- "I know you don't want to believe it, but you can't tell me nothing makes you doubt, makes you wonder what happened in Tahiti."
"It's a magical pla... I keep saying that."
"Don't you want to know why?" - ―Raina and Phil Coulson
The Magical Place is the eleventh episode of the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Synopsis[]
Coulson uncovers vital information about the mystery of his death, but, with Centipede out for blood, this knowledge may come at the cost of one of the team!
Plot[]
T. Vanchat is captured
T. Vanchat tries to sell an item to buyers in a building. The meeting eventually goes south when Melinda May and Grant Ward enter with a Flash Bomb. Vanchat manages to escape into a hallway. Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons then send their D.W.A.R.F.s to capture him, but he gets into an elevator. Skye manages to hack the elevator and send Vanchat to the highest floor. On the rooftop, Victoria Hand gets out of her helicopter and asks him for help in finding their friend.
Victoria Hand finds Skye
On the Bus, Hand briefs the team as well as emergency agents on how to take down Centipede and find Coulson. Suddenly, their computers go out, they are being hacked. Hand opens the door to Skye's bunk, to find her asking if she could take off her Tracking Bracelet. When Hand gets visibly annoyed, Skye explains that they could hack into Vanchat's money files and find information. Hand gets mad and wants Skye removed from the Bus. She asks May for her opinion, and May agrees. As Skye leaves, Ward and Fitz-Simmons give her information in order to escape custody.
Phil Coulson in the memory machine
Phil Coulson finds himself in Tahiti getting a massage. Suddenly, he wakes up in a creepy warehouse to find Edison Po. He is strapped to a machine to extract his memories. Po starts to torture him to figure out how he died as well as his resurrection. Meanwhile, in a diner, Skye tries to use a computer only for all of the computers around her to lockdown due to her bracelet. She quickly leaves and buys a suit that looks like a S.H.I.E.L.D. suit. She then sneakily steals Lloyd Rathman's car. She finds that the center monitor is also locked down, so she crashes the car into some barriers so that she could get a tow back to Rathman's house.
Skye disguises herself as Melinda May
Meanwhile, Ward interrogates Vanchat, but when no information is given, Ward opens up the roof of the Bus to suck Vanchat out. As Vanchat holds on for his life, he promises he'll talk. At the warehouse, Coulson knocks out a guard and runs outside only to find a creepy nuclear testing yard. Po sits outside for him and talks. Coulson charges at him, but a Centipede Soldier chokes him. In Los Angeles, Skye manages to get into Rathman's house and uses the end of a golf club to click phone numbers and calls Rathman's assistant that his car was stolen. When Rathman gets home, Skye walks out in her new suit and tells Rathman he is in trouble. She introduces herself as Melinda May, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Edison Po is killed
Skye claims he gave information to bad people. Rathman says that he just does what his clients need. Skye threatens him with jail time, so he agrees to help. He then secretly pushes the silent alarm. On the Bus, Hand wonders why Coulson's Team is so worked up about finding Coulson. She claims no agent is that important, Ward says that Coulson is. At the testing yard, Po continues to torture Coulson, but Raina stops him. Po then gets a call from the Clairvoyant only for the Clairvoyant to kill him with an electrical shock over the phone.
Skye points her gun at the guard
May and Ward talk when they suddenly get word that they found a laboratory in the Mojave Desert, May changes courses to fly there. Meanwhile, at Rathman's house, Skye has Rathman use the computer for her. Suddenly, a guard shows up and Skye pulls her own gun on him. She then makes him enter hacking codes for her in order to find the location of Coulson. In the desert, Coulson talks to Raina, who convinces Coulson to get into the machine to figure out how he was resurrected because he has been curious himself. On the Bus, Simmons gets a call from Skye, but May takes the phone. She tells Skye good work and tells Hand the information. May got Skye off the Bus because she works better alone.
The team works together to find Phil Coulson
In the memory machine, Coulson finds himself on Tahiti, just like he always has been. However, the image gets distorted and turns into a surgical room. Coulson then finds himself on a table with his skull opened up, exposing his brain. A machine works on restructuring his brain while he begs for the doctors to let him die. J. Streiten tells the doctor to stop, but she tells him that it was Nick Fury's orders. Meanwhile, Skye finds the testing yard and looks around. The team arrives and helps her only to be surrounded by Centipede Soldiers. They engage in a fight until everyone is defeated. Skye then hears Coulson's yelling for them to let him die. She gets to Coulson, punches out Raina, and pleads for him to come back. Coulson wakes up, relieved to see Skye. Raina is taken into custody.
