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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Identity and Change [4x17] ✦ Watchalong Reaction & Review (Patreon)

Published:
2025-05-03 01:06:14
Edited:
2025-05-22 17:13:04
Imported:
2026-08
Tags:

Content

Happy Friday everyone! Things are getting more and more intense in this part of the story. [Direct link here.]

Have a wonderful start to your weekend!

✦ KL

Files

Agents of SHIELD: Identity and Change [4x17] ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction

Comments

Ray H

Wandavision references this episode and Phil Coulson’s obsession with mind control soap in one of the commercials for “Hydra Soak”.

Sean Ellingham

Beware the blue soap! Coulson is definitely fun here - not that he isn't in the real world, but it's in a different way here - nerdier, less jaded and more enthusiastic because he's not been exposed to SHIELDs gadgets/methods, and of course he's a little crazy/a bit of a conspiracy theorist. Honestly though, given he has fragments of memories from the real world which totally conflict with his Framework life, it makes sense he'd exhibit what would appear to be 'crazy' tendencies. We also find out he was married for a time in this world - does that mean he was married to Audrey? I suspect not given the clipping of a cellist in his folder of memory fragments last episode, but we don't know for sure. With the confirmation of Hope being alive (which TBF we did essentially already know from 4x15) and the reveal that Mace is *actually* an Inhuman in this world, we now know the 'fixed' regrets for everyone except Fitz. We also now know that AIDA was responsible for fixing the regrets, which since Radcliffe was in the Framework when Mace, Fitz, Coulson and Mack 'became residents' in turn means she's the one who chose *what* to fix - at least for everyone except May, since we saw that get established in 4x11. May and Fitz are both uncomfortably different here - May has been so hardened by the Cambridge Incident that she's willing to consider a child as a dangerous threat without any evidence, and Fitz is not only willing to experiment on Inhumans but also to kill an unarmed woman in cold blood for essentially no reason.

Sean Ellingham

Incidentally, I thought the review seemed a little weird, but it took a while for me to figure out why - no background music *really* changes the feel!

Yoshi1990

I'm seeing why a lot of people like this season. Poor Fitz and Simmons relationship can't get a break. Something is always tearing it apart. Not gona lie, evil Fitz is pretty cool.

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I know, I made a mistake and forgot to upload my song to the cloud (I am editing these watchalongs on my laptop out of town). So had to go without music cause using anything else at this point feels weird!

Christopher simeon

The Framework arc is both loved and hated by fans. The environment and the color just feels so depressing not to mention the absolute pounding our team is getting right now. This season has been a mix of the mystical with the technical and the Framework is basically "Hell' for our characters. The worst things in the world for them have manifested here so as an audience we absolutely hate it but it is interesting to see this world and how differently things could have been. The writers have put many Eastereggs from previous seasons as well as the MCU in it. For example. The newspaper in the beginning Coulson scene is hard to read but if you manage to it gives an explanation on what happened to the Avengers in this world. They were called to Cambridge to stop the Bahrain girl Katya but got mind controlled and killed. Madame Hydra aka Ophelia is a comic character (I will post pictures in chat) she was never Aida in the comics that was an original idea from the show to create this storyline. Now Ophelia is very interesting she is a simulated consciousness created by Aida placing herself in the Framework. Aida has observed the actions of all our characters this season as well as the villains in order to emulate human behavior as best she can. So is she really Feeling angry at Radcliffe or is she acting angry BECAUSE if she were human she would be angry and she is emulating it?

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I agree that Coulson is fun and it seems like Clark Gregg had fun with it. Fitz and May are very different. 🫠 But in a way still awesome to see these characters so different. It's stressful but entertaining.

Sean Ellingham

I've seen more than a few female reactors say that they find evil Fitz really attractive!

