It’s a brand new day, and the sun is high, all the birds are singing S.H.I.E.L.D.’s gonna die.
Dr. Horrible references aside, yes, there is a fair amount of death in this episode. With that comes spoilers so tread carefully as we look at season 7, episode 11 of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
1. Kora
We got to learn a little more about Kora this episode, as she let herself get stunned and taken in to S.H.I.E.L.D. custody. The episode lets us see how she reacts to multiple characters and situations, starting with her sister, Daisy.
This gives us a bit of a heart-to-heart, as the characters share how their experiences differed. One grew up with Jiaying in Afterlife, not thinking it was a prison until she tried to leave. The other grew up without a family, not knowing the mother the first got to grow up with. There’s tension, but it’s overall peaceful, give or take how Kora seems to think the entire conversation is playing out just as Sibyl predicted.
Then we get how Kora reacts to May, and it’s somewhat different. Given how May gained her nickname of “The Cavalry” (which, you might recall, involved May having to kill an Inhuman girl), Kora turns to anger pretty quickly. We get a pretty decent fight scene between them, although it gets interrupted pretty quickly.
So what is Kora’s goal? She says it’s to save lives, but she plans to do so by taking other lives – starting with Grant Ward. It’s a similar dilemma to the one S.H.I.E.L.D. grappled with early on: is it okay to kill someone before they do anything wrong to prevent more death later?
At the same time, she still kissed Nathaniel Malick after learning he killed Jiaying, so who knows what she’s really up to?
2. Time Keeps on Slipping
Look, it’s no surprise, the timeline has been royally wrecked this season. Kora confirms that, after all the changes that have been made, they’re in a new timeline altogether.
So then there are a few questions we must ask: does the new timeline override the previous one? Are they two alternate but distinct timelines existing separate from each other? Will the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents be affected by the changed timeline the more they live in it? Will there be any returning to the first timeline?
And perhaps most importantly: how does this affect the show’s relation to the Marvel cinematic universe?
I don’t mind the “alternate timelines” version of time travel (I actually think that Dragon Ball Z handled it well by using the two timelines as a source of training and information rather than changing one’s own history), it’ll just be important to see how it fully plays out.
3. Daisy and Sousa
Remember how Daisy gave Sousa a big kiss while they were going through the time loops? She sure does. And he doesn’t, because time looped not long after. But that doesn’t change things for her.
Mack’s the first one to notice it, or rather, Mack and Yo-Yo. I liked the little bit where we learn they were betting on whether or not it would happen.
So Mack gives Sousa an “if you hurt her” talk, stating that it’s going to happen. Though historically speaking, I’d be more worried about Sousa getting hurt; Daisy’s boyfriends don’t have a particularly high survival rate.
Do they have romantic chemistry? They’re quite literally from two different times, but it does give us good character dynamics. Daisy is a little bit reckless and very headstrong, whereas Sousa is more straight laced but supportive. They complement and contrast each other well, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to romantic compatibility. It’s hard to see them really hitting it off once they don’t have the mission to worry about.
But I did enjoy seeing Sousa tease Daisy about the codename “Quake.” It was a cute scene, even if you have to wonder if it’s really that more ridiculous a codename than “Captain America.”
4. Inside Simmons
Now we’re back to Simmons getting interrogated. Malick wants to know where Fitz is, but she literally can’t remember thanks to D.I.A.N.A. being implanted in her. What we end up getting are bits and pieces of flashbacks as Malick tries to probe her brain.
Continued belowIn these flashbacks, we see Fitz and Simmons working on their time travel projects with Enoch. While Simmons is focused on the task at hand, Fitz realizes that (since they’re working on a time machine) they literally have all the time in the world to complete it. He wants a chance to live together with Simmons and make their time going, because apparently he got some bloodwork back that may indicate his is running out.
Naturally, Simmons has to forget about more than just where Fitz is. She has to forget saying goodbye. Whatever happens to him, it’s not going to be a happy ending.
Then she gets pulled out of the memory reader and has forgotten about him altogether. It’s hard to say what’s worse.
5. Endgame
As the episode ends, we see the Chronicom fleet emerge from space and begin firing on S.H.I.E.L.D.
By which I mean: every S.H.I.E.L.D. base around the world. We see the bases go offline on a screen as they’re destroyed one by one, too fast for anyone to escape. Perhaps the Lighthouse will survive, or they’re saving it for last to let Coulson and his team suffer – but it’s an ominous scene.
Of course, it’s also exactly as Sibyl predicted. The characters keep trying to make surprising moves and do things that Sibyl can’t predict – take bigger risks, act against their character, and so on. Yet at the same time, these decisions are the result of the information that Sibyl knows they have, so what if she predicted they’d act unpredictably?
For instance, Kora tells Daisy that Sibyl said “There’s no future where Daisy Johnson lets her sister fight alone.” Daisy agrees with that, because Simmons is more a sister to her than Kora is, so she goes after Simmons. But the way it’s worded makes it seem as though Sibyl intentionally said “her sister” to push Daisy down that path. Now Daisy, Sousa, and Mack are drifting in space with one chance to get to the Zephyr – and that could be just as Sibyl predicted.
How can you win if your opponent has even predicted you acting unpredictably? While the future has been changed before, the accuracy with which Malick and Sibyl carry out their operations suggests that everything is still going according to plan.
We’ll have to see how it all plays out next week.
