Awesome / Agents Of SHIELD Season Three

Malick: This god has outlived—
Coulson: I've met gods. Gods bleed.

— Phil Coulson lets Gideon Malick know of some previous acquaintances, "The Team".

Awesome Moments from Season Three of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..

For awesome moments from other seasons, go to the appropriate page.

• Season One
• Season Two
• Season Three
• Season Four
• Season Five
• Season Six
• Season Seven

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Laws of Nature

• The official entrance of Daisy Johnson as Quake, blasting away a group of soldiers from offscreen before they can kill Joey.
  • Mack and Lance effortlessly aiding her in helping Joey escape.
• The reveal of SHIELD's new aircraft, the Zephyr One◊.
• Rosalind luring Coulson and Lance into a trap by making them think they were trapping her. Also, Coulson and Lance consequently escaping after Coulson's found out what he needs to know. Of particular note, Coulson escapes his cuffs by taking off his prosthetic hand and clubbing the agent next to him with it. He's a resourceful man.
• When Daisy and Lincoln's combined powers only serve to slow Lash down, and only temporarily at that, Daisy adjusts tactics and aims her blasts at the floor beneath him. This opens a hole and sends Lash plummeting one story, saving them both.
• Leo Fitz, once the science boy who was ordered to take cover when the guns came out, lets himself be kidnapped by terrorists, gets them to agree to give him what he wants by making clear he'll die without opening the briefcase containing they want if they don't, and then, when it looks like he's handed them deadly technology and they're now going to kill him—actually, nope, the tech's not what they think it is. They're down and he gets away with the valuable artifact. Leo Fitz is now the most badass man in love on the planet.
• Jemma Simmons is no longer a mere Lab Rat either. She's spent six months, alone, on an alien planet on the other side of the galaxy, running from something that apparently tracks her blood. She appears to have nothing but the clothes on her back from when she was sucked into the Monolith, and she isn't known for her field agent skills. That's some serious Hunger Games shit right there.

Purpose In The Machine

• Everything about Fitz and Daisy rescuing Simmons.
  • Fitz diving into the Monolith portal to find Simmons. Thanks to the flare he had sent through earlier, she was actually close to the portal exit point when he went in, and he managed to get her back.
    • Two years ago, Fitz beat himself up because he couldn't jump out of the Bus to save Simmons. Now, he's jumped through a portal to rescue her.
  • Daisy uses her powers to open the Monolith and keep it open until Fitz is able to retrieve Simmons. This is really something awesome, because it causes her great pain to keep the portal open. The fact that she caused the Monolith to shatter into black sand is friggin' awesome too, because it looks like she shattered it by matching its natural frequency with the driving frequency she created.
  • The act becomes even more awesome in hindsight when you learn that HYDRA was originally created to bring an Inhuman back through the Monolith, and had been trying for thousands of years. Fitz and Daisy not only managed to bring Simmons back, but they did it in one day.
• Say what you will about his character, but Ward's "cutting the fat" from HYDRA is a very effective strategy. It eliminates wasteful, bloated heads and finds useful, loyal followers. Plus, that sports cars sequence was just friggin' cool.
• When Professor Randolph says that he intends to destroy the Monolith, Fitz unhesitatingly says that Randolph will have to Go Through Me. Randolph then reminds Fitz that he literally could go through Fitz if he so wished.
• Werner von Strucker, son of Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, stands up very well to Kebo torturing him, and this is amplified by the fact that he's not an agent of anything. He's just a pampered rich kid and yet, he turns the tables on his tormentor. Then he learns that Ward wanted this to happen so he would have someone to mold into a new HYDRA leader.

A Wanted (Inhu)Man

• May taking down three guys twice her size, with ease.
• Hunter beating Spud in their Fight Club style fight.
• Lincoln evading the ATCU for days on end, despite the full court press they're pulling with manpower and media coverage. That trick he did with the transmission towers was a sight to see.
• After Coulson and Mack's attempt to turn Lincoln over to the ATCU to protect Daisy fails when Lincoln escapes, Rosalind and Banks decide to take Daisy as a consolation prize. Cue Mack pointing a gun right between Banks eyes and saying that they'll have to Go Through Me, and despite Rosalind saying it's Nothing Personal, Coulson vows that if they take Daisy, the ATCU will be going to war with S.H.I.E.L.D. And they'll lose.

