- "The Clairvoyant only knew you'd be at Quinn's villa..."
"After I dropped a tracker. And the only thing he's had trouble seeing is what happened to you after you died."
"Because Director Fury wouldn't release that file to anyone. The Clairvoyant doesn't have abilities. He has security clearance. He's an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.!" - ―Phil Coulson and Skye
End of the Beginning is the sixteenth episode of the first season of the television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Synopsis
Agents Garrett and Triplett are back to help Coulson's Team track down S.H.I.E.L.D.'s nefarious enemy--The Clairvoyant. But will Deathlok destroy them all to protect his master's identity?
Plot
John Garrett and Antoine Triplett are attacked by Mike Peterson, who had been reborn as Deathlok, at a S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse. Several weeks later, they along with Agents Victoria Hand, Jasper Sitwell and Felix Blake join Coulson's Team in their hunt for the Clairvoyant.
The agents split into teams to pursue leads on different Clairvoyant candidates. At a nursing home searching for Thomas Nash, a catatonic man who once claimed to be a psychic, Melinda May and Blake encounter Deathlok. Before critically injuring Blake and escaping, he claims that "Mike Peterson is dead" upon being reminded of his son.
However, Blake manages to tag Peterson with a tracker before he fled. Concluding that Nash is the Clairvoyant because of Deathlok's presence, along with the falsifying of his nursing home records, the team converges on Deathlok's next location, an abandoned horse racing track, while Triplett and Jemma Simmons stay behind at the Hub with Hand.
The team briefly encounters Deathlok again, but he flees into the sewers. They discover a hidden room where Thomas Nash, a vegetative man on life support who could only speak through a computer, is hiding. Nash surrenders and boasts that as the Clairvoyant, he would always be watching them. When he says that the Centipede Project would kill Skye, Grant Ward instantly shot him dead.
Meanwhile, Leo Fitz attempts to create a secret phone line so that he could speak to Simmons from the Bus. While there, he discovers a bug that lead him to May's secure line. Phil Coulson realizes that Thomas Nash is not the Clairvoyant. When Skye presents the results of her studies on the S.H.I.E.L.D. psychological files of the potential Clairvoyants, they realize that the Clairvoyant is a member of S.H.I.E.L.D., with access to the same files. This gives the Clairvoyant knowledge of how to manipulate the agents.
Coulson accuses the detained Ward of working with the Clairvoyant, and shooting Nash to direct them away from the Clairvoyant's true identity. They are interrupted by Skye, who had learned of May's unapproved phone line from Fitz. Coulson and Skye end up in a standoff with May in the Bus's hangar. As May tries to explain that she was not allowed to identify to whom the line went, control of the Bus is hijacked.
At the Hub, Victoria Hand orders that everyone aboard be killed, except for Coulson, claiming, "He's mine."
Cast
Main Cast:
- Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson
- Ming-Na Wen as Agent Melinda May
- Brett Dalton as Agent Grant Ward
- Chloe Bennet as Agent Skye
- Iain De Caestecker as Agent Leo Fitz
- Elizabeth Henstridge as Agent Jemma Simmons
Guest Stars:
- Bill Paxton as Agent John Garrett
- Saffron Burrows as Agent Victoria Hand
- J. August Richards as Michael Peterson/Deathlok
- B.J. Britt as Agent Antoine Triplett
- Titus Welliver as Agent Felix Blake
- Maximiliano Hernández as Agent Jasper Sitwell
- Brad Dourif as Thomas Nash
Appearances
Locations
- Sydney, Australia
- Arctic
- Milton Keynes, England
- Macon, Georgia
- Muncie, Indiana
- Ball State University (mentioned)
- Pensacola, Florida
- The Hub
- Phuket, Thailand (mentioned)
- Cairo, Egypt (mentioned)
- Bora Bora, French Polynesia (mentioned)
- Canada (mentioned)
- S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters (mentioned)
- Washington, D.C. (mentioned)
- The Triskelion (mentioned)
- The Fridge (mentioned)
Events
Items
- Centipede Device
- Backscatter X-Ray Eye Implant
- Cybertek Prosthetic Leg
- Forearm Rocket Launcher
- Holocom
- I.C.E.R.
- Tag Rounds
- Medical Pod
- Bulletproof Vest
- Golden Retrievers
- S.H.I.E.L.D. Satellite
- Taser Projectile Launcher
- GH.325 (mentioned)
- Tracker (mentioned)
Vehicles
- Bus
- Lola
- S.H.I.E.L.D. SUV
- S.H.I.E.L.D. Jump Jet
- S.H.I.E.L.D. Aircraft Carrier
- Lemurian Star (mentioned)
Organizations
- S.H.I.E.L.D.
- HYDRA
- Yakuza (mentioned)
- Department H (mentioned)
Mentioned
- Index
- Project Deathlok
- Clairvoyant
- Lorelei
- Dan Monroe
- Elijah Fordham
- Noriko Sato
- Ace Peterson
- Edison Po
- Raina
- Ian Quinn
- Nick Fury
- Robert Coulson
- The Amazing Kreskin
- Santa Claus
- John Watson
- Kennedy family
Trivia
- Skye became an official S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in this episode.
- Agent Jasper Sitwell is ordered to report to the Lemurian Star, setting up the beginning of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
- This is the only episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that does not have an after-final-commercial epilogue, because it was replaced by footage from Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
- The X-Ray shot of Deathlok in this episode is a reference to his comic book appearance, where his facial implants are clearly visible, and he no longer has a nose, eyebrows, or lips (due to being a reanimated corpse).
- Muncie, Indiana is the hometown of Executive Producer Jeffrey Bell's grandparents. Muncie is also featured in the X-Files episode Salvage and referenced in the Angel episode Quickening, both written by Bell.
Media
Videos
References
External Links
End of the Beginning on Wikipedia
- End of the Beginning on IMDb
- End of the Beginning on the Marvel Wiki
