Happy holidays, readers! If you’re reading this on Christmas day, then I hope you have a good one, and if you’re reading this after, I hope it went well. Now then, let’s take a look at the latest episode.
1. All About Fitz
Last episode ended with the twist: Fitz is alive, in the future, and wearing badass space armor. This episode was all about the course of events that brought him to the future, leaving us with a tease for what he did after arriving. I’m glad that they took their time to explain this, and in doing so properly introduces new characters, reintroduced others, and gave us proper answers without dragging the mystery on to be revealed slowly in flashbacks throughout the season.
Seriously, that kind of slow reveal is so annoying, and this way we got the story without interrupting the narrative.
2. Operation Breakout
One thing I particularly liked about this episode was the amount of common sense on display. When Fitz gets arrested (by the actual government agents, not the ones that took the rest of the team), he doesn’t stubbornly go “I don’t know where they are, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you anything!” No, he knows they have resources, and actively volunteers to help find the rest of his team.
Although he does make a snarky comment about his last working theory being “they were abducted by aliens,” which is actually more or less the case. A nice little touch.
Then there’s his actual breakout plan, using coded messages in angry letters to soccer magazines. It was clever, but considering his message was so well-coded no one could break it, I’m really curious as to what exactly the code was. It’s sloppy storytelling to tell us a character did something clever without actually letting us know what it is.
Still, it worked, which brings us to the next point…
3. Oh Hi Lance
It was around this point that I went “Oh yeah, they did say Nick Blood would be returning this season.” So yes, Lance Hunter is back, being one of the only S.H.I.E.L.D. agents not in space or locked up at this point. (I would also like to take a moment to note that he is one of the few actors to typically have a cooler name than the characters he plays do, though that’s beside the point.)
Whatever he was doing in the spinoff that never happened sounds like it was exciting and filled with drama. His comment about how he and Bobbi “nearly got married again, until the ninjas showed up” sounds like a hilarious anecdote that we’ll never get to see, and while it would be neat for Bobbi to return as well, bringing back Lance returned a nice dynamic to the show, and kept the story moving.
It’s probably only for one episode, but it was nice while it lasted. And I genuinely laughed when, before Fitz went into cryo-sleep, they exchanged a “Star Wars” reference (“I love you.” “I know.”).
4. Not The Watcher, But Close Enough
Remember that alien in a bald human suit from a few episodes back? We get to meet him again. His name is Enoch, and he’s a 30,000 year-old alien who’s been watching humanity.
He is not, however, an excessively-tall being named Uatu. He’s a Chronicom from a planet connected to the constellation Cygnus, and describes himself as an anthropologist. We learn that he’s following a prophecy of sorts, and the only reason he can ever interfere with events is to prevent an extinction-level event.
Of course, as we know, that extinction level event will have already happened in the future Fitz gets to, and as he travels the slow way (frozen for 74 years), that adds another level of paradoxes to trying to avert it.
5. Future Doodles
Remember that Inhuman from a few seasons back that could foresee peoples’ deaths by touching them? I didn’t, but then this episode reminded me by bringing in his daughter. Well-played, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” way to maintain that continuity!
So we re-meet Robin Hinton, having only seen her briefly back in season 3. When we first see her, she’s at a park with her mother, drawing some little crayon sketches. I think the show was trying to mislead us into thinking the mother, Polly, was the one making the prophecies, given the way she was shown as the focus of the shot. If that was the attempt, though, it didn’t work; the government agents realized “a child is seeing the future” in what maybe was supposed to be a surprise twist, but was quite clear to everyone else.
Continued belowAfter all, a child innocently drawing things in crayon is never anything but innocent. Though it did remind me of Peter Petrelli’s powers from Heroes – too bad General Talbot is dead, they could have made an amusing actor allusion with him having also been in that show.
Still, as Robin is the daughter of Charles Hinton, the Inhuman with the power to foresee death, it makes sense that her powers are similar. It was a clever way to bring back a minor character many of us had completely forgotten about in a more important role, and helps connect past seasons and story arcs well.
Well-played, show. Well-played indeed.