Devils You Know

• Lash ambushing the ATCU truck carrying Dwight Frye, and the ensuing fight.
• Coulson lifting Frye by the neck using his robot hand and then threatening to use his laser fingers to get him to cooperate. And it works. All the while Rosalind looks on with an "I'm impressed" look.

4, 722 Hours

• Much like Fitz over the past six months, Simmons proves herself absolutely capable of surviving in the field, adapting and training more as she goes and using whatever skills she already has to her utmost advantage.
• "The only source of food...thinks I'm food." She makes a crude club, wades into the water and is pulled under. She emerges with the dead alien plant in her other hand. "You're dinner, biatch!"

Among Us Hide...

• Bobbi proving that she's fully recovered by not only managing to pass May's Secret Test of Character, but defeating Kebo in a fight later on.
  • Credit must go to Kebo for giving Bobbi a run for her money, even basically no-selling blows from her batons and then disarming and then almost drowning her.
  • Bobbi's simple yet awesome one-liner before she wins:
    Kebo: I've taken down men three times your size, girl. What makes you think you can beat me?
    Bobbi: Experience. [electrocutes him]
• Andrew keeping the secret about him being Lash from even May is certainly an impressive feat.

Chaos Theory

• When Lash throws Rosalind off a high ledge, Daisy does a quick experiment by using her powers to cushion the fall, resulting in Rosalind being completely unhurt, to everyone's surprise.
• Lincoln deducing all on his own that Lash is a SHIELD agent, and that Mack is off the suspect list as they fought Lash together. Then all he needs is a quick tour around SHIELD to determine the exact identity.
• Lincoln pulling a Kirk Summation on Andrew by pointing out that most of the Inhumans Lash killed were his friends; post transition, fully blended, and thus not dangerous. When Lash tries to justify it, Lincoln just blasts him.
• Lash's rampage, as much Nightmare Fuel as it was, was still cool to watch, with him going through everyone in his way like a hot knife through butter,
• May getting through to Andrew through a Go Through Me, then shooting Andrew to knock him into the containment module.

Many Heads, One Tale

• Fitz and Simmons finally delving into their UST issues, culminating in The Big Damn Kiss as their passions for each other boil over in the middle of an argument. Overcoming Twice Shy is always impressive.
• Grant Ward got quite the showing in this episode. He starts by cutting through Malick's men like they were paper, successfully extracts the location of Strucker's vault from them, and manages to get there — by himself — despite being presumably hunted by S.H.I.E.L.D. and Malick. Malick is so impressed, he genuinely offers to work with Ward right then and there.
  • Plus, Malick's man who refuses to talk, despite being visibly terrified of the blowtorch Ward is holding up to his face. Ward even congratulates him after one of the other guys breaks.
  • The lone mook sporting a Bald of Evil manages to give Ward quite a fight and lasts the longest.
• Coulson's plan to scope out the ATCU is brilliant. He uses Lash's containment unit, Skye's hacking, Bobbi's spying, and Hunter's ability to "waste time and run his mouth" to uncover the Science Division's darkest secrets. All the while, he tricks their leader into walking into a trap, completely isolated, and no choice but to come completely clean. Finally, he's been working towards this ever since Rosalind said "Tahiti", or in other words, since they first met. Stuff like this is why he's the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Closure

