S7 Ep6 Spoiler Discussion

AoS 706 - Adapt or Die.

Well, this was one of those episodes that ended with me staring at some newscasters going... Huh? There were only a dozen gotchas in the episode. However, one overwhelming conclusion can be drawn. The Chronicoms must die a horribly agonizing, painfully slow death. Excluding Enoch, of course. I would also like to extend that offer to Nathanial Malick.


Marvel logo. Scene dissolves into the Chronocom White Room we've seen Fitz and Simmons in.
Luke: You wish to overwhelm them.
Sibyl: I do.

Nathanial wants to get Daisy's and (mistakenly) Sousa's powers. Daisy for her telekinesis, Sousa for his slow aging.
Nathanial Malick: Take a look at Ron's suit. Guy's here 'cause he's got mouths to feed, not 'cause he worships a space octopus. No. Religion's not really my thing.
Well Nate, as good as that "space octopus" joke was, you still gotta die. Yikes. It's turning out Gideon is almost the good guy of the family. And he's a dick!


May: There's something wrong with that agent.
I agree with Phil. But he becomes more fun later. Like when he's going down to the computer room, see's his lock down announcement projection on the wall:
Stoner: Computers. My own face is aiding the damn enemy today. Turn it off.
Agent King (a Chronicom): We'll remove your face ASAP, sir.
Stoner: Don't get wise, Agent King. (Agent King sorta smirks.)
I love dialog like this...


We should probably mention this...
Coulson: I died, and I came back.
May [scoffs]: Yeah.
Coulson: I didn't ask for that. But here we are. And, okay, you don't feel. But you won't even tell me what you think.
May: You want to know what I think?
Coulson: Yeah.
May: You never die. You always come back. You know how many times I've mourned for you? I'm not doing it again. And I'm certainly not doing it for a decoy with a simulated personality!
Coulson: Thank you! There she is. Don't look now, but your emotions are coming back. Unless you just picked that up from watching me.... They're mimicking me. Adapting.
May: Are we done sharing now?

Sousa, is a Fitzing hero. He and Daisy belong together. Make it happen. (I am still not abandoning my prediction Sousa could be an inhuman...) Sousa should be the next director of  SHIELD  SWORD.  He is a definite leader type, like Coulson, Fury, Rogers and Stark.  He may only have knowledge to 1931, but he seems to adapt well to any situation, and he's a quick learner. Interesting that the Chronicoms don't have him on their radar as a threat. Have to file that one away...

The part where he literally carries Daisy to safety without his cane embodies the character. The writers already did the unforgivable by killing off Davis, if they do Sousa, I'll be pissed.


Daisy couldn't control her power when she first got it. Nathaniel has the same problem. He's breaking his own bones, just like we remember Daisy doing. Still, Sousa should have... hastened Nate's overdue date with destiny... So to speak...

Uh, we probably have to talk about Diana, like what the hell is Diana? It's an implant Jemma created to suppress the memory of where Fitz is? "She's adorable and we're inseparable. Literally."
Hmmm... We got a little bit closer to getting an answer, but still got no satisfaction. Nor Fitz for that matter.
However, watching Jemma force Deke to apologize for his transgression against Enoch was genius.

Coulson: The fact is, dying is kind my superpower.
He leaves a final message for May... And blows the charges that were meant to flood the lighthouse. So the Chronicom's time ship full of hunters was a lower level of the lighthouse and was blown up by Coulson... with Coulson still in it. Did we lose Phil again?

And Stoner kills Luke. And offers to buy May a "beverage of her choice"... May suggests closing the base and blaming a "Hydrogen Wave Crisis", lol.
When asked about Coulson, May replies, "He's gone."
Yo-Yo: Was he in that explosion? Is he dead?
May: He'll come back. Always does.
Sorry May, don't believe a word about not mourning Coulson. Damn. I found this heartbreaking.

Ah, Mack, they've already done this once with your character and your daughter, now it's your parents. But think about it. They took your parents a while ago, but you don't remember it. This isn't your timeline.
Considering how unguarded Mack's parents were, even though the Chronicoms knew Mack was around, made me suspicious...
But doing the Back to the Future thing and suggesting the parents get their kid an ATV, right before he finds out they're not his parents, wasn't unexpected, but it was... sad.

