“Parting Shot” is episode thirteen of season three of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
At the end of the previous episode, “The Inside Man”, Bobbi and Hunter had sneaked on board Gideon Malick’s plane as he discussed with the Russian representative about setting up a “sanctuary” for the Inhumans in Russia as they were heading there. This episode opens with Bobbi in an Interpol black site in Moscow. She’s being held because three members of the Russian government have been murdered by, presumably, her and Hunter.
It then goes back 34 hours earlier (I’m really getting tired of programmes doing that) with them both in Siberia, on the ground tracking Malick’s convoy, whilst Coulson and the team track them from the plane. Hunter really wants to kill Malick, but Coulson points out that this could be an act of war. Before they can do anything, they are found by soldiers guarding the facility. Who they then beat up. Then three cabinet ministers fly in. Only Bobbi speaks Russian, which means that only she can pretend to be a guard. She’s quite disappointed that no-one else in an intelligence agency is fluent. The mission is low profile with no-one getting caught. So that didn’t work.
The situation on the ground is quite confusing. Malick definitely has something planned, but it’s unclear what. Initially, it just seemed that all he wanted was to put all the Inhumans in one spot for easy access to them, but he obviously has something else planned.
The episode chops and changes between past events and the present. Hunter keeps up the pretence under questioning that they were on vacation, picking mushrooms. For soup. Although Hunter and Bobbi were caught, it looks like May, Daisy and Mack managed to get out okay.
Coulson has started to suspect that Malick, despite being the last head of HYDRA, is answering to someone else. Of course, this is because he is – the Other. Who seems to have regenerated Ward’s physical bodies by, by the looks of it, consuming the life energy of some normals.
The title probably refers to the second to last scene of the episode.