6.6 Spoiler Thread

You're running through Jemma's mind. We all probably have a little box we shove our evil into. I think if you were able to run through mine, you'd be firetrucking terrified. HAhahaha... If that was the worst Jemma can come up with, it's pretty tame...

I have to disagree here. Well about this episode.  I thought it was on of the better ones this season.  I agree on the Kitson thing, though it did have their laughable moments, though the filler may have been necessary considering the pace and content of the next episode.

Ep 6 wasn't a plot driven ep, but it was a character driven ep. Not only did it provide more of FitzSimmon's background that was hinted at through the series (as you mentioned), but pretty much settles all the little issues bugging us (or at least me) such as Fitz's thoughts after his brain damage problem, and the Jemma/Will and Fitz/AIDA thing, etc. But they're together now, and you know what that means. Bad firetruck *and* spoon is going to happen.

It also filled in some of what happened post season 5, and did the necessary we-need-to-see-Fitz-as-he-finds-out-what-his-other-self-did-in-the-future-and-the-past. He knows full well now, that the only reason he's alive is because he's a paradox. It's interesting that he finds out by actually being at the event through Jemma's memories, so from that aspect, I thought it was cleverly done.

That said (and yes, I'm going to repeat myself), this show has already been renewed for Season 7. Remember the first half of Season 1? It established SHIELD when it was SHIELD... Hydra... whatever, and it provided kind of a baseline of what SHIELD business was like before they found out it was Hydra. But it was also wasting time until that little Hydra reveal. So let's see. Benson and Yo-Yo are both working together. Benson wants to go to South America. Yo-Yo is from Columbia. Could we be finding out more of Yo-Yo's background soon?

If they're time wasting, now would be a good time to do some character episodes.


There's still almost 5 hours of show time, in what seems to be turning out to a single arc. More than enough time...


LOL, it did establish a dystopian future...

Here are my thoughts on "Inescapable:"

Why I have been waiting years for this episode

• We have had episodes devoted to the background of Ward ("Ragtag"), Coulson ("The Writing on the Wall"), May ("Melinda"), and Mack ("Watchdogs"); and the second half of season 2 focused on Daisy's background. There are even episodes devoted to the backgrounds of Malick ("Paradise Lost") and Hale ("Rise and Shine"). All of these episodes occurred sometime during the first two seasons that the character was on the show. Through "The Other Thing," the best for FitzSimmons were two deleted scenes from "Seeds." They are my favorite characters, so I may be overreacting. However, it felt as if the writers just did not care enough about these two characters to invest any thought into their backgrounds, until now.
• As a general rule, I do not ship characters. I believe that writers are too quick to pair up characters when it is not only possible but common to work with people without wanting to sleep with them. I used to ship FitzSimmons, but note the past tense. I do not know when I stopped doing so (it was likely a gradual process), but I think I know why. There has been a series of relationship issues that have built up over the years such as Simmons abandoning Fitz between the first two seasons when he needed her most. These issues were generally ignored as if we were supposed to pretend that they did not happen. It got to the point that I felt like a fool for caring about this relationship when the writers did not care enough about these characters or this relationship to spend any time addressing the issues raised, until now.
• As I said, I do not know exactly when I stopped shipping FitzSimmons. I realized that I no longer did so in "The Singularity." We got a(n about to have) sex scene, but I did not care. If anything I would have preferred an "I love you" scene. I started tracking all the times that Simmons heard Fitz use any variation of the word, "love," in her presence to describe his feelings toward her. Here is the entire list through "The Other Thing:"
  
  
  
  In other words, there have been times when Simmons was deaf or when she was eavesdropping or when he was talking about her feelings for Will. However, she had never heard him use the word "love" to describe his feelings toward her when he could see her, until now.
• In this episode, we saw that Fitz's death affected the team and that they mourned for him. We learned they actually did make the effort to recover his body and planned to have a service for him. I was not happy with how the team handled Fitz's death in "The End." His death scene and the wordless scenes that followed were good. However, the episode then tricked us into thinking that the characters were mourning Fitz and holding a memorial for him only for it to be a retirement party for Coulson. After all, there was an equally good replacement in a freezer. For all we knew at the time, Fitz's body was abandoned at the scene. There was not much evidence that the death of a Fitz affected the rest of the team very much, until now.

