD members as well as sort out which former SHIELD agents can be trusted, all while continuing to fight HYDRA and deal with whatever else crops up.  For next season we also have Skye’s incredibly bloody parent and whatever Raina’s involvement with him is.  And then there’s whatever’s going on with Coulson and the alien writing.  Clearly Garrett wasn’t lying when he said there was a bond between them, and I wonder if it’s a bond that Skye will share.  I have some thoughts on this, but I’ll save them for my end of the season wrap-up.

How about Ward?  I’m really pleased they didn’t give him a last minute change of heart redemption story that would have tied everything up with a neat little bow in one episode.  He’s clearly still not a good man and hasn’t been forgiven by anyone.  I still foresee a redemption arc at some point for him, but he has a lot of work to climb out of the hole he dug for himself.  I’m glad he’s still alive, as he’s become a very interesting character, and I look forward to seeing how/if he reconciles what he was shaped into by Garrett with his feelings for Skye and the rest of the team.  It looks like he’ll be given time to do that, rather than trying to cram it into the end of this season, and until then I look forward to seeing more of Trip.

I have to give major credit to Bill Paxton.  He came on and really meshed well with the show, giving it some weight and making for a compelling “big bad” for the season.  He was funny and entertaining while also being scary and crazy, and I’m sorry to see him go.  At the same time, I’m relieved that he’s seemingly gone for good, now that Coulson disintegrated him.  I was really worried when he started to come back as a super-Deathlok, and was overjoyed when Coulson took him out.

Let’s not skip over that, however, because that was one of many, many seriously awesome moments in this episode.  It was the perfect way to cap off Garrett’s story while also subverting our expectations.  Also on the awesome list: May kicking Ward’s ass.  It was so important to see for the characters, to give a small bit of closure to their feelings of betrayal (and to the audience for the same reasons).  It was great to see that May would really win in a fight between the two, and Skye’s lead-in to the fight was perfect.  I might have audibly sobbed when Fury pulled out the Destroyer gun.  It was brilliant writing, as it tied in so well to Coulson’s most glorious moment from The Avengers while also being connected so strongly to his death.  It was such a perfect “full circle” moment, and even on my second viewing for writing the recap my heart leapt into my throat just like it did the first time.  I’m even getting choked up writing this.  Not to mention Mike Peterson’s redemption moment.  And, of course, the biggest moment might have been Fury’s rescue of FitzSimmons.

Expert use of Fury by the writers in this episode.  Much more than his previous appearance, this really gave Samuel L. Jackson a lot to do, and made it feel like a continuation of his increased presence in The Winter Soldier.  His hero moment rescuing FitzSimmons gave me chills, but he owned pretty much every scene he was in.  He was cool and confident, yet he never overpowered the real stars of the show.  He got to show why he’s a key part of this universe, but he never overstepped his bounds and got in the way of Coulson and company.  It was nice to see Coulson take out his anger on Fury, but even better to see how much Fury respects Coulson, calling him an Avenger, counting him among his five most trusted people (Coulson, Hill, Romanoff, May, and who else?  Steve Rogers?), and making him the new Director of the new SHIELD.  His presence made the show bigger and more important not only by simply his appearance but by the way the character was played.  The Nick Fury card is a great Ace for the writers to have in the hole, and I hope they use him sparingly and as perfectly as they did tonight.

Don’t think for a second that I’m not going to end this talking about FitzSimmons.  Every scene with them made me feel like my heart was being ripped out.  I was so relieved that they’d both survived, but watching them try to come to grips with their impending death was so absolutely heartbreaking.  So much credit has to go to Elizabeth Henstridge and Ian De Caestecker for giving truly spectacular performances.  It was the part of the show that felt the most like a rollercoaster, from the high of seeing their survival, to the low of facing death, to the high of the escape plan, to the low of Fitz’s sacrifice, to the high of Fury’s rescue, to the low of Fitz’s fate.  The moment when Fitz finally confessed his feelings and Simmons threw herself at him, in the way that people who are in love can sometimes be desperate to touch, kiss and experience every fiber of the other person’s being.  It was so beautifully and tragically played, and felt so real, and the way they cut from Simmons’ scream of “No” when Fitz pushed the button was so powerful.  I have no idea what’s going to happen with Fitz, whether they’ll be able to save him, or whether he’ll be in some kind of coma or have some disability as a result.  Maybe Coulson and company can find a way to save him, or maybe Fury has some spare GH-325 lying around somewhere.  Regardless, Fitz and Simmons were the standouts in an episode full of amazing moments, and my heart feels like it’s been ripped to shreds after watching it twice tonight.

What do you think?  I have so much more to talk about, I don’t even know where to begin!  Is there anything you’d like me to address in a season wrap-up later this week?  What did you think of “Beginning of the End”?  What was your favorite moment?  Did you cry as much as I did?  What’s going to happen to Fitz?  How about Ward?  What’s up with Coulson and the alien writing?  What moment shocked you the most?  Garrett’s death?  The new Koenig?  Fury’s rescue?  The Destroyer gun?  What’s up with Skye’s parents?  Why so bloody?  What do you want to see next season?  Are you thrilled that the show will be back next season?  Is Trip a permanent member of the gang now?  Let me know in the comments!