Well, the title already tells us that things aren’t going to go well…
SOILERS AHEAD
After the Marvel Logo and opening credits, a title card tells us it’s Monday. This episode uses days of the week to structure its five acts as it’s set during the period of time known as “Fury’s big week”—arguably the most important period of time in the MCU—where the events of The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, and Thor all take place concurrently.
Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is in a car and starts reciting his ‘there was an idea’ speech— that he used to bring the team together in the first Avengers film—only for Black Widow (Lake Bell, doing a really good job of standing in for Scarlett Johannson) to finish it, in a slightly bored tone, telling him that she’s read the speech. They go back and forth, Fury telling her that if she’s read it then she knows what’s at stake and Natasha responding “which is why I’m surprised you’d wanna bet the future of the Avengers Initiative on that” just as the giant doughnut with Iron Man (Mick Wingert, who’s something of an old hand by this point, having voiced Tony Stark in previous Marvel animated titles) sat in the middle, pulls into view in the windshield.
Fury replies that Tony Stark may be eccentric but that he has potential. Natasha is sceptical but Fury reminds her that he’s taken big swings before, herself being an example. We then get the doughnut shop scene from Iron Man 2, with Stark telling Fury that he doesn’t want to join his “super-secret boy band” and Natasha injecting him with lithium dioxide to abate the symptoms of his palladium poisoning. Only this time something goes wrong, Tony appears to have an adverse reaction and dies.
Nick Fury looks on in shock and cross dissolves into the Watcher, who says: “Humanity, so eager, so willing to face the impossible, yet blind to the bigger picture.” He narrates a slideshow that summarises the events of the three films and how these events would act as the crucible that would “transform this collection of individuals into a team of heroes.” Or, at least, that’s how it played out in the universe we know…
Tuesday. Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) finds Mjolnir in a crater in New Mexico and calls Fury, who is at the Project Pegasus base where Natasha has been detained by Brock Rumlow (Frank Grillo) and the SHIELD Strike Unit. Fury tells Coulson to set up a perimeter around the hammer and to tell the team he’s en route. Natasha is being led away for questioning, under suspicion of murdering Tony Stark. Both she and Fury know she didn’t do it but as SHIELD has protocols, and she’s a former Russian spy, his hands are tied as much as hers. He discreetly hands her the injector, telling her that’s he’s counting on her getting away as he wants to find out who in their organisation sabotaged Tony’s antidote. He watches as she’s led into a truck and taken away.
Sure enough, the handcuffs don’t hold her for long and she soundly thrashes the rest of the strike team despite the confined space (once again, showing off how fluid the fight animation is) and escapes.
Back at the Mjolnir site, night has fallen and thunder is rumbling. Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) briefs Fury, telling him that all they’ve been able to surmise about the hammer is that it’s extremely powerful and that it’s not from Earth. Meanwhile, someone is taking out the agents patrolling the site. Clint also reveals that no-one has been able to lift the hammer, and Fury remarks that when something that powerful goes missing someone always comes looking for it and they have to hope that someone is an ally. Hawkeye asks what their next move is and Fury replies, same as always: “hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”
Coulson finds one of the agents knocked out by the mysterious assailant and sounds the alarm. The intruder is revealed to be Thor, and even in the midst of an emergency, Coulson knows a hot man when he sees one—“he’s a Caucasian male, mid-twenties with…really great hair… Sir, he’s gorgeous.” Cap wouldn’t be happy to hear you’re cheating on him, Phil! Fury orders Clint into position but to hold his fire, as he wants to see what Thor will do. Thor approaches Mjolnir (Clint even getting in on the ‘ogling Thor’ act—“Coulson wasn’t lying about the hair”) and goes to lift it but somehow Clint’s fingers slip and his arrow impales Thor in the chest, killing him.