Final FitzSimmons argument

There was not a part of this episode that I did not like, but the FitzSimmons argument at the end was very thought provoking. It felt like an argument between two people who have been repressing relationship issues for a long time until they could not hold them anymore. There were several issues raised:

• Fitz upset that Simmons abandoned him—As noted above, this is an issue that has bugged me for a long time. Over the course of the show, there has almost never been a time in which Fitz needed Simmons more than when he was recovering from brain damage between the first two seasons. He and Simmons were trapped in a pod at the bottom of the ocean with only enough oxygen to fill one set of lungs. He had the brain damage because he filled her lungs instead of his.
  
  How did she repay him? We never got any details on Fitz's condition, but there is a lot of research on how contact with loved ones helps with healing that suggests that Simmons's presence and support would likely have had the following effects:
  
  • Alleviate Fitz's suffering,
  • Help Fitz recover faster,
  • Increase the chance of a full recovery, and
  • Reduce the chances that the damage would eventually be fatal.
  
  I do not want to exaggerate and suggest that Simmons's presence alone would change a certain, long, painful death into a quick and easy recovery. The effects may not have been huge, but they would have been real and meaningful. Simmons may claim that Fitz was not fair, but this was the fairest issue in the entire argument. I do not think that her actions are either inexplicable or inexcusable, but she has never explained why she abandoned him, other than a rationalization that she did it for his own good, nor has she apologized. I can come up with a possible reason, which, I suspect, would be one more reason than the writers have come up with.
• Fitz upset that Simmons loved Will—It is very understandable that Fitz would feel this way, but I do not believe that she wronged him. With the exception of two scenes in the final half of the final episode, she spent the entire second season making it quite clear that she was not interested in Fitz in any romantic way. Those two scenes happened, so Fitz had reason to believe that he was at least first in line. However, there was nothing resembling a committed relationship at this point. Simmons did not go to Maveth on purpose. In fact, it was Fitz who fiddled with the latch. While there, it was quite understandable that she would form a relationship with the only other human she could find on that planet, someone who could help her survive. If anything, it was a bit unrealistic that she waited as long as she did before consummating her relationship with Will.
• Fitz suggesting that Will may have been Hive all along—This is just disturbing. Who could possibly suggest something like this?
  
  
  

  Jun 18, 2019 3:58:09 GMT FreeKresge said:

  • Finally, an offbeat choice: It from Maveth. Early in the episode, Simmons was desperately searching for water. There was none in sight when the sandstorm hit. When the sandstorm cleared, she was by a pool of water. Most likely, either It moved Simmons to the water or It created the pool, saving Simmons's life. In fact, I have a head canon that Will Daniels was Hive the entire time (explaining why It's powers on Maveth were completely different from Hive's powers on earth) with It being Hive's jailer. We only had Will/Hive's word that It was evil. All we (or Simmons) saw was It moving ominously. It tried to prevent Will/Hive from leaving Maveth, but It let Simmons escape.
  
  C'mon, Fitz suggested that Simmons slept with a dead guy. That is sick.
  
  
  

  Nov 25, 2017 6:44:43 GMT FreeKresge said:

  I also wonder why Hive never killed Will all those years. I have a wacky theory that Hive actually lied about when Will was killed and possessed. In other words, Hive did not kill and possess Will when Simmons escaped Maveth; Hive killed and possessed Will within days, if not hours, of Will's arrival on Maveth. This means that Simmons was unwittingly engaging in necrophilia while on Maveth. In this theory, "It" was not Hive; It was Hive's jailer. It has no problem feeding It's prisoner, which is why It brought Simmons close to "Will." However, It was not going to let Hive escape. This explains why It had powers like widening canyons and creating sandstorms, whereas the only powers that Hive manifested was an ability to control Inhumans and to reduce all other humans to bloody skeletons.
  
  I think that I better stop now. I do find it interesting that S.H.I.E.L.D. in Exile exists inside the world of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and that Fitz appears to be a fan of this site. Therefore, I apologize to Simmons for planting this idea in Fitz's head.
• Simmons called AIDA a robot girlfriend—If Fitz was primarily responsible for building AIDA, why did she resemble Radcliffe's ex in both appearance and voice (but not accent). While the Framework was a Fitz project with significant help from Radcliffe, LMDs were more of a Radcliffe project with significant help from Fitz. In any case, AIDA was more like a daughter than a girlfriend to Fitz. I understand that Simmons might still be upset at this. After all, by this time, she and Fitz were in a committed relationship. If he were to create daughters, it should be with Simmons, and only after discussing the issue with her.
  