• Coulson reminds everyone that being Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't just involve being a chessmaster when immediately after Rosalind Price is killed, he takes down two HYDRA mooks in hand-to-hand, before improvising a flash bomb with a bottle of air freshener and a few candles and then killing three more mooks on his way out of the building, including a Super Window Jump.
• How does Team Coulson plan to draw Ward towards them? By kidnapping Thomas, who had grown up to work for a bank.
  • When Coulson calls Ward to show the kidnapped Thomas, Ward calls Coulson on his bluff and knows he won't actually hurt him. Then Hunter puts a gun to Thomas's head. Ward cracks. To twist the knife further, Coulson immediately hangs up on him. When Ward calls back, he sets himself up to have his location traced.
  • Thomas gets a tiny CMoA as well. He asks to talk to Ward while Bobbi traces the call, and he uses the opportunity to tell Ward exactly what he thinks of him by calling him out, especially on the horrific way he murdered their parents and older brother.
• Despite knowing exactly how far Ward is willing to go — and not knowing how far Malick might be — Simmons faces them with open defiance, meeting Ward's attempts at intimidation with verbal barbs. Even when he moves onto outright torture, she doesn't crack.
  Simmons: I'm not afraid of you.
  Simmons: Please just shut up.
  Simmons: You really are the king idiot.
• Likewise, when Simmons rushes to Fitz's side as HYDRA sets up the portal, Fitz tells Giyera to back off or the deal's off. Giyera doesn't move an inch closer.
• Coulson diving from the Quinjet into the portal without even a second of hesitation. He jumps out of an airplane through an alien portal the size of a coffee table from hundreds of feet in the air. Motherfucker has brass balls and, apparently, paratrooper AND formation skydiving training to manage that.

Maveth

• Lash makes his first human kills — and his first kills, period, since HYDRA intercepted him from the ATCU. The Dog Bites Back, indeed.
• The Inhumans in action: Lincoln blacking out the base with ease, Daisy's Pre-Mortem One-Liner before taking out a couple of HYDRA Mooks, and Joey discovering he's a walking bulletproof vest.
• Coulson killing Ward by crushing his heart after their brawl.
• Fitz bringing down It!Will via blasting him with a flare gun.
• "It," aka the Inhuman HYDRA was founded to rescue, shows its bona fides as a true threat by not only surviving everything Fitz shoots him with, but then possessing Ward's corpse, getting through the Monolith in what had to be seconds to spare, and escaping the compound while it was under missile attack with no one the wiser.
  • Special mention has to go to the performance by Brett Dalton, as even without saying a thing, everything about him is so different from Ward that it's clear what's going on the instant he appears onscreen.
• Outgunned, outnumbered, and under time constraints, Mack leads the team to rescue Phil and Fitz, destroy a Hydra base, and get every member of his team back home. Special credit goes to Mack, who didn't ask to be put in charge, but still managed to step up in a major way.
• Bobbi casually saying "Copy that," before beating up a dozen HYDRA goons to secure the portal room.
• Moment of Awesome for Brett Dalton when Ward shows up back on Earth. Even without knowing the context, that Ward was killed and the creature on Maveth possesses dead people, you can just see that Grant Ward doesn't live there anymore. Without saying a word, just standing there, Dalton effectively communicates that he's now playing an entirely different character.

Bouncing Back

• President Ellis setting things up so that the ATCU is a front for SHIELD, unofficially giving them government sanction without having to deal with the public backlash against SHIELD's current bad reputation.
• Elena is a self-taught Inhuman. When Joey mentions training as a perk of working for SHIELD, she says and has demonstrated that she's already taken care of that. Every other Inhuman so far has required a community and facility for training; not Elena.
• The team, including new ally Elena, effortlessly storming the corrupt police station in order to rescue Bobbi and Hunter and capture Lucio, the evil Inhuman working with them.
• Evil though they may be, you have to give HYDRA credit as they then swoop in and easily grab Lucio, then exit before SHIELD can do anything.
• Coulson tricking Malick into taking a tapped phone call, allowing SHIELD to track down numerous HYDRA front businesses, which Malick has to shut down before they can get to them, costing him billions.

Inside Man

• Hive No Selling Lucio's attempt to use his powers on him, and then bending him to his will.
• Talbot revealing that he anticipated Malick double-crossing him, when Creel (who really has had a Heel–Face Turn) busts in according to plan and saves him and Coulson.
• Creel gets a second one by saving Hunter's life, Neck Snapping the Hydra mook about to shoot him.
• Bobbi tosses her batons at a Hydra mook, who ducks out of the way. As he gets back up, Bobbi slides across the table separating them, grabs the batons as they come back to her, and smacks the mook into a gong before he can do anything.
• May gets an Offscreen Moment of Awesome — she goes after the truck containing Talbot's kidnapped son, and when we next see her, she's driving the undamaged truck, with the Hydra agent who was driving earlier sitting unconscious next to her.
• The team's fight with Creel before Talbot clears things up shows some impressive creativity with his powers. Faced with electricity-shooting Lincoln, he grabs a tire to turn himself into non-conductive rubber. May fixes that by hitting him in the head with a steel pipe, at which point his head instinctively turns to steel, and Lincoln zaps him before he's able to change it back.