Clint is detained, not understanding what could’ve happened as he doesn’t slip or misfire. Fury tells Coulson that not only is Thor dead but that his blood samples revealed him to be both over a thousand years old and not human. Coulson remarks that that’s two high value SHIELD targets seemingly killed by their own agents within the last twenty four hours. Fury goes to try and talk to Hawkeye only to find him on the verge of death. He calls for a medic and Coulson yells at the guards, angrily demanding to tell him who they let in the cell, but they insist that hadn’t let anyone in. Fury tells Clint to stay with him but it’s too late, and our next shot is in the morgue. Coulson ponders whether it could’ve been a cyanide capsule but Fury points out that Clint had a wife and kids, and so if he was going to go he wouldn’t do so willingly, and speculates that he was murdered by the same person who killed Tony Stark, despite the fact that he was in a locked cell under observation, with no sign of forced entry, struggle or entry wounds. (Put a pin in that.) But what could connect a billionaire playboy, a SHILED assassin and a “space corpse that looks like a Chippendales dancer?”
Wednesday. We arrive in Virginia at Culver University, an important setting in The Incredible Hulk and where Bruce Banner conducted his experiments. Natasha approaches Betty Ross (Stephanie Panisello) and manages to persuade her to help examine the injector, as she’s not only an “expert in the tactical applications of cellular biology” but also good at keeping things off SHILED’s radar. Ross examines it under a microscope and reveals that not only are no traces of lethal pathogens but that the antidote never made out of the syringe, instead looking like a tiny projectile was fired from the needle, making Natasha think of nanotech (again, put a pin in that). Ross asks her to leave but, as she does so, she notices a hat and jacket for ‘Stanley’s Pizza Parlor’ (the pizzeria in the film where Banner has a job). Fury then calls to tell her that Hawkeye is dead—her devastation poignantly and effectively shown by a single line: “who do I kill?”—and that it looks like that the killer is going after the Avengers Initiative candidates. She asks who else is on the list and Fury answers her and Bruce Banner, so she needs to find him and get the two of them to ground. Natasha answers that she thinks she already has. She goes to open a closet but is prevented from opening it by Betty. Before tells her to move before she makes her, which makes Bruce (Mark Ruffalo—the model has even been altered to look more like him to keep in line with the current continuity) reveal himself, saying that violence probably wouldn’t work out for any of them. Natasha hears helicopter blades in the distance and tells them that they need to go.
In the New Mexico desert, the Watcher watches Coulson drive to the site. But as he arrives so does the Bifrost, from which Loki emerges and the entire Asgardian Army emerges (along with the Destroyer and Thor’s friends: Lady Sif and the Warriors Three). Fury and a convoy of SHIELD agents rush out to meet them. He and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) have a bit of back and forth as he introduces himself. Back at Culver, Natasha tries to get in touch with Fury and Bruce insists that it’s safer for everyone if he fends for himself as he can’t die, to which Natasha replies “then I guess you’re in luck”, as General Ross (Mike McGill) and his forces arrive. We intercut between the two locations as Fury finds out that Loki came to Earth for vengeance for his brother’s murder and Natasha tries to get Ross to stand down, but a crosshairs reveals that someone has Bruce in their sights and he is shot, much to the General’s confusion as he didn’t order anyone to open fire.
Natasha tries to calm Bruce down, promising she’ll get him out of this, but Bruce turns into the Hulk and Loki unleashes the power of the Casket of Ancient Winters on SHILELD. The Hulk fights Ross’s forces. Betty tries to intervene to get her father to stop but is prevented by Natasha, who tells her that the General isn’t the one who started this. Then something strange happens: the Incredible Hulk becomes the ‘Inflatable Hulk’ and explodes (no blood or guts of course, this is Disney, but still pretty disturbing regardless). Fury tells Loki that declaring war on Earth won’t bring Thor back and Sif (Jaimie Alexander) halts Loki’s attack, acknowledging that Fury isn’t wrong and that the All-Father would want them to listen. Fury tells him that whoever killed his brother also killed two of their own and offers him a compromise: give him time to find his brother’s killer and he can “have his pound of flesh.” Loki agrees, giving him until sunrise to do so, or he’ll reduce the planet “to ash and ice.”