  There is a serious issue with Simmons using this incident against Fitz. It is difficult to impossible to apply real-world laws to science-fiction scenarios that do not resemble any situation that lawmakers intended when they wrote the laws. However, I believe that it is reasonable to conclude that AIDA RAPED FITZ (or Madame Hydra or Ophelia raped him).
  
  Ideally, when one partner is raped, the other partner should be supportive. By definition, there is no consent (and AIDA messed with Fitz's mind so much that there can be nothing that resembles consent), so the partner who is raped has done nothing wrong. I do not believe that the FitzSimmons relationship is an ideal relationship. This is a good thing as an ideal relationship would be boring. In real relationships, I would imagine that it is not unusual for someone to be a less than supportive when a partner is raped. However, if one partner treats the other partner being raped as a wrong committed against the first partner, then the relationship moves from being merely a realistic relationship to being an emotionally abusive relationship (which can still be realistic).
  
  It is also very common for film or television to discount rape when a man is the victim. See "Yes Men" for another example.
  
  On the other hand, I once entertained a theory that the LMD Simmons in "World's End" had actually been around for a while. In particular, there was a period in the middle of the fourth season in which there was a quota of one scene per episode in which Simmons was supportive of Fitz. As she usually is not that supportive, I theorized that it was the LMD in those scenes. I abandoned this theory because the events of "Self Control" would make no sense if there were a LMD version of Simmons that everyone knew about. However, maybe I was premature in abandoning the theory and this is what Simmons was talking about. Maybe Simmons was referring to Fitz building not AIDA but LMD Simmons as a robot girlfriend to be supportive and to be with him when Simmons was too busy attending meetings.
• Simmons claimed that Fitz was a Nazi—I consider this argument to be unfair. When Simmons was in the Framework, she knew that she was in the Framework, even as she failed to grasp what it meant to be in a Framework. Most importantly, she did not have a lifetime of fake memories implanted in her mind. Fitz had a lifetime of fake memories implanted in him. There were fake memories in Coulson, May, Mack, and Mace as well, but these were just enough to distract them as they were not part of AIDA's plan. Fitz was crucial to the plan. Ophelia claimed that she only changed two things in Fitz's life (giving him a good relationship with his father and having him meet her on their first day at the Academy). However, I do not believe her when she said these were the only differences. It was pretty clear that AIDA did everything that she needed to accomplish her goal of being turned into a human with many superpowers, and this required completely messing with Fitz's mind. It is probably a miracle that he is as sane as he is. The Doctor is now a part of Fitz, and I can understand how this can, and probably should, make Simmons wary. However, Fitz is not to blame. He is the victim.
• Simmons claimed that everything Fitz did was for his own ego—Well, she could also have claimed that the sky was blue, the grass was green, and that everything Simmons did was for her own ego. Has there ever been a great scientist who did not have a big ego? Of course, Fitz wants recognition for his accomplishments just as Simmons wants recognition for hers. None of this is incompatible with wanting to help humanity or one's friends.

Other Thoughts

One of the things that I liked best about "Inescapable" was that it was a rare episode that felt like it was written by someone who has actually seen the show and cares about it as much as fans do. I liked that it included details from the past such as Fitz and Simmons constantly squabbling in the first season and how it was Simmons who pushed Fitz into joining Coulson's team to how, from the Doctor's perspective, Simmons murdered his beloved father.

In my comments on "The Other Thing," I ended up deleting a comment that it did not feel as if Fitz and Simmons were being written off the show in the same way that Morse and Hunter were written off in "Parting Shots." Obviously, anyone who saw the preview for "Inescapable" knew that they were not. I am still paranoid enough to worry that this episode was a parting gift to FitzSimmons fans (and to Elizabeth Henstridge and Iain De Caestecker).

Regarding the preview, in the thread on whether we watch them, I noted that previews can roughly be divided into ones that reveal nothing, ones that are misleading, and ones that I am very glad that I did not see before watching the episode in question. After watching "Inescapable," I went back and watch the preview. It was very much in the category of ones that I am glad that I did not watch before watching the episode in question.

Chronicoms had a lot of advanced technology. Yet, they still relied on a couple of relatively primitive Terrans to solve their problems rather than on the Chronicoms who developed the advanced technology. Atarah must have been very desperate. She was also quite impatient. Simmons could have mentioned that the time machine was assembled by her son in law. This son in law would marry a daughter who has yet to be conceived, and the son in law will be about 15 years younger than the daughter. I wonder how Atarah would expect the daughter to be conceived when the daughter's parents are trapped in a mind prison.