In the Zephyr, Jemma is working on Daisy is in the medical chamber, and Sousa is looking on with concern.
Deke: We're about to jump.
Jemma (to Sousa): Last chance if you...
Welcome to the Team, Daniel. Long may you live.



Wow. Lot's of story advancement just before mid-season, a perfect time for that episode to describe what happened from when Enoch saved FitzSimmons in the Lighthouse to May's death in Izel's pyramid.

Never did find out what was in the picture Freddie Malick had, nor the consequences of Deke killing him.  Well, not yet, anyway.

Did Coulson successfully blow up the Chronicom's time ship? Does this limit their ability to travel through time? If it does, Is that why the Z1 jumped at the end of the show? And just like that, bad guys like Luke are gone?

If I had any idea where this season was going, well, I don't anymore...  But, when you hit rock bottom, the only way you can go is up.

Always been a fan, but it's interesting that they're not only taking a character from another series, but is further developing that character. They're clearly marking Sousa as being more than say, a Keller or Victoria Hand character, where you might give a darn if the character gets popped.

But they turned Rosalind into a likeable character, only to snuff her out to make Ward a complete assh...... completely unlikable guy. These guys have a history of killing likeable characters...

I'll need to read the fine print first...

I've always sucked with dates. I meant the year they picked Sousa up, whatever that was...

Okay, so what I gather from this is: A lot of things were not good!




Anyway, here my own random and a bit disjointed two cents:


- Another good episode, a lot darker than last week's though. 


- Not quite as much a focus on Skye and Sousa as I would have expected, but what they did there was powerful! Like, for real. For some reason the scene where Sousa told Skye about his own injury while she was completely out of it almost had me in tears. Talk about great acting on both of their parts!
Also: "Jiaying, it happened before." God damn! Honestly, while we're already at it with screwing the timeline, how about we save Jiaying from Whitehall? After all, we've had both of them mentioned by now, plus having both Enver and Dichen in the same episode/scene would be a lot of fun. 
As to Skye and Sousa, wow they are really pushing this. Hard. And it is working out magnificently!!! As I said before:



Poor Deke, though. Looks like Skye might be favouring another man's lemons.



Also, Skye lying unconscious in some sort of cylindrical medical chamber while a handsome dark-haired agent is worrying about how. The more things change the more they stay the same...  



- How come Mack and Yo-Yo slice their way through a concrete wall just fine, but then can't find a way around a metal door? Talk about lazy writing. 
What a bummer about Mack's parents. And both of them even. I guess I should have seen that one coming, going by how easy the rescue was, but I'll admit that it took me off guard. Too bad the annoying brother has apparently also been born already.

The fact aside that I really don't like Mack, though, I really feel bad for him here. That must have been horrible to experience. BUT, that doesn't change the fact that (for whatever reason) he is currently in charge of one of the most important missions ever, regarding the fate of all mankind, and he just completely... crumbled. Not only was he going to embark alone on a reckless rescue mission with little to no planning that he knew would be a trap, but after things did go south, he also completely abandoned the team. At least back in S3, when Coulson went after Ward, he put someone else in charge, because he knew he wouldn't be making sound decisions at that point. (The fact that that person was Mack is ample proof of that!  ) Yet Mack himself now simply bailed.

Can we please put Sousa in charge already? Although... he might also be preoccupied at the moment.


- Simmons has an implant in her brain and she gave it a name. O-kaaay.   I'm just going to assume that "Diana" has some sort of holographic persona or something that Simmons interacted with at some point, because otherwise this is really just weird. 


- I don't think we've seen the last of Nathaniel yet. And the next time he will have had time to get used to his new powers. I'm joining backroadjunkie in calling for his horribly agonizing, painfully slow death. Maybe Skye could show him what she's going to do to his brother one day. 


- Mack: "We got a twenty on Daisy and Sousa?"
Simmons: "I checked every camera feed in the Lighthouse. No sign of them."
Mack: "Can't be out of my strongest fighter."
*Elena will remember this*

Well,  I guess a certain someone could at least be trying to get her powers back... 
 

- First, May waits to warn Coulson about the agent that lured away General Stoner being a Chronicom until after they have already left the room, and then Coulson decides to have a thorough heart-to-heart with May instead of following up on that immediately?!? Man, Stoner can count himself lucky these morons stopped bickering when they did and not a few moments later, because otherwise he would have ended up on the pile of faceless people as well. And those were not the cool Game of Thrones variety of faceless people!  




