“Hot Potato Soup” is episode twelve of season four of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
In the previous episode, “Wake Up”, the attempt to bug Senator Nadeer’s office badly backfired when it turned out that not only was the senator expecting them, she knew exactly who to expect, and Coulson and Yoyo were caught. Having them both essentially arrested did not help S.H.I.E.L.D. and showed that they had a leak. Fitz discovered that Dr Radcliffe had programmed Aida to try to steal the Darkhold, and Radcliffe was captured. However, this was simply an android duplicate – Radcliffe had already left and he has now sided with Nadeer. Radcliffe had stated that there was another android inside S.H.I.E.L.D. along with Fake May – who has discovered that she is fake, but is unable to jeopardise her mission and Real May is trapped in a simulation – so was Fake Radcliffe the other android or was he referring to another? Nadeer tells Radcliffe that he will have to meet the Superior.
Billy and Sam Koenig are in some type of arcade when two Russians enter, looking for them. Although they do not seem to know that there are two Koenigs. Billy is captured, and it seems that the Russians are working with the Watchdogs. This is unfortunate, as Coulson had given the Darkhold to Billy to keep it safe.
Billy is taken on board a submarine, and placed in a room with Dr Radcliffe, who is also tied up. Radcliffe claims that he was double crossed by his new allies but, when the captain, and owner, of the submarine, Russian industrialist Anton Ivanov (played by Zach McGowan, who plays Roan in The 100), is going to torture Billy, Radcliffe reveals that this was actually a ruse intended to try and trick Billy into revealing the location of the Darkhold. Instead, Radcliffe is going to map Billy’s mind so that he can find out what he knows. It seems that this should have been led with, rather than the playacting. Is Ivanov the Superior? He’s never named as such, although he does have the money to help fund Nadeer and the Watchdogs.
Sam meets up with Coulson and some of the others, and then goes all fanboy over Daisy, in her persona as Quake. In the process revealing perhaps rather more than he should have about fan fiction on the internet involving Quake. Some of it also involving Black Widow. Too much information. It seems that there are yet more Koenigs out there, and that they have been passing the Darkhold around like the titular hot potato. So Billy passed it to Sam, who then passed it on, and finally it ended up in a S.H.I.E.L.D. repository called the Labyrinth which only the Koenigs know the location of. Unfortunately, Billy was the last person to have it.
Fitz has fixed Fake Radcliffe and is trying to get him to reveal the location of the real Dr Radcliffe. Fake Radcliffe reveals that he knows something about Fitz’s father, but isn’t so willing to divulge anything about Radcliffe’s actual location. Fitz decides to try and reprogram the LMB (Life Model Decoy), but this doesn’t work and he says that the LMD’s code is highly advanced, much more than Aida’s. Fake May is doing as Radcliffe suggested and getting close to Coulson, something Real May may want to do.