I admit that the Confederacy may not have known the details, but what exactly were they trying to extract from a planet that was "set ablaze, heated to the melting point, the magma now turned to stone"?

In "Fun & Games," Simmons was quite skeptical when Fitz said that he proposed to Simmons first. In "Inescapable," she did not deny it when Fitz asked if he had already proposed to her.

There is a phenomenon in psychology that states that actively trying not to think about something only causes a person to be more likely to think about that thing. To take the most common example, if I were to ask someone to record every random thought for a minute, it is unlikely that the person would think about white bears. However, if I were to ask the person to try not to think about white bears, it is likely that the person will think about white bears. Simmons became a victim of this. She ended up thinking about the very things she did not want to think about. It is too bad that she apparently did not take any psychology courses at the Academy, or she would have realized this.

I understand that Fitz was a bit distracted by the sight of a dead body, particularly because it was his own. However, he did not seem to notice that Elena had mechanical hands.

If Deke does not yet count as a major character, then the scene with Fitz's body was the first scene this season to contain all of the major characters on the show.

Apparently, some of the characters were reluctant to accept Simmons's belief that there was another Fitz in a freezer who could replace the one who died. Her belief was not unreasonable. In fact, I wrote the following on the thread for "Rise and Shine:"
Obviously, Talbot ended up in the role that I predicted for Fitz, but I was right that Frozen Fitz could be a replacement. Maybe Fitz should let other team members know about this site. My only concern is that I still believe that the Fitz who died had value and deserved to be mourned even though there was another, something that was ignored at the very end of "The End."

From Fitz's perspective, he has had very little interaction with Mack since Fitz received one of Mack's most vicious lectures. (Soon afterward, they were dumped into the Framework. Afterward, Fitz encouraged Ophelia to rescue Mack, but Mack was unconscious. Mack was present when Daisy talked Fitz out of turning himself in, and they were all at the diner.) I remember a review describing that lecture as the kind of conversation that tends to end friendships. However, Mack was the first rescuer that Fitz thought about over even Hunter, who, from Fitz's perspective, rescued him much more recently.

Simmons stated, "I never knew pain until I met you!" While very dramatic, this is a truth about close relationships, especially close romantic relationships. There is a saying that, "you hurt the ones you love." This is not exactly true. A better way to put it is that, "you are hurt by the ones you love." There is vulnerability in loving someone else. Occasionally, even in the best of relationships, this vulnerability will lead to pain. There is a story of a researcher trying to create a measure of how in love a person is. As is typical in such a case, the researcher tried many different items to determine which worked best. I do not remember the exact words of the one that worked best, but it was something like, "X is the cause of my worst depressions." Love hurts.

I already had in my notes "I ship Simmons Id/Doctor" before they started making out. I guess that the sexual tension between them was that obvious. I wonder if we will ever find out what the "that" was that Simmons likes and Fitz does.

I think that we all assumed that it was the shrikes that destroyed Chronyca-2. It simply makes sense for all the story lines to tie together eventually. However, Mack should not know that he is in a television show and should not know that the story lines will tie together. How did he know that it was the shrikes that destroyed Chronyca-2? My guess is that either Sarge or one of his crew told him off screen that it was Chronyca-2's destruction that Benson found in Tracker's video.

So what exactly was Zombie Simmons? At minimum, it probably represents something that she has repressed. The question is what?

• The simplest, and thus least interesting possibility, was that she saw a Japanese horror film that she was too young to see. It gave her nightmares until her father suggested locking the image in a box.
• I want to think of Simmons as a good person, but doing so requires me to ignore a fair amount of evidence that she is, at least, a selfish person who puts her needs above those of others contrary to the stated ideals of S.H.I.E.L.D., or, at worst, she is simply a despicable individual. In the second season, she murdered Bakshi. In the third season, she sacrificed the lives of twelve innocents to save her own. In the fifth season she (and Fitz) were willing to sacrifice the entire world to save herself (and Fitz). In the sixth season, she robbed from and tortured an innocent in order to fulfill a personal agenda. Fitz had an evil side planted inside him. Simmons may have always had one hiding in a box.
• She may have had a specific trauma when she was seven (and a half) years old. Being sexually molested is probably too cliché, but, maybe, she saw a beloved childhood pet struck and killed by a car. She may have dealt with this trauma by repressing it.
• Rather than representing a single trauma, the zombie might represent the sum total of all her traumas, often from being in peril. For example, just since the show started:
  
