Coulson takes part of the team to try and access the alien city in Puerto Rico while Skye and May try to get Raina before HYDRA takes her.
Tropes:
- Always Chaotic Evil: This time it's Played for Laughs. Diego, Bobbi's contact in Puerto Rico, is a politician so whether or not he's working for HYDRA, he still can't be trusted.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: HYDRA quinjets corner the Bus in midair and threaten to shoot it down if they don't allow Ward to board and take Raina. Which he does, also taking Skye. Then Whitehall orders it shot down anyway.
- Badass Family: The Koenig Brothers really prove their worth as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted after Skye's fight with Agent 33. She's got a bloody nose and a gash across her cheek.
- The Bermuda Triangle: When Triplett sees that the alien city is located beneath Puerto Rico and close offshore, he immediately believes it's responsible for the Bermuda Triangle. Coulson tells him it's not: SHIELD dealt with what was behind the Triangle back in the 1980s.
- Big Damn Heroes: After Agent 33 gets the upper hand on Skye, Hunter arrives just in time to tackle her to the floor.
- Blatant Lies: Mack claiming not to believe in ghosts.
- Call-Back: When Fitz-Simmons are both over-politely insisting the other speak first, Coulson eventually snaps at them that one of them should just start talking. It's a reversal of a few similar scenes in Season One, when he frequently had to interrupt to insist that one of them stop talking so he could understand what they were saying.
- Car Fu: When Raina tries to run for the HYDRA agents, a timely arrival by May in her big van takes them out.
- Continuity Nod:
- Agent 33 is still wearing (part of) May's face since May electrocuted her in Florida and fused the mask to her.
- The blue aliens are explicitly named as being the Kree, who made their first (living) appearance in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).
- The death of Christian Ward and his parents is brought up again, with a news report indicating that there may have been a third party present. May and Skye, watching, have already surmised that Grant was behind it.
- Cliffhanger: The episode ends with three:
- Agent 33, at Whitehall's command, orders the Bus to be shot down, with May, Triplett, Hunter, and the Koenig brothers on board.
- Coulson, Bobbi, Fitz-Simmons and (possibly) Mack are still in the entrance to the underground city, and it's uncertain whether the city's defenses will let them leave at this point, or do to the others what they did to Mack.
- Ward, Raina, and a team of HYDRA soldiers have kidnapped Skye, supposedly to take her to meet her father... but Raina insists that Skye bring her tablet (with the map of the city) along for the journey.
- Cryptic Background Reference: Mack and Bobbi's brief conversation about an "other thing" she doesn't want Hunter knowing about.
- Curbstomp Battle: Surprisingly averted in the fight between Skye and 33. Her training with Maye has paid off. That said, this is a woman who fought Maye herself to a standstill, so Skye still loses.
- Demonic Possession: Mack gets possessed by something when he brushes against the sigil on the floor, which turns his eyes red and gives him superhuman strength.
- Disney Death: Possessed Mack ends up plummeting down the hole in the floor that the team made after being shocked by Bobbi.
- Dutch Angle: Lots of them in the Nightmare Sequence Cold Open.
- Electronic Speech Impediment: There's a slight static in Agent 33's voice that comes and goes, apparently the result of damage to the mask.
- Empathic Environment: The weather in Puerto Rico is nice and sunny to start with, but there's a storm brewing as they prepare to enter the lost city.
- Foreshadowing: The nightmare tune in the Cold Open is a distorted music box version of Harry Dacre's "Daisy Bell".
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: HYDRA locates the Bus by tracking the transmitter that Coulson had implanted in Raina so S.H.I.E.L.D. could keep tabs on her. Ward, knowing Coulson's love for classic spy gear, had monitored old SHIELD frequencies used in the Cold War.
- Hope Spot: A very brief one occurs when Fitz is stopped from using live rounds on Mack as Bobbi knocks him out from behind with her electric batons. Mack then falls into the hole to his apparent death.
- Hypocritical Humor: The Koenig brothers, in reference to May and Agent 33, comment on how weird it would be for two people to be walking around with the same face.
