End of the Beginning

End of the Beginning is the sixteenth episode of the first season of the television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..

Synopsis
Agents Garrett and Triplett are back to help Coulson's Team track down S.H.I.E.L.D.'s nefarious enemy--The Clairvoyant. But will Deathlok destroy them all to protect his master's identity?

Plot
John Garrett and Antoine Triplett were attacked by Mike Peterson, who had been reborn as Deathlok, at a S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse. Several weeks later, they along with Agents Victoria Hand, Jasper Sitwell and Felix Blake joined Coulson's Team in their hunt for the Clairvoyant.

The agents split into teams to pursue leads on different Clairvoyant candidates. At a nursing home searching for Thomas Nash, a catatonic man who once claimed to be a psychic, Melinda May and Blake encountered Deathlok. Before critically injuring Blake and escaping, he claimed that "Mike Peterson is dead" upon being reminded of his son.

However, Blake managed to tag Peterson with a tracker before he fled. Concluding that Nash was the Clairvoyant because of Deathlok's presence, along with the falsifying of his nursing home records, the team converged on Deathlok's next location, an abandoned horse racing track, while Triplett and Jemma Simmons stayed behind at the Hub with Hand.

The team briefly encountered Deathlok again, but he fled into the sewers. However, they discovered a hidden room where Thomas Nash, a vegetative man on life support who could only speak through a computer, was hiding. Nash surrendered and boasted that as the Clairvoyant, he would always be watching them. When he said that the Centipede Project would kill Skye, Grant Ward instantly shot him dead.

Meanwhile, Leo Fitz attempted to create a secret phone line so that he could speak to Simmons from the Bus. While there, he discovered a bug that lead him to May's secure line. Phil Coulson realized that Thomas Nash was not the Clairvoyant. When Skye presented the results of her studies on the S.H.I.E.L.D. psychological files of the potential Clairvoyants, they realized that the Clairvoyant was a member of S.H.I.E.L.D. with access to the same files. This gave the Clairvoyant knowledge of how to manipulate the agents.

Coulson accused the detained Ward of working with the Clairvoyant, and shooting Nash to direct them away from the Clairvoyant's true identity. They were interrupted by Skye, who had learned of May's unapproved phone line from Fitz. Coulson and Skye ended up in a standoff with May in the Bus's hangar. But as May tried to explain that she was not allowed to identify who the line went to, control of the Bus was hijacked.

At the Hub, Victoria Hand ordered that everyone aboard be killed, except for Coulson, claiming, "He's mine."

Cast
Main Cast:
 * Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson
 * Ming-Na Wen as Agent Melinda May
 * Brett Dalton as Agent Grant Ward
 * Chloe Bennet as Agent Skye
 * Iain De Caestecker as Agent Leo Fitz
 * Elizabeth Henstridge as Agent Jemma Simmons

Guest Stars:
 * Bill Paxton as Agent John Garrett
 * Saffron Burrows as Agent Victoria Hand
 * J. August Richards as Michael Peterson/Deathlok
 * B.J. Britt as Agent Antoine Triplett
 * Titus Welliver as Agent Felix Blake
 * Maximiliano Hernández as Agent Jasper Sitwell
 * Brad Dourif as Thomas Nash

Locations

 * Sydney, Australia
 * S.H.I.E.L.D. Safe House
 * Arctic
 * Milton Keynes, England
 * Milton Keynes Prison
 * Macon, Georgia
 * Tranquility Bridge
 * Muncie, Indiana
 * (mentioned)
 * Pensacola, Florida
 * The Hub
 * Phuket, Thailand (mentioned)
 * Cairo, Egypt (mentioned)
 * Bora Bora, French Polynesia  (mentioned)
 * Canada (mentioned)
 * S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters (mentioned)
 * The Triskelion (mentioned)
 * The Fridge (mentioned)

Items

 * Centipede Device
 * Backscatter X-Ray Eye Implant
 * Cybertek Prosthetic Leg
 * Forearm Rocket Launcher
 * Holocom
 * I.C.E.R.
 * Tag Rounds
 * Medical Pod
 * Bulletproof Vest
 * Golden Retrievers
 * S.H.I.E.L.D. Satellite
 * Taser Projectile Launcher
 * GH.325 (mentioned)
 * Tracker (mentioned)

Vehicles

 * Bus
 * Lola
 * S.H.I.E.L.D. SUV
 * S.H.I.E.L.D. Jump Jet
 * S.H.I.E.L.D. Aircraft Carrier
 * Lemurian Star (mentioned)

Organizations

 * S.H.I.E.L.D.
 * HYDRA
 * Centipede Project
 * (mentioned)
 * Department H (mentioned)

Mentioned

 * Index
 * Project Deathlok
 * Clairvoyant
 * Lorelei
 * Dan Monroe
 * Elijah Fordham
 * Noriko Sato
 * Ace Peterson
 * Edison Po
 * Raina
 * Ian Quinn
 * Nick Fury
 * Robert Coulson

Trivia

 * Skye became an official S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in this episode.
 * Agent Jasper Sitwell is ordered to report to the Lemurian Star, setting up the beginning of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
 * This is the only episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that does not have an after-final-commercial epilogue, because it was replaced by footage from Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
 * The X-Ray shot of Deathlok in this episode is a reference to his comic book appearance, where his facial implants are clearly visible, and he no longer has a nose, eyebrows, or lips (due to being a reanimated corpse).
 * Muncie, Indiana is the hometown of Executive Producer Jeffrey Bell's grandparents. Muncie is also featured in the X-Files episode Salvage and referenced in the Angel episode Quickening, both written by Bell.