Parting Shot

• Bobbi saving Hunter (and everyone else) by calmly walking up to General Androvich and shooting him repeatedly, then dropping her gun and surrendering.
• Bobbi and Hunter's Heroic Sacrifice: They're faced with a no-win situation: Either the American president acknowledges SHIELD exists and secures their freedom at the cost of potentially starting a war with Russia, the American President acknowledges SHIELD exists but disavows the organisation to secure US-Russian relations and leave them to their fate, or the president denies SHIELD exist and Hunter and Bobbi are framed for espionage and terrorism. No matter what, either they lose, SHIELD loses, or the United States loses, so what do they do? They allow themselves to be disavowed; the president is able to deny SHIELD's existence and maintain relations with Russia and their actions at least prompt the Russian Prime Minister to spare their lives, but they're now burnt, unable to work for any legitimate spy agency, and cursed to be followed and monitored for the rest of their lives. It's a huge sacrifice as it means they can't even say goodbye to their friends, but they did it with almost no hesitation to prevent potential war. Why? Because they are the Shield that protects people, and that's what they do.

Watchdogs

• Nitramine that's stable enough to be used as a gel projectile. It's scary stuff but the results are indeed amazing.
• After talking about it since the beginning of Season 3, Mack finally creates the shotgun axe — well, it was a meat cleaver, but beggars can't be choosers.

Spacetime

• Daisy gets another single shot battle, and this time Chloe Bennet gets to show what she can do with two working arms.
• Charles' Heroic Sacrifice, saving Daisy by giving Malick a future vision, which then causes Malick to kill him. Then he leaves the fight, looking completely shaken by whatever he saw.
• Malick's Curb-Stomp Battle against Daisy with a strength-enhancing exoskeleton. After almost a whole season of seeing him do nothing but planning and commanding, he finally jumps into action himself.
  • Using the same exoskeleton, he crushes a guy's skull.
• Despite being heavily beat up, Daisy managed to summon enough strength in the time Charles bought her to blast Malick with enough power to wreck his exoskeleton.

Paradise Lost

• Catch Daisy Johnson by surprise with a mine? Fine. She'll use a focused vibration column to keep it active, then get out of the way as it detonates. Still a whole unmapped minefield to contend with? She'll detonate them all with a wide-field blast of seismic activity.
• HYDRA's Inhuman Giyera has a couple of awesome moments in this episode.
  • His entire fight with Melinda May. In conditions where his powers were useless, he nearly won a fight against one of SHIELD's best close combat fighters.
  • How did Giyera escape from the containment cell aboard the Zephyr? He snuck a buckle from outside the containment cell and used it to pry the cell doors open.
  • Special mention goes to him stopping Coulson's punch by controlling Coulson's prosthetic hand and then knocking him out.
  • Surrounded by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on board the Zephyr? No problem. He used his telekinesis to seize control of the Zephyr's controls, putting the entire command plane into a steep dive, then pulled up at the very last moment and knocking almost everyone out except May. Then when May called for help from Daisy and Lincoln, he walked over casually and dispatched her too, taking out the majority of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s command structure in one fell swoop. Dangerous? Without a doubt. Awesome? Absolutely.

