Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Recap With Spoilers: Seeds

The episode kicks off with the scene we saw earlier this week--students at the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy having a little fun, drinking and swimming after an exam, when the water around them starts to freeze as another student, whose studying they disrupted, starts to leave the area. Two girls get out of the pool, but the third student, a male, is caught in the ice and has to have help from the departing student in order to escape. Before the fourth student can leave, he gets the stinkeye from the other three. Back on the Bus, Coulson is looking at photos of his corpse. In the lab, it looks as though the pool was not frozen by a metahuman, but by a device that Fitz and Simmons helped to design years ago. Ward, Fitz, Simmons and Skye are going to go talk to students at the Academy while May and Coulson attend to "other matters." The quartet meet up with Fitz and Simmons's professor, who leads them off and tells Ward and Skye she'll be back for them once Fitz and Simmons are set up for their lecture. Ward leads Skye off to a building where there's a wall of Valor listing the name of lost Agents. She hovers over Bucky Barnes's name.  She tells Ward that she feels like she cheated her way in and doesn't deserve to be a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. Ward tells her that all she needs to be a member is a commitment to the greater good, and that Coulson saw that in her when they first met.

On the Bus, Coulson is obsessing over his file, which he got from Fury. May tells him that they're looking into Skye's past in Mexico City, where the partner of the Agent who turned Skye in at the orphanage has turned up after years in hiding. Back at the Academy, Fitz and Simmons are presenting to a packed auditorium. Elsewhere, Ward is talking to the victim of the ice attack, who identifies Donny Gill as the student who was studying by the pool that night. He doesn't think that Gill had anything to do with the attack, though; he's just an odd dude, not a killer. Ward is visibly skeptical. Fitz and Simmons tell the students that Hydra, Centipede and AIM are populated by brilliant scientists, as well, and they're going to share some stories from the field about what happens when advanced technology ends up in the wrong hands. Before they can, though, Gill, sitting in the audience, suddenly starts to panic and then freezes solid. The room starts to panic, most of them are running away. They're trying to get skin exposed so they can run a glucose line into the boy before he freezes completely. Skye finds another device on the floor like the one that had frozen the pool, and smashes it; the ice around the student cracks and falls away. A man in a car, Ian Quinn, takes a call and talks vaguely about how he's disappointed something didn't work and that whatever it is could benefit everyone involved. He gets out.

Cut back to the Academy, where Fitz and Simmons can't find anything of use to identify who might have made the device. Donny apologizes for having ruined their presentation, but they wave it off. Ward decides that Donny was the intended target all along. The professor (Agent Weaver) tells them that Donny was failing out of high school when they found him in spite of his 190 IQ. She's worried he's still bored at S.H.I.E.L.D. and will wash out here, too. Ward sends Weaver away to do a token investigation while he, Fitz, Simmons and Skye are going to do their own investigation. Ward tells Fitz to go talk to Donny, on the logic that even if Gill can't give them anything, he can use a friend. Simmons brings them to a nightclub hidden in the boiler room, where students go to avoid faculty. Fitz goes to see Donny, asking him how he feels after the freeze attack. He's impressed by the ideas Gill is toying with. In Mexico City, Coulson and May stake out a travel agency that doesn't have Internet access, where they figure their missing ex-Agent will turn up if he's trying to flee after having popped up on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar. May asks Coulson if he's thought of going on the lam, too, and tells him how she would do it if she were to do so. He remains stoic, so she starts telling her own version of his story until he interrupts. He accuses her of taking on the Skye investigation just to distract him and she admits that's part of it. He's worried that they changed more in his brain than they've let on, and May tells him that they haven't and asks if he trusts her. He says he does, but that he's tired of secrets; she tells him that she's been having sex with Ward, and at that moment, Coulson sees their target. The pair start watching him, but he makes them and flees. May loses sight of him and he jumps her, but she gets the better of him in the fight. He tries to take some kind of pill out of a compartment in his watch and when she's focused on keeping him from doing that, Coulson pulls up. The target tries to get away up the fire escape, but Coulson hovers Lola to his level and announces himself as Agent Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D. The man says thank God, and asks if it's about the baby. The pill Agent Lumley was trying to take was cyanide; Coulson asks him why and he tells the story of how Avery had been killed investigating an 0-8-4--the object of unknown origin was the baby--Skye. The people who had been on the case all started getting tortured and murdered, so Avery made Skye officially disappear and got killed for her trouble. The foster system was set up with a secret protocol to move her around every few months. Lumley tells them that he doesn't want to know anything about the baby in case someone comes asking, but asks if she's alright and Coulson says yes. At the night club, Skye tricks the bartender into giving her information on the other students--including Callie, who was at the pool but did not go in and who apparently lost the top spot at the Academy to Gill. Back in Gill's room, he's showing Fitz some of his "bigger ideas," and Fitz is suitably impressed. He helps Gill crack a problem, and ingratiates himself to the guy along the way.  He offers to bring Gill to the Boiler Room, but Gill wants to hang around and implement some of the improvements Fitz suggested. Simmons calls Fitz and lets him know that they've talked to Callie and figured out that Gill and the other "victim" had staged the attacks in order to draw Fitz and Simmons there. Fitz starts to object but then realizes something, rushes back and finds the pair powering up a larger version of the ice machine. He's blasted with a compressed air cannon and knocked out before he can stop them. Back on the Bus, the who group reconnects and Fitz tells them that he thinks Gill must have a backer to pay for the rare parts. Skye traces the purchases back to Quinn. Quinn starts to back out of the deal when he's told that S.H.I.E.L.D. is onto his scientists, but Dormer (the first victim) tells him that he'll run a demonstration on campus to prove their value to Quinn. Quinn tells him to do it, then turns the plane around anyway. Dormer turns on the ice machine over Gill's objections, and it craps out almost immediately. Back on the Bus, Skye is trying to get Coulson to talk to her and he's resisting. He tells her that Quinn isn't the only one who manipulates people to do what he wants; S.H.I.E.L.D. does it all the time. He tells her that he's been keeping information from her--he tells her the truth about what happened to her 24 years ago. It cuts away to silence, but you can see Skye crying. On the computers in the lab, Fitz and Simmons see a massive weather pattern forming. Gill and Dormer have turned on the machine again and created a massive hail storm. As they try to turn the machine off, Ward has gathered everyone in the Boiler Room for safety. the rest of the team on the Bus fly the plane over the storm and down to help. A reaction with the device kills Dormer and injures Gill just after Gill thinks they've reversed the machine's process. The team takes both of them on board the Bus and starts trying to revive Dormer. Finally, Coulson tells them they have to give up. Gill breaks down over his lost friend. After all's said and done, Coulson tells May that he did hear what she said about Ward and that he trusts she knows what she's doing. He tells her that he told Skye the truth, but that after she momentarily broke down, she took away from it that she's grateful that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been looking after her all these  years and that it isn't that families she grew up with didn't want her. He says that Skye has helped restore some of his faith in humanity. Back at the Academy, cut to a shot of her and Ward visiting the Wall of Honor to check in with Avery's place. In custody, Gill's finger runs across the car window, leaving a trailer of ice.