Recurring guest stars Luke Mitchell and J. August Richards portray Lincoln Campbell and Deathlok, the kidnapped allies, while Henry Goodman and Cobie Smulders reprise their roles of Dr.

The episode also features two significant sequences, a one-take fight scene that Bennet broke her arm filming, and the dramatic destruction of a plane which was realised through visual effects and CGI.

Gordon fails to rescue Lincoln Campbell from Hydra, and Raina recognizes the injuries he receives from a dream she once had, discovering her new Inhuman precognitive abilities.

Director Phil Coulson offers a truce to the group of agents who oppose his leadership, agreeing to unlock Nick Fury's "toolbox", containing his secret files on S.H.I.E.L.D.

team of Melinda May, Ward, Skye, Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons, and they fly to the Arctic in their old mobile command base, a plane called the Bus.

Coulson, May, and Fitz break into the base's control rooms to steal information about Hydra leader Wolfgang von Strucker's primary headquarters in the small Eastern European nation of Sokovia, while Skye, Ward, Bakshi, and Simmons rescue Peterson and Campbell.

[a] In July 2014, the executive producers stated that they had plans to incorporate Cobie Smulders' Maria Hill into the second season,[1] leading to a cameo appearance at the end of this episode.

[2] In March 2015, Marvel announced that the nineteenth episode of the season would be titled "The Dirty Half Dozen", to be written by Brent Fletcher and Drew Z. Greenberg, with Kevin Tancharoen directing.

[3] The starring cast was confirmed to include Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, Ming-Na Wen as Melinda May, Brett Dalton as Grant Ward, Chloe Bennet as Skye, Iain De Caestecker as Leo Fitz, Elizabeth Henstridge as Jemma Simmons, Nick Blood as Lance Hunter, and Adrianne Palicki as Bobbi Morse.

[2] Simmons, Negga, Goodman, Richards, MacLachlan, Olmos, Harris, Adams, Stewart, Stojan, Lachman, Mitchell, and Kassianides reprise their roles from earlier in the series.

[11] The executive producers were enthusiastic about the idea being used, and the actors, including Bennet, rehearsed the sequence on the prior weekend,[12][8] for "a couple of hours" at a "gymnastics place".

Between Houdini and the particles we had to create for that one shot—a big giant virtual shot where we had a QuinJet come down and all the debris is falling all around and there's fire and smoke, that sequence was what that episode was about.

Kolpack explained that Kassianides "was shot against greenscreen and background plates, and we added several layers of different erosion techniques, taking his body away, and then having all the actual particles dynamically coming off of him as he moved.

"[13] "The Dirty Half Dozen" features "Easter eggs, plot threads and other connective tissue leading into the opening scene of Avengers: Age of Ultron", including the appearance of Goodman as List and Smulders as Hill, reprising their roles from the films.

[15] Executive producer Jed Whedon described the tie-in as more "nuanced" than the previous one, which connected the series to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, given that the crossover has relatively little impact on the ongoing storylines of the season.

Club's Oliver Sava graded "The Dirty Half Dozen" a "B+", also noting that "has to take some shortcuts to reunite the original team, but the momentum picks up considerably once everyone is in the same room".

Sava called the Age of Ultron tie-in "overt", with Raina's clairvoyance "a convenient plot device to put certain pieces in place", but ultimately felt that "those big-screen connections don't interrupt the focus on relationships".

[24] Marc Buxton at Den of Geek scored the episode 3.5 out of 5, calling the Age of Ultron tie-in "anti-climactic ... it felt like a bit of a cheat", criticizing what he saw as too much of S.H.I.E.L.D.

[25] Rob Leane, also at Den of Geek, was more positive of the Age of Ultron tie-in, calling it "the next best allusion to the movies we've ever had" following the series' connections to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and praising the use of List and Hill.