Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s “Melinda” is the episode that answers a lot of questions for Skye. It also answers a lot of questions for the audience about Melinda May through a series of flashbacks. Here’s a detailed recap of season two’s episode 17, which aired on April 14, 2015:
Skye (Chloe Bennet) is still at the Inhuman compound. Her mother, Jiaying (Dichen Lachman), takes her to the mountaintop for a bit of training, which includes causing an avalanche on a nearby mountain. Later, when Skye is telling her a little about growing up in foster care, her mother finally confesses who she really is. She begs Skye not to tell anyone. It turns out that her reason for keeping their mother/daughter bond a secret dovetails into May’s story.
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the compound, Raina (Ruth Negga) is trying to come to terms with her transformation. She is in constant pain and feels like she received no gifts when she went through the mist. She is desperate to leave the compound, but Gordon insists on keeping her there for her safety. She describes her nightmares to Lincoln, who is sympathetic to her.
Back at SHIELD, May (Ming-Na Wen) brings Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) in on what she learned from Bobbi (Adrianne Palicki) and Rodriguez (Edward James Olmos). The more they dig into Coulson’s (Clark Gregg) files, the more secrets they find. From the looks of things, Coulson is readying an army of gifted people. May tells Simmons that they have to break into Fury’s toolbox to find out what’s going on. Simmons doesn’t reveal to May that she handed the toolbox off to Fitz when he left SHIELD. (Uh oh!)
[Flashback] May and her ex-husband, Andrew (Blair Underwood), are happily married. She is getting ready to go out on a mission with Coulson. They are planning to start a family. These scenes were especially poignant because we know what her future holds, and it doesn’t include Andrew or a family.
Coulson and May arrive in Bahrain, which we’ve heard before is the site of something big that went down and earned May the nickname “The Cavalry.” They meet with their target, a gifted woman who is super strong. However, she is not interested in getting any help from them. While Coulson is talking to the woman, May sees a little girl run through the square. Just as things go bad with the Russian woman, May sees a few men take the little girl hostage.
Coulson sends in his tactical team. May and Coulson listen over the comm. The team breaks in, but then they go silent. May and Coulson have no idea what has happened. They decide that May, the special, should get them out. She breaks in and starts taking down one guard after another. She finally finds her team in a locked room, but they are in a trance. They try to hurt her saying, “I want your pain.” She retreats and locks them back up.
Finally, she spots the blonde Russian woman, the gifted. They fight. She is surrounded by the henchman but she takes them out. Finally, she kills the Russian. She assumes that because the Russian woman is dead that the others will snap out of it. But she was wrong. The little girl emerges from her hiding place, and it becomes terribly clear that she is the one controlling everyone.
May realizes what she’s going to have to do. She is horrified (and so are we). She begs the little girl to give up, but she won’t. The scene cuts to Coulson out in the van, and we hear a gunshot off-screen.
The tactical team starts pouring out of the building. They are amazed that May was able to take down so many men. We hear them say that “the cavalry” arrived after all. That is how she got her nickname. Finally, May comes out. She is a wreck. She collapses, sobbing on Coulson.
[Present Day] At the compound, Skye’s mother asks her for one favor. She tells Skye that if they have dinner with Cal (Kyle MacLachlan), her father, she will not ask for any more favors. They enter the dining area. Cal is beside himself with excitement. (I was worried he was going to explode and start a fight, but he didn’t.) He gives Skye a bouquet of daisies, which represent her real name, Daisy. They drink champagne, and Skye relaxes. She seems happy. Lincoln (Luke Mitchell) comes in and sees the scene. He realizes it is the same scene from a nightmare that Raina had described. Her gift is to see the future.
Elsewhere, Fitz (Iain de Caestecker) is being tailed by SHIELD agents. He is locked up in a bathroom, trying to break into Nick Fury’s toolbox. He succeeds and is able to contact Hunter (Nick Blood) and Coulson. He asks them if he can join them. They happily agree, and then they tell him they’ll help him lose the men following him.
A look back: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode 16 recap