Well, by now it looks like when the team does finally get back to their own year, there won't be a lot left they'll recognise. Which, I guess, might be the point where we're officially rejoining the main MCU again, because as of Endgame that is basically what the MCU is. A bunch of different, but similar timelines that diverted from each other when someone started messing with time. 

One timeline where Loki escaped after New York. One where he did not. 
One timeline where Cap lived out his life with Peggy Carter. One where he did not and she married someone else. 
One timeline of the future where Graviton blew up the Earth. One where he did not, because Skye stopped him. 
One timeline where Mack's parents were killed by Chronicoms when he was a child, one where they were not.
One timeline where Grant Ward became a murderer working for Hydra. One where he did not, because Victoria Hand got to him first and led him on a better path.
...

Okay, that last one might just be wishful thinking, but you get my drift. Now I guess it'll remain to be seen whether our team stays in the current timeline they're in once they've defeated the Chronicoms, or whether they'll end up reality-hopping to find the one they originally belong to. Damn, I think they could even do a whole new show about that part!!

I read through a couple of them, and it's funny that a live-watch gets visceral reactions (like, "oh, that's not good") with more reactions to visuals, as opposed to the summaries where the entire show is analyzed postmortem knowing how some of the problems were resolved.

It's difficult to get context. So many times you get caught up in the show that you don't comment until a commercial break. At least they provide a time stamp...



This is one of the parts that has me thinking Sousa is destined for something more than a tag-along man-out-of-time role. The writers really want you to invest some feeling for the character. I wonder if Sousa was chosen because there's already some established back-story, and wouldn't need to waste time trying to fill it in.

I'd really like to think Disney came to the writers and said, "We'll give you a couple seasons, but this is what you have to set up for us by the end..."

No. Certain things still need to happen. What happens if Cal, Jiaying and Daisy grow up as a happy family? SHIELD never gets involved, and Daisy never becomes Skye. And then Talbot succeeds in destroying the Earth. It just gets ugly...


Maybe they'll let Snowflake out.

I have to agree. This is SHIELD. The mission must come first. Sure, grieve for your parents, but their fate is going to happen to billions once the Chronicoms have the planet.

Mack and Coulson are both gone, Daisy (and May for that matter) is incapacitated.

Sousa's pretty much in charge by default in terms of SHIELD hierarchy...


You found something "weird" in Agents of SHIELD? How unusual...


I found Gideon's death to be less than satisfying. They could have at least made him scream a couple of times.


Robo-Coulson rejected the idea the aide was a Chronicom because she displayed emotion. It wasn't until the end of the heart-to-heart that Coulson realized they were emulating people.

Besides, we wouldn't have gotten that "I BELIEVE YOU!" scene. Coulson or May didn't have to convince Stoner of anything after that...


Plot twist: Sousa did marry Peggy Carter in the original timeline, but because Rogers went back in time, Sousa got Dear Johned and was subsequently killed by Hydra (but was rescued by the Team...)

Easy, huh? HAhahaaha...

I don't think there'll be much of a love triangle. More like, something serious developing between Skye and Sousa while Deke keeps pining from afar. At least as of his rant in episode 6x12, Deke still seems to have feelings for Skye, yet she's never displayed any interest in him aside from a superficial friendship. Not when he got shot, not when she got back from space and not even when they were both about to die in Sarge's truck. I doubt that is going to change now all of a sudden. 

As to Snowflake: What, you're suddenly expecting continuity? 


Okay, fair enough.  


It's mostly the "ignoring" part that really bothers me. Yo-Yo did get that five seconds check-up from Simmons, who found nothing wrong with her, but I feel like there's a lot more she could be trying. 

In The Winter Soldier, Steven watches a video of Peggy in a museum. In it she tells the story of how Steve saved a thousand men in a blizzard, by fighting his way through a Nazi blockade. Apparently one of the men he saved later became her husband. 

Well, neither Fitz, nor Simmons or May were on the ground when Skye and Talbot fought. I doubt any of them would have seen it coming that he might absorb Skye, thereby taking her powers. So when the Earth was quaked apart, it makes sense that they might assume that she did it somehow. 

As to the last part, like I said, wishful thinking.