We’re back! It’s time for one final season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., where everything will come to a close. There are plenty of loose ends left to wrap up, so let’s begin our journey.
1. Timey-Wimey… Stuff
It’s a time travel season, which means I get to indulge in one of my hobbies: over-analyzing fictional time travel!
Yes, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has dealt with time travel before, but let’s look at what they’re doing now compared to how previous seasons worked.
The Zephyr, now functioning as a time machine, can travel to select points in time. So there’s no zipping through the time stream like Legends of Tomorrow. More importantly, what impact will the team’s presence have on the future?
In past episodes, the future was all but immutable. It took an entire season and a whole lot of effort for the team to change the future, but it proved that it’s possible. In this season, time is a little easier to mess with.
The show brushes off the Butterfly Effect as “one aspect of the multiverse branch theory,” which is consistent with what we’ve seen so far. According to Deke, time travel here works with minor changes having no influence on the future, but too many changes can pile up. It still sounds like time is a little easier to change, but still aligns with how hard it’s been to change the future before.
The Chronicoms, on the other hand, are acting with precise knowledge of history. They’re making tactical strikes at points they know will change things.
And of course, this is all entirely different from the Endgame time travel, where changing the past has no effect on the present because your future already happened. So I feel at this point the mechanics of time travel are a tad inconsistent with the Marvel universe as a whole, but at least more or less internally consistent.
2. Robo Coulson
Phil Coulson is back! To an extent. As mentioned in the last season finale, he’s an LMD with all of Coulson’s memories. And in spite of making a dramatic appearance, he’s just now being activated and made aware of it.
This does give us some good acting from the whole cast. The S.H.I.E.L.D. team is trying to cope with what this means, and Coulson is re-living two years’ worth of memories as they get programmed into him. Then it raises questions of what it means to be alive, if he’s really Coulson or just a robot who thinks he is, and so on.
Of course, we all knew they couldn’t leave the star of the series dead forever. But an LMD Coulson with all his memories will make for some interesting character dynamics as the show goes on, so I look forward to seeing where this goes.
3. Welcome to the Past
Okay, I have to start off by saying: I am an idiot. At the end of the last season, I mistook the Empire State Building being constructed for it being in ruins, and entirely misinterpreted a line about it being the tallest building. They went back in time, not forward to another post-apocalypse. Thank you to the commenters who pointed that out.
With that out of the way, welcome to 1931! The show is having fun tossing out plenty of historical trivia and is really leaning into the 30’s aesthetic. I must say, the team really pulls off the looks. Even the logo gets updated for the era. The set and lighting effects do a good job setting the scene, and you can tell the cast was having fun with it.
Sure, every now and then the characters will drop some historical knowledge that makes it sound like an educational cartoon, but it’s for the team’s sake as much as ours.
While the show doesn’t shy away from the sexism and racism of the past, it does sanitize it a fair bit. Mack and Daisy get past it simply by being their badass, intimidating selves, but every time it comes up I keep thinking how much worse it could have gone for them. On the other hand, given all the current events revolving around racism, I’m okay with not needing a reminder of how awful real people can be while watching a show spun-off from a movie based on a comic book.
Continued below4. Patton Oswalt Returns
When Patton Oswalt appeared as multiple Koenig brothers, I called him a national treasure. I stand by that statement.
Yes, we now get to meet the grandaddy of all Koenigs, still played by Patton Oswalt. He brings all the greasy charm of a 30’s bootlegger businessman to his character, and it’s fantastic.
What else can I say? I’m just glad to see him back. In fact, considering how important the Koenigs have been to S.H.I.E.L.D., I thought he was the thread the Chronicoms were out to pluck, which brings us to the final thought.
5. Who’s the Target?
We know the Chronicoms are targeting individuals connected to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s history. At first it seemed like Koenig would be their target, given how many of his descendants are S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.
Then we’re told Roosevelt would be making an appearance, and he becomes an obvious target. Stop FDR and all of U.S. history goes off-course, including the creation of S.H.I.E.L.D. While that does lead us to an amusing scene where Coulson shouts “Look out!” when there’s nothing to actually look out for, it’s also a red herring.
The truth is actually a pretty good twist, as their target is Freddie, who works at Koenig’s speakeasy. Why? Because his full name is Wilfred Malick, a founder of Hydra. Without Hydra, S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn’t exist, so the team has to save one of their greatest enemies to save themselves.
This is an amusing twist, especially for the start of the season. It can set up plenty of conflict, both between characters and internally, and shows us the scale that the Chronicoms are thinking in. Sure, we know the team will save Wilfred (and thereby contribute to the start of Hydra) but they’re not going to be happy about it.
What are your thoughts? Is the show back in full swing, or will its last season be less than stunning? Let us know and we’ll see you next week.