Mike Peterson sees a message after waking up
Later, Coulson thanks Hand, who leaves. He then meets with the team again and tells Skye he trusts her. He then removes the bracelet by simply saying "disengage bracelet". Skye is worried and asks Coulson about what he was saying when she found him. Coulson tells her it was all in his head. At night, Coulson sneaks into Dr. Streiten's car and asks him questions. Streiten explains that they resurrected him with unused technology. However, they had to keep him conscious to monitor brain activity, but this caused Coulson to endure pain and lose his will to live. So Fury ordered them to place false memories in Coulson in order to give him his life back. Meanwhile, Mike Peterson is alive, albeit badly burned, missing the lower half of his right leg, and now possessing an explosive surveillance eye implanted in him by someone working for the Clairvoyant.
Cast[]
Main Cast:
- Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson
- Ming-Na Wen as Melinda May
- Brett Dalton as Grant Ward
- Chloe Bennet as Skye
- Iain De Caestecker as Leo Fitz
- Elizabeth Henstridge as Jemma Simmons
Guest Stars:
- Saffron Burrows as Agent Victoria Hand
- Rob Huebel as Lloyd Rathman
- J. August Richards as Mike Peterson
- Ruth Negga as Raina
- Cullen Douglas as Edison Po
- Ron Glass as Doctor J. Streiten
- Aiden Turner as T. Vanchat
- Felisha Terrell as Emily Deville
- Samantha Cutaran as Karine
- Imelda Corcoran as Doctor Goodman
- Matt Mullins as Centipede Soldier 2
- Adam Lytle as Centipede Soldier 3
- Darren Dupree Washington as Interrogating Agent
- David Lim as Waiter
- Christopher Rocha as Tow Truck Driver
- Justin Gant as PD Guard #1
- Wayne Alon Scott as PD Guard #2
- Gabriel Koura as Centipede Soldier 1 (uncredited)
- Alice Chen as S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent (uncredited)
- Sun Jae Kim as S.H.I.E.L.D. Scientist #1 (uncredited)
- Unknown Actor as Agent Kob (uncredited)
- Samuel L. Jackson as Director Nick Fury (archive footage; uncredited)
Appearances[]
Locations[]
- Los Angeles, California
- Mojave Desert
- Bethesda, Maryland
- Tahiti, French Polynesia (flashback)
- Guest House (flashback)
- Key Largo, Florida (mentioned)
- Cayman Islands (mentioned)
- Sydney, Australia (mentioned)
- Geneva, Switzerland (mentioned)
- New York City, New York (mentioned)
- Fridge (mentioned)
- S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters (mentioned)
Events[]
- Centipede Investigation
- Resurrection of Phil Coulson (flashback)
- Cold War (mentioned)
- Battle of New York (mentioned)
- Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals (mentioned)
Items[]
- Flash Bomb
- D.W.A.R.F.s
- Holocom
- Tracking Bracelet
- Theta Brain-Wave Frequency Machine
- Memory Overwriting Machine
- Backscatter X-Ray Eye Implant
- Night-Night Bracelet
- Night-Night Pistol (mentioned)
Vehicles[]
Sentient Species[]
Organizations[]
- S.H.I.E.L.D.
- Coulson's Team
- Project T.A.H.I.T.I. (flashback)
- HYDRA
- Kester, Dyer and Rathman LLP
- Drake's Towing
- Wealth & Capital
- Los Angeles Police Department (mentioned)
Mentioned[]
- Jasper Sitwell
- Ace Peterson
- Robert Coulson
- Clairvoyant
- Maria Hill
- David Rathman
- Chan Ho Yin
- Akela Amador
- Audrey Nathan
- Matthew Ellis
- Julie Coulson
- Lloyd Rathman's Phone Calls
- Dr. Martin
- Tammy
- David
- Michael Jordan
- Bryon Russell
- Tiny Wings
Trivia[]
- Leo Fitz references the catchphrase "Embrace the Change", used to promote the Secret Invasion event in the comics.
- Skye being called "Doctor Nugent" by Jemma Simmons when she phoned after being expelled from the team is most likely a reference to Alice Nugent.
Videos[]
References[]
External Links[]
The Magical Place on Wikipedia- The Magical Place on IMDb
- The Magical Place on Disney+
- The Magical Place on Marvel Database