The Team

• We finally get to see the Secret Warriors in action and they. Are. Badass. The entire rescue scene is one long Moment of Awesome for everyone involved.
  • Daisy demonstrates why she's in charge. First she comes up with a solid plan of attack on the Hydra base, getting them in by literally blasting her way through fifty feet of solid rock. She makes the sound tactical decision of sending Elena and Joey, the two less experienced members, together to back each other, while she and Lincoln split up. Then she fights her way through the base solo, hacks her way through Hydra's security systems effortlessly and finishes it off by dealing Giyera a One-Hit KO.
  • Lincoln gets a chance to show the benefits that SHIELD training gives you by similarly soloing his way through the base, seamlessly blending his powers and martial arts to take out every HYDRA solider in the way, and being the one to finally capture Gideon Malick.
  • Joey and Elena work together seamlessly, with Joey using his powers for defense and Elena neutralizing whole squads in seconds. Despite both of them being relatively inexperienced compared to Daisy and Lincoln, they stay professional throughout the mission, even casually quipping about the number of guys they'll be fighting and the weirdness of the situation. Extra points for them being the ones to rescue the rest of the team, and Joey being the one to kill Lucio (even if it did send him into a Heroic BSoD for the rest of the episode).
• Daisy shows that, most of the time, she's holding back. Using a sustained blast, she shakes apart the entire hangar on her way out of the base. She also easily kills Malick with her powers.
• Coulson gets a badass line when talking to Malick:
  Malick: This god has outlived—
  Coulson: I've met gods. Gods bleed.
• Hive gets one for a stunning plan. When the Secret Warriors stage their rescue, he doesn't try to stop them. He sneaks up on their leader, infects her, and then watches them fly away with a Trojan horse. He then uses Daisy to break up the Secret Warriors, kill Gideon Malick (liability who outlived his usefulness), steal the Kree tech sphere along with the terrigen, and then crash the Playground.
• Gideon Malick, of all people, gets one in this episode. After losing his daughter to Hive, losing faith in the organization he was groomed from birth to believe in, being captured by rookie SHIELD Agents and finally killed off in SHIELD custody, things have never looked worse for him. Despite this, he manages to Face Death with Dignity when Hive's agent comes for him, and pulls off a major posthumous Taking You with Me on Hydra. Ladies and gentlemen....Do not mess with Malick's family.

The Singularity

• The hangar door is unable to open all the way, leaving a breach not quite wide enough for the Zephyr to fly through. May solves this by flying the plane sideways out of the hangar.
• May coming in to help Lincoln fight Alicia's clones.
  May: Lesser species, my ass!
• Simmons giving Hive a "The Reason You Suck" Speech and shooting him multiple times. She did say she was going to shoot "Ward" some episodes ago.
• Fitz was rather physical himself to explain his side of the situation. Too bad Daisy showed up...
• Fitz and Simmons being the ones to get somewhere before Hive.
• Coulson is revealed to have put an energy shield into his robot hand, purely for the Rule of Cool.
  Coulson: I thought the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. should have a shield. Fitz agreed.
• Fitz and Simmons finally taking care of their Unresolved Sexual Tension.
• While the scene is relatively subdued, Talbot taking all of the intelligence that Malick gave to Coulson and using it to launch seventeen simultaneous strikes against HYDRA bases across the globe. The ATCU is no longer a Redshirt Army.

Failed Experiments

• May plays James like a fiddle. He's practically eating out of her hand due to her sweet talk and ego stroking, and when she has the info she needs, she effortlessly knocks him out.
• Hive might be creepy as hell, but his The Dog Bites Back moment where he fights one of the Kree who created him was pretty badass.
  Hive: I'm not that frightened hunter anymore.
• We also see an(other) example of just how powerful Daisy can be when she really uses her powers to their fullest. She fights a Kree Reaper and defeats them without killing them; snaps their spine.

Emancipation

• Hive finally getting his ass handed to him in combat by Lash, the one Inhuman designed to combat him.
  • To elaborate, Lash kicks things off by shoving Hive right off a ledge. Hive's a little winded by this, but all he sees so far is another strong Inhuman to turn to his side, so he tries to infect Lash with his parasites...and Lash just burns them up with his energy attack. As the smug look finally falls from Hive's face, Lash knocks his ass flat with his signature energy attack to the chest, leaving Hive gaping at the smoking hole it leaves. It was at this moment Hive knew he fucked up.
• Lash's abilities to 'hunt down other Inhumans' turn out to be specifically aimed at Hive, meaning he can cure those infected by Hive and be immune to the same parasites. He's able to effortlessly take out all of Hive's slaves as well as grievously wound Hive himself, while freeing Daisy from the sway.
• Lash killing the superhuman Alpha Primitives with his bare hands.
• James channels Ghost Rider when he faces off against the Watchdogs and is able to turn them from confident militants to 'scared pups' in a heartbeat.
• James gets another one when he's able to kill Lash through a sneak attack! Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, thy name is James.
• May and Lincoln get a moment during the latter's escape, managing to trick the entire base and Daisy into believing he wanted out, when in reality, they were preparing to send Lash instead. They did this without a word spoken to anyone except Coulson.

