A quick adventure
(This
review contains minor spoilers!)
With how many side characters that’ve
been featured in S.H.I.E.L.D over the years, it’s surprising that we’re only
getting our first spin-off miniseries now. Focused on speedster
Yo-Yo/Slingshot/whatever you wanna call her, Slingshot is a small,
self-contained mission focusing on her getting vengeance on the guy that killed
her cousin. It’s pretty fun and well worth the half hour spent watching it if
you’re a fan of the main show.
Slingshot takes place just after
Coulson stepped down as director in favor of Mace and Yo-Yo is being welcomed
into the S.H.I.E.L.D family. She’s seeking vengeance against some guy that
apparently killed her cousin (Is this a thing that’s been brought up on the
show before? Cause I sure can’t remember if it was), but as she’s technically
an entry-level agent, she’s not allowed to go after him just yet. But through
some clever manipulation of S.H.I.E.L.D files (as well as a revolving door of
cameos from everybody in the main cast), she’s sent on her way to Baltimore to
finish him off once and for all.
The first half of this 6 episode
series is unfortunately pretty hit or miss. The real action and excitement doesn’t
get started until episode 4 at earliest, and the rest of the start is just
Yo-Yo wandering around the S.H.I.E.L.D base, talking to the main cast as they
each get a cameo. Out of all of these, the only one that really felt necessary
to the overall story was Director Mace’s appearance. What’s really interesting
about Mace here is that, if I’m correct with the time period we’re seeing him
on his first week or so at the job as director, and yet he’s way more
suspicious and intimidating here than he was back in the first few episodes he
was in of the main show! The Mace we see here is far closer to what I was
expecting him to be back when everyone was talking about how much they disliked
him in the first episode of Season 4, instead of the bizarrely friendly
director we got in the end.
Once we get all the main cast’s appearances
out of the way and Yo-Yo’s adventure actually gets going, the show feels much more
like an actual episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D than a cheap mini-series
cashing in on the actual show. The sets and VFX, while pretty simplistic, are
up to the standards we see in S.H.I.E.L.D, and the final battle and how the
story wraps up are both very satisfying.
That’s really about it for Slingshot.
It feels like a very self-contained episode of S.H.I.E.L.D, with half the
running time of a regular episode. I feel that if the cameos were cut down and
we got to the actual meat of the episode earlier (did we really need Mack showing up just to reaffirm the weird on again-off
again romance he has with Yo-Yo?) it would’ve been a more interesting watch
overall. But still, if you’re a fan of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and enjoy Yo-Yo’s
character, or you just want some more content while you wait for the real show
to return on January 10, it’s a harmless watch that you won’t regret seeing.
Just like the title character herself, Slingshot is both fast and fun.
FINAL SCORE
7/10
Good
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