- I Gave My Word: Ward honors his deal with May about not shooting down the Bus provided he's allowed to take both Raina and Skye. Whitehall, however, had no intention of honoring that deal and overrides him.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight:
- Attempted with Mack, but doesn't work. He did tell Coulson to run just before the alien possession completely took him over, but that's it.
- Skye briefly tries to convince Agent 33 to stand down so Team Coulson can help her. Agent 33 isn't interested.
- I Need to Go Iron My Dog: While waiting on the quintet with Fitz and Simmons, Mack says he needs to check on the landing gear and starts to leave. When Fitz calls him on it, he bluntly says it's because "the awkward silence is killing me."
- Invisibility Cloak: A fairly unique example — it's hidden in Sam Koenig's umbrella, is wide enough to hide at least two people comfortably and uses the same invisible tech as the Quinjet and the Bus.
- Invisible Subtle Difference: The Koenig brothers, on being mistaken for each other in separate incidents, each independently insist that there's a visible difference in their respective heights. It's played for laughs: each describes the other as "the shorter one".
- Literary Allusion Title: The title of the episode comes from Dante's Inferno, as part of the inscription over the Gates of Hell: 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here'.
- Meet the New Boss: Very much averted when Bobbi questions Coulson when he tells her his plan to destroy the alien temple to prevent anyone from using it as a weapon. When Bobbi points out Fury would have considered trying to capture it, Coulson points out he's not Fury. He's also not calculated the number of civilians killed as collateral damage he would consider acceptable, as Fury would have: to him, aside from hating the term, the only acceptable number is 0.
- Mistaken for Romance: Bobbi thinks it's obvious that Fitz and Simmons were an item.
- Moving the Goalposts: HYDRA tells the team on the Bus to hand over Raina or they'll be shot down. They hand Raina over. Ward then demands for Skye to be handed over as well, guaranteeing their safety if they do so (though, as Whitehall notes irritably later, that wasn't his call to make).
- Nightmare Sequence: The episode opens with Skye having one. She's running through an empty Playground calling for Coulson. She finds him in the ready room and barely stops him from touching something. Then Coulson and May abandon a baby in the ready room, despite her pleading not to. Then she wakes up.
- Noodle Incident: Whatever S.H.I.E.L.D. learned about the Bermuda Triangle back in the '80s.
- No-Sell: Coulson fires four ICER rounds into Possessed Mack to no effect.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Raina's reaction when she thinks she's talking to May only to realize it's actually Agent 33.
- Skye, once she realizes that the team will be attacked by the city's defenses since they aren't worthy.
- Pet the Dog: Ward leaves the Bus intact, against Whitehall's orders.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Mack's eyes turn blood-red after he gets possessed.
- The Reveal: The blue angels, and by extension the alien in the Guest House from which the GH-325 serum is derived, are named the Kree. Coulson's musings that Skye is not human due to using the GH serum with no side effects now have a new direction of meaning.
- Running Gag: Throughout the episode, people keep asking the Koenigs how many of them there are.
- Shapeshifter Mode Lock: A variation. Thanks to that electric shock to the eye, Agent 33 is now stuck with May's face, except she has a rather nasty scar to distinguish her.
- Shipper on Deck: Bobbi seems to be becoming something of a cheerleader for Fitz-Simmons, encouraging Simmons to try to patch up her relationship with Fitz at least to the point where they can be around one another again, while generally refusing to believe Simmons' assertion that there's nothing romantic going on there at all.
- Stunned Silence: Triplett's general expression during most of the conversation between the Koenig brothers.
- Sunken City: The alien city is, for the most part, located underwater off the coast of Puerto Rico. The only way in is a solitary air shaft that's on the very edge of the coast.
- Took a Level in Badass: Skye's fight with Agent 33 shows that she's learned quite a lot about fighting over the past year.
- Token Evil Teammate: Raina serves as a brief one to Team Coulson while in their custody.
- You Killed My Father: The Koenigs are none too pleased seeing Ward, knowing he killed their brother Eric.
