Ruby finally gets her chance to face off against her most hated rival—Daisy Johnson.
Tropes in this episode:
- Anguished Declaration of Love: May finally tells Coulson that she loves him during their argument about his impending death, figuring it will shut him up.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Werner asks Ruby a very potent question: she could easily tear her mom to shreds if she wanted to, so why doesn't she? Ruby answers that she doesn't know. Turns out it's because, for all their arguing and differing ideas about their goals, she does love her mother.
- Big Damn Heroes: Daisy manages to stop Ruby from killing Coulson and Talbot.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted in two cases:
- Ruby still has a cut on her lip from the fight with Creel in the previous episode. After her fight with Daisy, she gets some very noticeable bruises on her forehead and cheek.
- Elena drives Ivanov and herself through a window on the second floor of the HYDRA facility. While Ivanov takes the brunt of the impact, Elena still gets a few cuts from going through the glass.
- Bond One-Liner: Elena, after killing Ivanov.Elena: Who's superior now?
- Brought Down to Badass: Yo-Yo can't use her superspeed when fighting Ivanov (her arms would need to be recalibrated to avoid intense side effects), but she's still a trained agent with incredibly strong robot arms.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Ruby does this to her mom, saying how she never gave her a choice in her own life and everything she's done has never been good enough. Hale's essentially just another Whitehall. Hale is understandably horrified by the realization.
- Closest Thing We Got: Since Jemma is off doing her thing with Fitz and Yo-Yo, Piper is forced to fall back on her incomplete field medic training to take care of Deke's gunshot wounds, by talking Mack through the surgery.Mack: What about anasthesia?
Piper: Well, he's already unconscious, and I never got to that chapter. - Crazy-Prepared: Even though she had no reason to believe it would pay off, Hale put Talbot through the Faustus method just in case he ever escaped.
- Curb Stomp Cushion: Daisy's powers make Ruby's loss to her pretty much inevitable, but Ruby performs admirably hand-to-hand and even manages to stop Daisy from quaking her at one point by slicing her palm. Daisy just uses the other hand and quakes her into a tree, ending the fight. Nevertheless, Ruby seems somehow convinced that she still could have won, had her mother not forced Daisy to flee with Deke.
- Despair Event Horizon: While nearly freezing to death alongside Coulson, Talbot is just short of breaking down, blaming himself for not resisting Hale, and thinking of himself as a traitor to his country, as well as his family.
- Destination Defenestration: Yo-Yo ends her fight with Ivanov by tackling him out a window.
- Didn't Think This Through: Both Fitz and Simmons realize that they might have been too overconfident, and end up being captured by Ruby and Werner.
- Downer Ending: Ruby and Werner kidnap FitzSimmons to force them to repair the Particle Infusion Chamber. And Talbot has been activated as a Manchurian Agent within the Lighthouse.
- Flat "What": Mack's reaction when a drugged-up Deke starts ranting about how much he wants to kiss Daisy.
- Foreshadowing: Ivanonv is an LMD, so how could Hale, who knows this, use him to test the chamber on human flesh?
- Frontline General: For the first time ever, Hale is seen leading a strike team herself, along with wielding her own M4 carbine.
- Hope Spot: FitzSimmons have just survived certain death thanks to Yo-Yo destroying Ivanov's Mechs at an opportune moment. Then Strucker and Ruby show up and they're back to square one.
- Humiliation Conga: Ruby losing to Daisy was bad enough, but her mom seeing it was even more humiliating for her.
- I Have Your Wife:
- Ruby threatens to kill Simmons to force Fitz to repair the Infusion Chamber. He complies, arguing You Can't Fight Fate.
- The Stinger reveals that Talbot's family is also held hostage.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: At one point, Fitz and Simmons are surrounded by at least half a dozen robots armed with assault rifles (while they only have normal handguns, mind you) and none of the bots comes even close to hitting them. Maybe the timeline really is preventing them from dying.