  • She contracted an alien virus and jumped out of a plane without a parachute.
  • She dove on a grenade probably without realizing that it was just an ICEr grenade.
  • She was dumped on the bottom of the ocean where she nearly suffocated.
  • She was exposed as a S.H.I.E.L.D. mole in Hydra.
  • She was whisked away to another planet.
  • She was attacked by an LMD who looked and sounded just like Fitz.
  • As noted elsewhere in this thread, she found herself buried in what was fortunately a very shallow grave inside the Framework.
  • She saw an innocent woman murdered by someone who again looked and sounded just like Fitz.
  • She was strangled by her future father in law.
  • She was kidnapped and whisked away to a future when the earth had been destroyed.
  • In this future, she was enslaved by an evil alien overlord.
  
  These were simply the first events that I could think of. I am sure that I could find more if I went through my notes. Through all this, she has been unusually resilient. Perhaps this is because she represses all these events.

These are not mutually exclusive. It is possible that the particular appearance of the zombie was influenced by a Japanese horror film she saw when she was too young and that she saw a beloved pet killed and that she is deeply affected by traumas that she experienced since then and that all this leads her to perform some despicable acts. The box was inside her bedroom when she was her 7.5 year old persona, so whatever it is probably originated by then even if subsequent events added to the box.

While earth may be the obvious place for Enoch to take Fitz and Simmons, Enoch still presumably cares about his homeworld. One might presume that humanity in general, and Fitz and Simmons in particular, may owe Enoch a debt. Enoch may have taken Fitz and Simmons to a place where they can work on time travel without being in a prison. The season may end with a cliffhanger on whether it works or, given Fitz's track record, with it going horribly wrong.

Despite being a regular character, Deke has been in only one of the six episodes so far. Even if he appears in every episode from now until the season finale, he will be in barely more than 60% of the episodes. This raises the question of why he is officially a regular and not recurring. My guess is that Deke will be a critical part of the writers' plans for the second half of the season. Jeff Ward or his people figured that out, so he was able to hold out for regular status.

With Sarge's absence in this episode, Daisy is now the only character who has been in all six episodes, if you count being a character in Deke's Framework as an appearance in an episode.

I am at a point where I accept that Fitz and Simmons are a couple even if I wish that the writers left them as platonic friends. I will not say that this episode is too little, too late, but instead I would say that it was a good start, quite late. The show can go further. For example, at some time in the future, Simmons may actually be on a first name basis with Fitz. At a minimum, I hope that the show does not consider this episode to be sufficient and follows up on the issues raised. I want to see Simmons explain why she left Fitz. There are also additional issues that can be addressed, such as why she waited a full year before even discussing what Fitz said to her under the sea and why she eventually came around given that she was in no hurry. On this point, I can probably come up with a dozen possible explanations. I suspect that this is about 12 more than the writers have come up with.

In conclusion, I described fandom of a television show as being like fandom for a sports team. At the moment, I am hoping that this episode is a turning point, the equivalent of a team that has been mediocre due to injuries finally becoming healthy and making a run for the pennant. Even if this is not the case, at least this episode could be the one high point of a season, the equivalent of a pitcher pitching a perfect game in an otherwise disappointing season.

As I noted in my comments above, I have definitely been waiting a very long time for this episode.


Before that version of the film, there was a made-for-television version. It came out approximately when Simmons was seven and a half years old.


This was a call back to "FZZT" when Simmons's prognosis was very bleak:

They will never know what would have happened to them during the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. if they stayed at the Academy. However, it is reasonable that, most of the time, they would have been much safer had they remained. Fitz would not have received his brain damage and he would not be hosting the Doctor. Simmons would not have contracted the alien virus and would not have been swept to a distant planet.

In my head, the pause at the end of that exchange was the moment when Fitz realized how important Simmons was to him.


I can confirm that, at the time, Deke had more dialogue in "Code Yellow" than any character had in any episode since Young and Old Hale combined in "Rise and Shine." In "Inescapable," Simmons had more dialogue than any character has had in any episode from the beginning of the show through "The Other Thing" other than Simmons herself in "4,722 Hours." In "Inescapable," this was second to Fitz, who broke Simmons's record in "4,722 Hours" for most dialogue of any character in any episode of this show.

As you can see from my comments, I did a lot more than read their argument.

Good call!