Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2 2

"Heavy is the Head"
Release Date	September 30, 2014
Director(s)	Jesse Bochco
Writer(s)	Paul Zbyszewski
Previous and Next Episodes
Previous	"Shadows" (September 23, 2014)
Next	"Making Friends and Influencing People" (October 7, 2014)

 I know you're the boss and you have to compartmentalize everything, but it's not healthy. You need to loosen up. Try... yoga or something. 

—Agent Skye

Appearances

Featured Characters:

• S.H.I.E.L.D.
  • Agent Melinda May
  • Director Phil Coulson
  • Agent Skye
  • Agent Leo Fitz

Supporting Characters:

• Lance Hunter
• S.H.I.E.L.D.
  • Agent Antoine Triplett
  • Agent Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie
  • Agent Peggy Carter (Photo)
  • Agent Billy Koenig (Mentioned)

Antagonists:

• Hydra
  • Carl Creel
  • Sunil Bakshi
  • Daniel Whitehall (Mentioned)
  • John Garrett (Mentioned)
• Raina
• Skye's father (First full appearance)

Other Characters:

• Idaho (Corpse, skeleton or other remains)
• United States Army
  • Brigadier General Glenn Talbot
• U.S. Air Force
• SAS (Mentioned)
• Jemma Simmons (Illusion or holographic simulation)
• Agent Izzy Hartley (Photo)
• Jane Hartley (First appearance) (Photo)
• Strategic Scientific Reserve (Photo)
  • Margaret Carter (Photo)
• Lance Hunter's Ex-Wife (Mentioned)
• God (Yahweh) (Invoked)
• Christian Ward (Mentioned)

Races and Species:

• Humans
• Fish (Mentioned)

Locations:

• Earth-199999
  • Earth
    • The Playground
    • Sierra Leone (Mentioned)
    • Basra (Mentioned)
  • Hell (Invoked)

Items:

• GH.325 (Mentioned)
• D.W.A.R.F.s. (Only on screen as a static image or video record)
• 0-8-4 (Hydra Weapon) (Only on screen as a static image or video record)
• Gravitonium (Named only)
• I.C.E.R.
• Diviner
• Overkill Device

Vehicles:

• Quinjet
• The Bus
• S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier (Mentioned)

Synopsis

Melinda May, while chasing Creel on a motorcycle, finds the mercenaries still pinned under their car. Lance Hunter confirms that Hartley and Idaho are dead and that Creel took the Obelisk. May offers to help him out of there, but Hunter refuses, telling her she needs to go after Creel. She leaves him a tool he could use to get out of the car, and races after Creel, who Coulson tells her has already stolen a car. Hunter cuts his way out of the car, but is immediately arrested by the Army. May, meanwhile, catches up to Creel, but Coulson orders her to stay back and not engage him as they are entering a civilian area.

Skye and Trip arrive back at the Playground with the Quinjet they recovered from the military. Coulson orders them to get the specs on the plane's cloaking technology to Mack so he can reverse engineer it while Skye briefs him on their mission. Skye wants to continue hunting for the Obelisk, but Coulson turns that down in favor of continuing their pursuit of Creel. Meanwhile, May has followed him to a diner, and is watching the place from the outside. Creel waits to meet his contact inside the diner while fighting off the infection from having come into contact with the Obelisk. A waitress accidentally touches his arm and his quickly overcome by the Obelisk's infection. May rushes in to investigate the commotion, but Creel is already gone.

The army drops Hunter off alone in a field, but a helicopter carrying Brigadier General Talbot comes to pick him up. Talbot tries to get Hunter to give up Coulson's location, promising he could use his connections to a senator with "deep pockets" to give Hunter anything he wanted. Hunter at first refuses Talbot's offer, but agrees to give up Coulson if he can get Hartley a proper burial. He goes back to the Playground after losing the tail Talbot put on him. Hunter admits to Coulson that he's to give him up to Talbot in 48 hours. Meanwhile, Mack and Fitz try to come up with a way to take down Creel and counter his abilities. Fitz is still mentally unstable and is prone to outbursts of rage when he cannot find the words to say. Although they first clash, Fitz and Mack slowly start to bond over their work.

Creel gets in contact with his superiors at Hydra, who give him the new drop location for him to give them the Obelisk. Raina soon after approaches him, attempting to use Creel's frustration at Hydra's inability to help him with the Obelisk's infection to her advantage. Even though she offers him a rare substance in exchange, Creel refuses to hand over the device. The next day, Coulson receives a surprise call from her so she could give him Creel's location and prevent the Obelisk from falling into Hydra's hands. With this information, Coulson has Skye, May, Trip and Hunter go out to intercept Creel and retrieve the Obelisk. Trip is put in a sniper position while the rest are on the ground. Once Trip gets his sights on Creel, Hunter betrays the team and takes them out with his I.C.E.R. Creel's contact helps him get the infection under control, but Hunter fires at them from a close range with Trip's sniper rifle. The contact gets out of the way, while Creel turns his body into iron and the bullet bounces off him. Creel chases Hunter into a store and quickly overpowers him. Just as he is about to kill Hunter, Coulson comes out from behind him and puts the device Fitz and Mack came up on Creel's back, causing Creel to lose control of his powers and turn into stone.

During the commotion, Raina made off the Obelisk and brings it back to Skye's father. He orders her to pick up the device, and, despite her reluctance, she does so. The Obelisk does not affect her as it did everyone else who came into contact with hit, and instead starts to glow, making the runes on the device even clearer. Back at the Playground, Skye confides in May that she thinks something is wrong with Coulson. After brushing off Skye's concerns, May heads to Coulson's office. Something is wrong with him, as May says he's overdue for another "episode." Not much later, Coulson starts drawing the runes again, but this time May captures the ordeal on camera.

At the end of Hunter's 48 hours, Coulson shows up in the field to be turned over to Talbot. Before Talbot takes him into custody, Coulson gives him the petrified Creel instead. He offers to make a deal: S.H.I.E.L.D. will hand its enemies to Talbot and in exchange he gives them some "breathing room". Talbot laughs this off, stating that the new S.H.I.E.L.D. has not the artillery to take over a convenience store. Coulson proves him wrong as shows off his "arsenal," the cloaked Bus that had been flying over their heads the entire time, and calls it only the tip of the iceberg. Talbot then watches a Coulson flies away in another cloaked Quinjet.

Cast

Character	Actor
Director Phil Coulson	Clark Gregg
Agent Melinda May	Ming-Na Wen
Agent Skye	Chloe Bennet
Agent Leo Fitz	Iain De Caestecker
Agent Jemma Simmons	Elizabeth Henstridge
Lance Hunter	Nick Blood
Skye's father	Kyle MacLachlan
Agent Antoine Triplett	B.J. Britt
Raina	Ruth Negga
Agent Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie	Henry Simmons
Brigadier General Glenn Talbot	Adrian Pasdar
Sunil Bakshi	Simon Kassianides
Carl "Crusher" Creel	Brian Patrick Wade
Idaho	Wilmer Calderon
waitress	Carolina Espino
bartender	Cutter Garcia
soldier	Danny Pierce

Trivia

• Grant Ward does not appear in this episode, making this the first episode of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. where a main cast member is absent.
  
• The car crash at the beginning is supposed to be in Virginia, but there is a clear indication of its filming in Southern California, as the Artisans Way sign is still visible.

See Also

• 4 image(s) from Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2 2

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