- Internal Reveal: Yo-Yo tells FitzSimmons what her future self told her— trying to save Coulson is why the team fails to save the Earth.
- In Vino Veritas: After his surgery, Deke is high on a cocktail of painkillers and admits to Piper and Mack that he would like to kiss Daisy, using the most goofy language possible. Then he starts talking about shaving his head to emulate Mack. Mack finally dials up the morphine to knock him out.
- Ironic Hell: Hale ends up in the same cell she kept Ruby locked in.
- Keystone Army: Ivanov's drones are controlled by him remotely through a system in his body. When Yo-Yo kills him and disables his body, all the drones deactivate.
- Killed Off for Real: The Superior/Ivanov's real head was killed
. - Let Us Never Speak of This Again: When Daisy comes in to check on Deke, a few seconds too late to overhear his goofy declaration of love, Mack quietly advises Piper not to bring it up.
- Love Confession: May calls Coulson out on his reckless behavior, knowing he's about to die. She shuts up his justifications by telling him she loves him.May: Thought that would shut you up.
- Love Is a Weakness:
- Ruby comes to see her relationship with her mom as her only weakness. Rather than kill her, Ruby just opts to lock her in her cell. She similarly states that her mom's love for her is her mom's weakness, as it made Hale drop her guard.
- Likewise, Ruby is counting on this for Fitz when she holds Simmons hostage.
- Manchurian Agent: Talbot is one. Hale didn't just torture him for information, she used the Faustus brainwashing method on him.
- Meatgrinder Surgery: Mack and Piper's surgery on Deke is very close to this, but he pulls through. It's more due to Mack and Piper's lack of experience than the equipment on hand.
- Metaphorically True: Ivanov is under the impression that he will be allowed to use the infusion machine to enhance himself. Hale does intend to let him use it, but as a guinea pig to see its effects on human flesh.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Ruby's Calling the Old Man Out moment clearly has an effect on Hale.
- "Not So Different" Remark:
- Ruby rightfully accuses her mother of using her as a tool, the same way Whitehall wanted to use Hale herself.
- Ivanov tries to pull this card on Elena, stating that she is now a cyborg too. However, Elena retorts by saying that, unlike him, she is still human where it counts.
- Not What I Signed Up For: When hearing about Team Coulson encountering aliens and visiting the future, Talbot sarcastically states that he might have been better off left in his cell.
- Read the Freaking Manual: Piper brings a manual into surgery of all things, because her training is incomplete.
- The Resenter: Werner is understandably still pissed at Fitz and Simmons, as they were there when he was mentally tortured.
- Shout-Out: Talbot calls the LMD Daisy that shot him a "skin job," a Blade Runner reference.
- Too Dumb to Live: Ivanov for some reason decides to use the LMD body with his real head to go on this mission. Unless all of his other Ivanov models have been destroyed, this is not a good idea, and sure enough it ends with him dying.
- Ungrateful Bitch: Deke accuses Daisy of this when she berates him for trying to save her.
- Unknown Rival: Daisy has no clue who Ruby is, or why Ruby hates her so much.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: By providing Talbot a means to contact his family, Daisy allows Candice Lee to have Talbot's wife trigger his brainwashing and make him a Manchurian Agent.
- Villain Ball: Ivanov approaching Yo-Yo, with his real head attached, instead of just sending a few of his drones note . It naturally leads to him being killed.
- We Have to Get the Bullet Out!: Somewhat justified in Deke's case, as the bullet has hit an artery and causes extensive bleeding.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Ruby just can't bring herself to kill her mother— even after judo flipping her and betraying her, she still wants to make her proud in the end.
- Wham Line: Talbot manages to get a secure phone call to his wife, and it all seems great... then she starts reciting the Trigger Phrase used for activating those brainwashed by the Faustus method.
- What the Hell, Hero?: May tears Coulson a new one for carelessly surrendering to Hale.
- You Can't Fight Fate: When Fitz is forced to repair the infusion machine by Ruby, he seems quite horrified at the implication of them being unable to prevent the destruction of the planet.