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He's physically attractive in evil mode because of the outfit choice. But nope, his regular self is 1000x more attractive in every way than this evil guy. 🥰

Sean Ellingham

From the comments I remember, the suit is a big part of it, but there's also another aspect: Leopold exudes a level of confidence and self-belief that regular Fitz doesn't really have - our Fitz has a lot more self-doubt.

Calculatus Eliminatus

On the subject of regrets fixed. In 4x15 LMD Coulson, talking to LMayD but reflecting Coulson's thoughts. He Asked May if she knew what her biggest regret is. We know her regret was not saving the girl. (which by the way was first mentioned in 1x8 when Coulson asked May what she told the trapped between dimensions guy, She said she told him the same thing Coulson told her, "Let the girl go". Then in the next season, we see what happened in Bahrain). Coulson says to LMayD, he wonders what life would have been like if he never joined Shield, so that's his regret. Boom, school teacher. Mack is easy, regretting losing hope. Mace, well, remember when the "superior" had him. He said, I do have one regret, that he didn't have powers of his own so he could kick his ass. So here, Mace really is the Patriot with inhuman powers. So, what was Fitz's regret. We shall see. And I'll just say again, though I rarely comment. This show is fantastic about paying off nearly every part of the show history or a seemingly simple line in an episode long forgotten. They are so good about it. And you never know when a small even from S1, plus small event from S2 might show up as a big event in S4 or who know what the future seasons may hold. I do think that way too many people give the show grief for how S1 had to start, but this is as solid as any of the other Marvel TV shows, on a much smaller budget and across 22 episodes. I'm glad you gave it a chance.

Thadman

Pretty much everyone at the time (and you here) said about the Framework that they hate it here. It always reminded me of that Far Side comic with the two guys in Hell, surrounded by flames, and one guy is leaning toward the other guy and whispering, "I hate this place." 😆

Ivan Chicharro

Man, Iain de Caestecker was already great as awkward good guy Fitz. But he's incredible as a villain. The Doctor is terrifying and the scene where he kills Agnes breaks you heart. This man deserved an Emmy for this show.

Thadman

Madame Hyrda in the comics has green hair and if you look very closely, you can see her hair is tinted slightly green here. It looks black, but it's like it's got green highlights or something. I didn't know about Madame Hydra in the comics until someone at the time of airing mentioned it and posted pictures of her, then I went back and looked at "Ophelia's" hair and said, "Oh, COOL!" Also, when Simmons asked how AIDA could've killed Radcliffe in the real world, you said "The Darkhold," but strictly speaking, it wasn't the Darkhold. She was going with her programming that Radcliffe gave her and she found a loophole. I had to think about it after it aired because they went through it so quickly where she tells him about the paradox/conflict of her programming and he actually gave her the loophole needed to solve, as she said, to problems at once. She's not supposed to kill humans (after Nathanson) and him specifically, but she calculated that humans have a tendency to change their minds about things and have regret later. She thought "What if Radcliffe later on changes his mind about The Framework when he's told me the top priority is the continued existence of the Framework?" He says that he would never change his mind on the Framework because building a perfect world where people could live happily forever is his life's work. She said that she couldn't be sure that EVENTUALLY he probably would change his mind and shut down this artificial world and he told her that he doesn't consider it artificial or fake and that it is AS REAL as the physical world because what the world is comes down to perception, so if all you perceive is this artificial/manufactured world, then that IS reality. That's when she said that you've given me the solution to the problem. Kill his body and stick his consciousness in the Framework where he will live forever because he just told her that life in the Framework is every bit as real as the physical world. I think the only thing we can say the Darkhold did for sure was to give her the knowledge to create such a world, but I also suspect that it may have given her a...curiosity or desire (?) to fully understand what it means to be the humans that she emulates and the Darkhold picked up on that curiosity and showed her how to achieve those feelings. That's just speculation on my part though.

