Marvel's Agents of Shield 1x18 Providence review

Providence was the 18th episode of AoS season 1. After a fantastic episode last week, viewers were left with so many questions. 

1. Is Agent Ward really a Hydra? 
2. Or is he actually a good guy, pretending to be the traitor but in the end he will be back as Coulson's team hero?
3. Or, perhaps his memory is compromised by Hydra just like The Winter Soldier?
4. Did he really kill Agent Hand? Or is it just some kind of, again, a staged act to deceive Garrett?
5. Is he the only bad guy in the team or should we suspect others too? 
6. SKYE's BACKUP HARD DRIVE!!!

--- SPOILER ALERT ---

The episode opened with Ward rescuing Raina, a.k.a "the girl in the flower dress", from her cell since Shield caught her. Turned out later Raina was needed by The Clairvoyant a.k.a Agent Garrett to continue their Centipede Project. So here we learned that the project was indeed a Hydra project. 

One thing I noticed about Raina in this episode was, FLOWERS. I mean yeah I get it, she is the girl in the flower dress, but still,

Garrett kept on calling her Flowers, even after Raina told him her name, to which he answered "a force of habit". Is there some back story to this? Perhaps something in Raina's past prior to her involvement with the Centipede that had something to do with flowers? Idk. I think there's much more to this, though.

Talking about back story, we got a bit of confrontation scene between Ward and Garrett. Ward was not happy about Skye getting near death shot a few episodes back. (I guess it means that Ward actually had genuine feelings for Skye). Ward insisted that his assignment was only to find out about Coulson's secret. But then Garrett said this,

It became clear here that Ward was a Hydra agent since the beginning. He got a specific assignment from a specific someone (Garrett?) even before Coulson's team was assembled. So yes we can cross the possibility of Ward's memory being compromised. But actually the part that intrigued me was the "don't forget why". Why? Why meaning there's a reason why Ward was chosen to be the traitor. 

Moreover, Ward told Raina about how he knew Garrett since he was a teenager, saying,

Well, whatever his past story was, this plot, especially his feelings towards Skye, still opens a possibility of Ward turning back to the good side. Although, to be completely honest, I kinda hope Ward stays as the bad guy. Because otherwise it will be too cliche, won't it?

Also, I really enjoy Brett Dalton's  performance as real Ward and fake Ward. Seriously, I could see how he literally switched between the two and it's very entertaining. The background music helped, but still kudos to you Brett.

Okay now let's move on to Coulson's team. 

After all the Shield vs Hydra chaos happened, Shield was now regarded as terrorist and the US government were going to take them down. Before that happened, Coulson decided to order his team to flee and vanish, and then asked Skye to erase any proof of their existence, making them ghosts. Skye put it in a simple term for all of us,

Agents of nothing would make a hilarious series title, though. 

Later Coulson got a set of coordinate sent to him through his badge, a form of communication which Coulson believed was Nick Fury's style. The rest of the team did not believe him though, since it was confirmed that Fury was dead already. 

But still they followed him to the coordinates, which lead them to somewhere in the Canadian wilderness. Which resulted in all of them bundled up in cute fluffy cold gears. CUTIES.

I mean, look at  how cute Fitz was. Also Agent May and Skye were wearing beanies.  

Back to the plot. Turned out, that coordinates lead to Fury's secret base there. A base with one agent there called Agent Koenig. Funny guy. Also later he told only Coulson about Fury being alive. But no one else could know about it. WHY?

Meanwhile, Ward and Garrett were hitting The Fridge, a Shield facility where all weird weapons and alien stuffs were kept, and bad guys were held captive. Simply put, now Hydra had all the weapons and all the bad guys. Not a good news for the world.

Oh, I almost forgot. Remember last week Skye gave Ward the back up drive of their plane? Well, Skye, our smart little hacker didn't disappoint at all.

Bow down to Skye, y'all!

One last thing I found kinda funny in this episode. Garrett and Ward's Hydra base was located in Cuba now, and this was the entrance:

What is this? Hogwarts??

--- SPOILER ENDS ---

I give this episode of AoS 4/5 noise. Not as amazing as last week's, but still intriguing. To me, the show succeeded in keeping the hype and rhythm go steadily ever since Captain America The Winter Soldier. Still with the team's awkward but funny one-liner, and now that the spotlight has moved above Agent Ward, I guess we will see further character development there. Interesting.