Meanwhile, in Virginia, Natasha has snuck into a public library to get to a computer to try and access the Avengers Initiative files. She manages to get Coulson to tell her his password (which we learn is “Hashtag-Steve-Steve-Steve-I-heart-Steve-0-7-0-4”, no wonder he was reluctant to tell her) as she’s locked out of the system. She logs onto SHIELD’s server and accesses the personnel files—including Janet Van Dyne, who is presumed deceased—and notices something strange: “how did a woman who died two years ago access the database yesterday?” She calls Fury but hears something strange and realises she’s being watched. She tells whoever it is that they won’t win against her or SHIELD before she’s brutally attacked by a seemingly invisible assailant. Her phone call goes to voicemail and Natasha desperately yells “it’s Hope! It’s all about Hope!” (another pin) before she’s dragged away and killed off-screen.
In New Mexico, with only four hours to go before sunrise, Fury sits in a diner, replaying Natasha’s voicemail message over and over. Coulson reveals that there’s still one candidate left: Fury himself. Fury remarks that he’s not the only Avenger left and goes to his car, retrieving Captain Marvel’s pager from his glove compartment. He tells Coulson it’s their last hope and, as he does so, realises what Natasha was trying to tell him. As he’s about to set off, Coulson asks where he’s going and he says: “either make a pact with a god or a deal with the devil.” He arrives at the ice structure in the desert where the Asgardians have made their base and tells the Destroyer armour standing guard that he’s “here to see your boss.”
Thursday. The Watcher overlooks a misty San Francisco graveyard and Fury is standing at the grave of Hope Van Dyne, who in this reality was a SHIELD agent. Now tie all those pins together, as the assassin is revealed to be none other than Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), this time in the guise of Yellowjacket, and who has gone off the deep-end after the deaths of his wife and daughter. He blames Fury and SHIELD for her death (it’s revealed that she was killed on a mission outside Odessa Ukraine, meaning that in this universe Hope Van Dyne was killed by the Winter Soldier) and so he decided to get revenge on Fury by tearing down everything he built, able to kill the Avengers candidates undetected by his ability to shrink down to microscopic sizes (in a bit of nightmare fuel it’s revealed he killed Bruce by using a re-sizing disc on his heart, causing it to uncontrollably enlarge).
Throughout the encounter, Fury is uncharacteristically flippant, only shifting to serious when it comes to Thor and unimpressed to find that he killed him just because he could, as he was the sort of person Fury would recruit in a heartbeat. Pym goes to kill Fury only for him to be easily swatted away. They fight and when Fury starts duplicating himself and using ice magic, we quickly realise that this is Loki in disguise. Sure enough, Loki beats Hank and the real Fury shows up and gives him a ‘reason-you-suck’ speech—“SHIELD is people, people willing to give their lives for something greater than themselves to save the world from men like you”— before he’s taken away by the Asgardian army. Loki tells Fury it’s been a pleasure and Fury replies “Good. Now take your hammer and get off my planet.” But Loki’s decided that maybe they should be allies after all and says he plans to extend his stay on Midgard, and Fury warily asks him “how long?”
Friday. It turns out that Loki means to stay indefinitely, marching into the United Nations and giving a televised speech—the one he gave in Germany in Avengers—conquering the planet with no bloodshed whatsoever. Meanwhile, in a hanger Fury and Coulson look over a row of coffins containing the Avengers’ remains. Coulson says that the Avengers fell before they had a chance to rise but Fury says that the Avengers were not just a team but an idea, “the affirmation of humanity’s need to believe that in our darkest hour, we will find our heroes.”
The Watcher then states that he believes that hope never dies, no matter the universe, as long as someone keeps their “good eye” on the bigger picture. He says this as Fury explores the Captain America crash site and finds him frozen in ice. He says, “welcome back Captain”, and this turns out to be two-fold, as Captain Marvel (Alexandra Daniels) appears and asks “so where’s the fight?” Showing that, in a reversal of the ending of last week’s episode, all hope is indeed not lost.
So, this week was a murder mystery and next week looks like it will be shenanigans with Doctor Strange.