Thadman

Yeah, that trick AIDA pulled on Daisy got us all. We did the same as you and cheered that Mack remembered Daisy and then our hearts fell when we find out it was a ploy. It seems that AIDA suspected that Jemma and Daisy were their outside/real world counterparts and not simply their avatars, so she set that trap to make sure it actually was them that snuck in and was mucking up her world. Even at that, you could say that she's going on her base programming to protect the Framework at all costs, BUT she is still manipulating the world's course here and there and turned the world's forces against them. 'Cause...they don't belong there? Maybe she thinks that's the way to protect it, but it seems more like she's doing it so that she can get her goals of feeling those feeling like "joy" that she told the Superior after she made him an LMD body controlled by his real brain. (Such a weird sentence to say) 😀 The fact that she doesn't have feelings makes it so that she can do things in that world that hurt people, but since it's all in service of protecting and prolonging that Framework world, it's the right thing to do. She doesn't have feelings and only the morality that could be given to her by Radcliffe and Fitz in the short time before this all went to hell. She was still new and learning about humans so she hasn't learned and internalized more complex things like morality and ethics. It's why she can be head of HYDRA and not think it's wrong. HYDRA is the controlling force in this world, so she put herself at the top of that in order to keep control. I don't think she has an opinion about right or wrong, either way. But, when we take out morality, ethics and compassion, that can easily be defined as "evil." It's my favorite definition of evil, not as some abstract or ethereal entity, but the lack of compassion. That's for beings capable of such feelings, but what if it's regarding beings that don't have that capacity? Is it still evil or is it just...how they exist?

Cyrinil

Small correction: I don't think it's clear at all whether Madame Hydra can hurt people in the framework. She uses phrases like "I need to find her and expose anyone helping her" or "find them" or "they mean to destroy us" but she never directly orders anyone harmed or attempts to harm anyone herself. Even when the firefight starts on Radcliffe's island, she simply walks away. Fitz chose to shoot Agnes "on his own" and Aida never suggested it. I don't actually know if she's capable of suggesting it.

Christopher simeon

Your right Aida is meant to protect everyone plugged into the framework. The only one she can hurt is Radcliffe and that is because he was dumb enough to suggest that hurting one life to protect more lives as a last resort is ok.

Christopher simeon

Yes the dark hold gave her knowledge to achieve her purpose. Which is to be a flawless emulator of course just like Radcliffe intended.

Thadman

I wouldn't say he was necessarily wrong with that statement, but is more high-concept philosophy and not something you should be telling a fledgling intelligence without much discussion.

Thadman

Yeah, she doesn't directly order harm, but indirectly she does 'cause she knows the society and their protocols, so saying something like "they're trying to destroy us" or whatever, she knows what the response will be.

Tesh

man, i forgot just how phenomenal this season was, every episode is better than i remember, and yea the acting is phenomenal on all fronts, its just so good. thanks for the reaction and thank you for a reason to go back and rewatch this phenomenal show.

Christopher simeon

How could I forget to mention the Ward Eastereggs. The Hive mention of course but also Ward in 1x21 had a flashback to him making a choice to shoot his dog. While in the present it was parallel to him killing Fitzsimmons with a focus on Fitz in particular as he dropped them in the ocean. Now Ward doesn't take the shot here and it's the wrong choice from his perspective and Fitz is basically in his shoes having to make a choice to kill a innocent and making the wrong one.

Onno Smits

The student that interrupts Coulson at the start of this episode, complaining about her dad; That's actually Clark Gregg's actual daughter! She got a little cameo in this. 😊 The names carved into the bricks in the base, signifying the dead agents, are all writers and crew of the show. The one that stands out most is "G. Kitson". George Kitson actually wrote this episode. I love this whole Framework arc! It's so unsettling and suspenseful, but also great to see this "alternative" version of history. There are some MAGA parallels which are... even more poignant now in 2025. 😬 Did the font of the timer in the top left change? 🧐

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The font did change, it's brief cause I'm editing away from home at the moment and forgot to carry over my timer file and my signature song!