Agents of SHIELD (SPOILERS)

[rpmaluki]

Enoch said Daisy's friends survive but the team doesn't, thus, no more deaths from this point onwards except maybe Coulson getting unplugged permanently. SHIELD as we know it officially disbands.

[juan678]

https://www.cbr.com/agents-of-shield...e-final-words/

[scilover]

I don't have time to finish it yet. shall go for it faster.

[AndrewCrossett]

They're going out with by far their best season yet.

It's tough to do a Groundhog Day episode without it being trite, but they managed it.

Now I'm really curious about what Fitz is doing because of Jemma's reaction... and also how the team splits up in the end. Maybe they all end up in separate timelines?

I think Daisy is closer to hooking up with Sousa than with Deke.

Called it. Though Sousa doesn't remember, Daisy does.

[Cyke]

spoilers:

Sousa > Lincoln Enoch's death > Lincoln's death

end of spoilers

It was weird watching this episode right after watching Palm Springs starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti, since both are twists on the Groundhog's Day time loop. But both were really good with their unique twists.

But yeah, what a real gut punch of an episode. Everyone was in top form, and kudos to Henstridge for her direction. I was a little miffed that our previous episode with the Inhumans did very little with the 1980s setting (the title card did the most -- even the compound's denizens weren't wearing period-specific fashion), this episode hyper-focused on a very specific moment in time and made the most of it.

A few thoughts:
-
Mack: "You anywhere nearby?"
Yo-Yo: "Hey, it's me. Everywhere is nearby."

- It was cute the way Coulson jumped in with "Phlebotinum!"

- "Deke's dead?"
"Very."
"Do we need to be sad about that?"
"We do not."

I know our heroes are keeping the bigger picture in mind, but on a meta level it was so, so satisfying to hear the rest of them say that.

- With that said, we didn't see the bulk of Enoch's fighting, and frankly, the scenes of everyone laid out defeated after every fight were just perfect. Each and every one.

- Death scenes on TV tend to be super schlocky or all too quick. This was some masterful writing on the philosophy of death, with Coulson speaking "from authority."

- It was good to see Coulson, Daisy, and Enoch together. Sure, Enoch doesn't have the most connection with them, but the ones he did have had to go save the day, and Coulson and Daisy are the two most visible characters on the show. From a production standpoint, it would make sense in a cynical way, but the story still makes in-character sense (rather than the dictates of the story's stern logic) why those two would share such moments with him. They're not the closest but you wouldn't be able to tell from the end of the episode, and it doesn't feel forced.

- But speaking of logic, considering how Enoch wiped the floor with arguably their physically strongest guy (Mack), their best fighter (May), a war veteran master spy (Sousa), and a goddamn speedster (Yo-Yo) simultaneously kind of emphasizes how painfully absent he was in some of the season's biggest battles. Sure, wibbly wobbly timey wimey but the writers basically benched the team's biggest gun over and over again. Still, it was nice to see those four together with Enoch.

- Last thought: the show says both that space is meaningless within the time vortex, and one of the key clues is their distance from the anomaly. Distance *is* space. I'll handwave it since the episode was so good, and it makes about as much sense as the time travel in the ultimate authority on TV time travel, Doctor Who, where viewers have to handwave the science on a weekly basis.

- With that said, I simply adore the Thirteenth Doctor's time vortex, but if the producers ever replace it with the time vortex from this episode, I won't blame them. It's a beautiful effect.

[Jon Clark]

Enoch said Daisy's friends survive but the team doesn't, thus, no more deaths from this point onwards except maybe Coulson getting unplugged permanently. SHIELD as we know it officially disbands.

Or the people we have been watching (the team) die, but their counterparts in the altered timeline survive. So all Daisy's friends are alive after this adventure- they just aren't the versions that make up her team. The young Mac whose parents died in 1976 survives.

Anytime someone speaks about the future with authority, you never take their words at face value

[rpmaluki]

Or the people we have been watching (the team) die, but their counterparts in the altered timeline survive. So all Daisy's friends are alive after this adventure- they just aren't the versions that make up her team. The young Mac whose parents died in 1976 survives.

