Well, that was a muddle. But then again, most "One Year Later" episodes are a bit of a muddle. It's been almost a year since the last new episode of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The show has been renewed for a seventh season already, because Marvel, Disney, and ABC won't stop beating a dead horse. Unless it's called Inhumans.
And in fairness, Agents is probably the best of the Marvel shows on the air. That includes Runaways and Cloak & Dagger. Maybe not the Netflix Defenders stuff, but then again most of that has been cancelled, or moved, or whatever.
Which is odd, since Agents has always been a hodge-podge of MCU stuff.The fact Coulson (Clark Gregg) is on it ties it into the movies, as does the occasional Nick Fury or Asgardian or S.H.I.E.L.D. tie-in. But it's always been one-way: Agents has to follow whatever is happening in the movies but the movies pretty much ignore Agents like a red-headed stepchild. I'm surprised half of the cast didn't disappear after Infinity War. But given the timey-wimey nature of that (hey, I hear stories!), maybe it did and we just didn't notice. And Coulson could quietly disappear from the Avengers movies as the superheroics and Thanos, and new characters like Ant-Man and Captain Marvel stepped up.
Also, welcome to Gislef's new Friday night review show/column! MacGyver ended its season tonight, and Doom Patrol is winding down. So I've got to review something. Right? I suppose there's Swamp Thing after Doom Patrol ends, but a) maybe I won't feel like reviewing it, and b) I'd rather have too much to review than too little. What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment.
After a lot of "last season" clips, we get into the episode. Which has Enoch (Joel Stoffer) nattering away next to Fitz's (Iain De Caestecker) cryogenic tube. An alien ship cuts their ship in half.
Then we get Daisy (Chloe Bennett) and Jemma (Elizabeth Henstridge) landing on an alien scrap-heap planet. Daisy beats up the local soldiers, they capture the controller Trok, and question him to learn one half of the ship is on the junk heap. They go there and find Fitz's tube but no Fitz. Jemma finds a plate on the inside that has the name of the planet where the tube was manufactured, and Jemma figures Fitz would have gone there. Daisy, Davis (Maximillian Osinski), and Piper (Briana Venskus) all want to go home. They play hide-and-seek with a Confederate destroyer, and then Jemma warps them to the planet's location anyway rather than home.
Earth is having problems of its own. It's one year later, and Mac (Henry Simmons) is the new director since Coulson's retirement for his impending death. Melinda (Ming-Na Wen) and Elena (Natalia Cordova-Buckley) are still agents, and there's a host of new faces. The most prominent is Agent Keller (Lucas Bryant, our old buddy from Haven), who it turns out is making time with Elena. There's a bit of awkward discussion on this, first between Elena and Miranda, and then between Elena and Keller. They end up deciding to put their relationship on hold because Keller is uncomfortable making time with Mac's former girlfriend. And Elena is uncomfortable making time with Keller when Mac cut himself off from her when he became director.
Maybe the new S.H.I.E.L.D. base is in Haven, and Nathan is cheating on Audrey by getting it on with Elena? Or the last incarnation of Audrey died and Elena is the next one? The fan fic possibilities are endless.
But that's the soap opera stuff. In the S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff, we eventually find out dimensional anomalies have been springing up… somewhere. The S.H.I.E.L.D. techs are scanning the world, but the two anomalies we see are in Ohio and Indiana. Some big Road Warrior-looking guy named Jaco (Winston James Francis) comes through the back wall of an outdoor basketball court. His buddy isn't so lucky and materializes partway into the wall.
With Jemma and Fitz missing, Melinda and Mac recruit a new scientist, Dr. Marcus Benson (HITG Barry Shabaka Henley). who lost his male lover because it's network TV 2019. Marcus has been drinking, and Mac offers him a second chance for himself and for S.H.I.E.L.D. The doctor eventually accepts and confirms the guy who materialized in the wall mutters a cryptic name before expiring. He also has a timing device with coordinates. S.H.I.E.L.D. heads off there.
Jaco has met up with two of his buddies, and they talk about bringing a fourth person through. They can't materialize on a spot occupied by anything that's been built, and there's a museum at the coordinates, so they head there to blow it up. The Road Warriors get into the museum and set off the explosion. The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents get there and are caught in the blast. An armored semi comes out of the blast cloud and guess who's driving it? Sarge (also Clark Gregg), who gets out, shoots a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who understandably thinks he's Coulson, and drives off with his buddies.
The final tag scene has Fitz working in an alien workshop somewhere, shooting himself up with some drug to the neck with a hypogun.
What any of this means, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe Sarge and his bunkies are from the future. Maybe they're from an alternate timeline, since Agents went all timey-wimey a season or two ago. Maybe they come from an alternate dimension. Maybe Sarge is Coulson with amnesia, maybe he's an alternate version of Coulson, maybe he's a clone. Most probably none of the above.
Clark Gregg appears briefly as Coulson earlier in the episode, as a hologram recording Mac listens to when he needs Coulson speaking words of wisdom, let it be, let it be. Plus Mr. Gregg directed the episode. So even if Sarge gets shot dead next week, I'm sure the actor isn't gone from the show.
There's no sign of Jeff Ward as Zeke, Fitz and Jemma's future son traveling back in time. Although Ward gets a main star credit.
The space stuff left me cold last year, so the bits with Daisy and Jemma this week, and the Quest for Fitz didn't do anything for me this week. It gives Osinski and Venskus more to do, so there's that. And the two of them have a nice bantering chemistry, which is more than Daisy and Jemma do. So there's something to liven up that grouping.
The main interest is what's going on with S.H.I.E.L.D. and Earth. I'm not clear, and the episode seemingly doesn't make clear, what the status of S.H.I.E.L.D. is "one year later". They're driving around in S.H.I.E.L.D. cars (even though they were using Quinjets earlier) with big S.H.I.E.L.D. logos on them. So I guess S.H.I.E.L.D. is a publicly-known entity after its betrayal a few seasons earlier. Maybe it's explained in the movies? I haven't seen the last few MCU movies. And as I noted, the show takes it cues from the movies more than the movies take their cues from the show. But that's still more interactivity than you get with Runaways or Cloak & Dagger.
Elena doesn't get to do any superspeed stuff. Seems like it would have been useful at the museum. Hopefully she'll get to strut her stuff a bit since she's apparently the only super-type on Team S.H.I.E.L.D. Although Mac hints there are others. Maybe Agent Keller doesn't feel pain and he legally changed his last name? And the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are Trouble-afflicted? See what I mean about an infinite potential of Haven tie-ins? I'd pay good money (but not to the WWE) to see Adam Copeland again. Have I mentioned that I miss Haven?
So there's enough mysteries on Earth to keep the show going at least another season or two. I could do with less of the space stuff, which seems to be distracting from the Earth-based storyline, and isn't that thrilling anyway. So far, they're just dealing with officious, but scruffy-looking aliens, and playing hide-and-seek with an alien warship.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
Written by Gislef on May 11, 2019
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