Well, times are tough for the S.H.I.E.L.D. team, and I mean that in a very literal sense this time. We’ve got our time loop episode, and it takes us for a wild ride. So buckle up, reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, and get ready to see the team live, die, and repeat.
1. Time Loop
Yes, this is a time loop episode. The introduction shows us everything going wrong before the loop, but thankfully Daisy picks up on it quickly, and the team doesn’t question her when she says she’s looping. Thank goodness the S.H.I.E.L.D. team has seen enough weird stuff to go along with it.
The episode establishes some rules for the time loop:
– Every loop brings them closer to destruction
– Daisy and Coulson are the only ones who remember
– If Daisy dies, she forgets everything from the past loops
The last point is important, because it establishes that this isn’t the first or second loop, but rather the 87th. Coulson remembers everything, but it takes a loop or two before Daisy wakes him up once she forgets. It adds another layer of challenge to the time loops, since dying at any point sets them back even further.
With all that established, the episode has a lot of fun with the loops. Coulson and Daisy continue conversations between loops, discuss failed tactics that Daisy forgot, and can experiment with different plans each loop. Anything they learn one time can be remembered another without needing to learn it again, and Daisy gets really good at speaking in sync with other people.
Actually, this episode reminded me a lot of the game “T.I.M.E. Stories,” where the players themselves can loop back and repeat events if they fail the mission the first time. The endgame often reaches a point where the players quickly run through each task to grab exactly what they need before time runs out again, using their knowledge of events.
Thankfully, it was nothing like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya’s “Endless Eight” arc. Even if Nagato and Coulson both lived through hundreds of loops, at least we as the audience don’t have to see the failures play out over several episodes.
2. Sousa
In the middle of it all, we still get some nice character insights with Sousa. He’s there whenever Daisy wakes up, and is willing to help without question or hesitation. In fact, once Daisy explains how the time loop works and suspects a device is rigged to kill whoever picks it up, Sousa is the one to reach in and grab it, knowing he’ll be fine once they loop again but Daisy would lose her memories.
Finally, Daisy asks him why he’s like that, and he gives us a nice little speech. He knows the type to run head-first into a wall on their way to their goal and wants to be there to help pick them back up. Maybe he sees a little Peggy Carter in Daisy?
Either way, it was a nice scene that helps cement his character. It earns him a big smooch during one loop, but Daisy’s the only one who will remember it. That’s just as well, since her relationships usually end with the guy dying.
3. Memories
Eventually the team realizes Simmons could find a way to fix the time drive… but she’s got those memories sealed away. As established a few episodes prior, she’s using a device to block her memories of how time travel works to protect Fitz.
Well, it takes a lot of effort to get the implant out of her without someone dying (more on that in a bit) but eventually it works. Then as the memories come back, Simmons breaks down into tears, and there’s definitely some sounds of apologizing in there.
So the question, then, is: what really happened to Fitz? Simmons says he’s in a safe location but entirely exposed, but is he really? Whatever is horrible enough to cause Simmons to break down the moment she remembers is almost certainly Fitz-related, but now it feels like it’s more for protecting her own mind than it is protecting him.
Whatever the case may be, it was a powerfully dramatic moment.
Continued below4. Enoch
Enoch has slowly been growing on me as a character this season, which brings us to this episode. There are a few things to touch on here.
First off, he is still a Chronicom and can still be programmed. So if he’s programmed to prevent Simmons from remembering no matter what, he’ll do that. That lead to quite a few deaths in a number of loops, and a great sequence where the team consistently fails to stop him.
Each loop, more and more SHIELD agents came in to stop Enoch before they could extract the memory blocker, which quickly cut to the team lying on the floor pondering their defeat. The moment where Simmons admitted, “In retrospect, I should have realized I made countermanding the order password-dependent” was particularly amusing. Deke died once, but no one really cared because they were going to loop again. Sure, it must have been painful for the team, but it was fun to see thanks to the timing and editing.
Then we get the other side of Enoch’s personality. When he learns that the key to saving the crew is to remove an energy modulator from his own body, he does so without hesitation. Yes, he’ll die, but all of them will die if he doesn’t.
This gives us a sufficiently emotional death scene. It’s not intense, he doesn’t rage against the heavens or die in a blaze of glory, he just talks. About loneliness, about outliving others (a fear that Coulson has been grappling with lately himself) about the circle of life. He talks and says goodbye before accepting his fate, knowing that his death saved the team.
Goodbye, Enoch.
5. Ominous Portents
However, Enoch’s death comes with a warning. “While your friends will survive, the team will not.” This will be their final mission (and with just a few episodes left in the series).
So what does this mean? Will the S.H.I.E.L.D. team be scattered? Will they be disbanded after the day is saved? The agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. have been through a lot, including the occasional shutdown of S.H.I.E.L.D. itself, but they’ve always had each other.
This could just mean that their time as a team will end with no more S.H.I.E.L.D. to be a part of, but they’ll still survive and be together. Or it could be a sign of worse things to come.
Speaking of worse things: we also see Nathaniel Malick and Kora right at the end of the episode. Several seasons back, Daisy learned to hone and control her powers by quaking wine glasses to make them sing without shattering. This scene gives us a nice parallel foil where Kora learns to control her powers… by blasting and shattering the glasses completely.
The sister vs sister conflict is approaching, all in due time.