Absolution

• Talbot and Fitz using motion capture to bluff the kill code for the warhead into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s hands just in time to disable the warhead. Too bad this'd probably be a short episode were Hive's plans to be foiled so easily, just like that.
• Radcliffe completes his Heel–Face Turn by shooting a Primitive and saving May.
• Elena completes the reassembled memory machine simply by watching Mack, and Lincoln fries Hive's brain without Hive even realizing it.
• The team has had all manner of trouble destroying Hive thus far — gunshots don't even faze him and even grenades are quickly healed. So this time, they attack his mind with the memory device — Hive has centuries of minds and memories stored up from the people he's consumed, and the device brings all of them to the surface. Even after the device is shut down, Hive is reduced to a babbling, incoherent mess that leaves his henchmen wondering, "What the actual hell?"
  • And how they finally take care of Hive: they might not be able to kill him, but they can freeze him and leave him trapped and useless in the same suspension gel that the ATCU was using to contain inhumans earlier in the season. The plan goes so perfectly that the heroes can only stand there in awe of what they've just accomplished.
• Hive's backup plan deserves mention, he manages to completely turn the tables from him being the prisoner to a considerable number of SHIELD agents being turned into primitives and trapping the others, while using SHIELD's equipment to further his plan.

Ascension

• Thanks to Lash's influence, Daisy is now immune to the sway. Since she can no longer join Hive, she takes out her frustrations on him instead, and she integrates her powers in hand-to-hand combat. Unfortunately, Hive is still Nigh-Invulnerable, as he can even No-Sell having his skeleton crushed.
  Hive: Bones don't hold me up. I'm held up by all the parts working as one.
• Yo-Yo takes a bullet for Mack, and when he says she shouldn't have, she replies that she was trying to catch them. Considering she only got hit by one round and there were a lot fired, that means that she did, and just missed one.
• Simmons, all alone with primitives running through the base, manages to avoid them and understand how they function enough to cripple their vision, leaving the whole team able to move freely. If not for her, they'd never have been able to react in time.
• Coulson shows that he's able to learn from his enemies, first showing the upgrades he made to his prosthetic hand inspired by Radcliff's assistant, then by using the hologram trick Blake tried on him to distract Hive (who, unlike Coulson, does not see through it). The latter ends with him gloating and gloriously trolling Hive, quoting A New Hope.
• During his conversation with Coulson, Hive fully reveals his true face at last, and it's uncannily accurate to his comic book counterpart. He also explains how he plans to impersonate Coulson, who agrees it would probably work.
  • It's also worth noting that the CG for Hive's face is some of the most gorgeous ever put on television, falling well under Visual Effects of Awesome, even if it's only for a few seconds.
• For the second season in a row, Fitz kills The Dragon. Unlike with Gordon last season, however, this time was completely calculated on his part, getting Giyera to drop his guard long enough to blindside him with a cloaked handgun that he built specifically to kill Giyera. Never hurt Jemma Simmons, because Leo Fitz will make you regret it.
• Mack finally achieves his season-long goal:
  Coulson: Now all we have to do is decide who goes, and who stays to hold off a wave of primates and Hive the Terrible.
  Mack: Well, I'd like to be in a fight. [Beat, reveals shotgun axe, a real one this time] I built this damn thing for a reason.
• The fight itself is pretty awesome. The Oner with the whole team involved fighting Primitives, including Non-Action Guy Fitz and Simmons.
  • Simmons uses a crowbar in the fight, much like a certain other scientist.
    • FitzSimmons didn't just join the fight against the primitives, they took one down together.
  • Mack gets to break in his shotgun-axe on the primitives. It's as effective as he had hoped for.
  • May takes down several primitives with nothing more than her bare hands.
• Lincoln giving his life to fly the Quinjet carrying the warhead and Hive into the atmosphere, saving humanity and preventing Daisy from sacrificing herself.
• You gotta give Hive credit for facing death with dignity. Once he realizes that there's no way out, he calmly accepts his end, even becoming reflective and talking about it with Lincoln, almost like they're friends.
• Post-Time Skip, we have Daisy evading SHIELD by using her power to fly (or at least, leap a tall building In a Single Bound).

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