Anytime someone speaks about the future with authority, you never take their words at face value

But they wouldn't be "her" friends, Those people would have lived a different life to her team that's she's shared a lifetime's worth of a bond and memories, in the same way young Mack lost his parents at an early age and for about a year and a half he had this weird "uncle" Deke that bought him gifts, helped with homework and such that Director Mack certainly never had.

[AndrewCrossett]

Seems like they could just jump back in time, pick up a version of Enoch who's still alive, and bring him along. Mining the timeline for dead people is perfectly legal in the MCU. They did it with Fitz. The movies did it with Gamora.

But that would spoil a great death scene.

[rpmaluki]

Seems like they could just jump back in time, pick up a version of Enoch who's still alive, and bring him along. Mining the timeline for dead people is perfectly legal in the MCU. They did it with Fitz. The movies did it with Gamora.

But that would spoil a great death scene.

That, and the fact (as Jemma explained) they can't jump backwards, not since the first original jump to the 30s.

[AndrewCrossett]

Wondering about the "Fitz is dead" theory. I think it's possible. The biggest argument against is: if he's already dead, why would concealing his whereabouts (or whenabouts?) be important... so important as to be worth the lives of the team? Jemma went into a meltdown when she got her memories back that one time. It could be that her memory block wasn't really to conceal Fitz's location, but to enable her to function. That in turn would suggest that it's Jemma, not Fitz, who is vital to the outcome of the plan. But if so, why was Enoch willing to kill Jemma?

I think there are two possibilities that are the most likely:

1. Jemma's reaction wasn't necessarily caused by grief, but by confusion and shock as all her memories came back and hit her at once... similar to what happened to LMD Coulson when they uploaded Coulson's memories. This would indicate that the suppressed memories are extremely traumatic and frightening.

2. Fitz isn't dead yet... but whatever their plan entails will necessarily require him to die when it's executed.

In any case, I can't imagine the show will end with no further appearance by Fitz. At the very least we'll see him in flashback when it's revealed what happened.

[Ascended]

Where has the actor been, anyway? I can't imagine they'd bench one of their OG cast in the final season just for story purposes. Even if Fitz is separated from everyone else he could still be on screen (it's happened before).

[AndrewCrossett]

Iain de Caestecker is in an upcoming miniseries called "Us," but it doesn't look like he's one of the main stars. It could be they needed to shed a regular cast member in order to pay for the VFX this season, and he was the one who had other work lined up. Because of Covid shutting production down for months, though, whatever project he was working on many not have even been announced yet.

[juan678]

[Ascended]

Iain de Caestecker is in an upcoming miniseries called "Us," but it doesn't look like he's one of the main stars. It could be they needed to shed a regular cast member in order to pay for the VFX this season, and he was the one who had other work lined up. Because of Covid shutting production down for months, though, whatever project he was working on many not have even been announced yet.

I had a hunch it was other work or the pandemic keeping him away. I mean, that seems far more likely to me than the studio just cutting the character after seven seasons. If they were gonna cut someone for budget or story purposes I'd expect it to be someone who hasn't been around since episode 1, yknow?

Shame, this season has been quite good but Fitz' absence is very much noticeable.

[ZeroBG82]

I had a hunch it was other work or the pandemic keeping him away. I mean, that seems far more likely to me than the studio just cutting the character after seven seasons. If they were gonna cut someone for budget or story purposes I'd expect it to be someone who hasn't been around since episode 1, yknow?

Shame, this season has been quite good but Fitz' absence is very much noticeable.

Wouldn't have anything to do with the pandemic, as these episodes were all shot last year. In fact, this final season has been in the can and complete, at least so far as filming goes, since before the last season completed airing back in summer 2019. Disney just held them back for a year for dramatic flair.

I'm under the impression that Fitz' actor had some kind of conflict with another project. So maybe they just decided it wasn't worth working around his availability and mostly wrote him out. Remains to be seen, as we have four left to go.