S7 ep 8 spoiler thread

I see that the last post of the live chat raised the question of whether Kora is Daisy's full sister or half sister. Kyle MacLachlan was 24 years old when the episode took place. The actress who played Kara was 28 years old when the episode was filmed. The only way that Kara is Daisy's full sister is if Jiaying cheated on Cal with Kara's father or if Cal has the same anti-aging powers that Jiaying and Ming-Na Wen have.

I've been busy with another project, so this is in a pretty raw form. I'd clean it up, but I'm not gonna.



AoS 708 - After, Before

The show pretty much starts where Ep 707 did.

January 21, 1982. Mack takes off on a motorcycle, Deke goes to comfort Mack.  And the time drive malfunctions, and we see what happens from the Zephyr's POV.   According to satellite data, the Zephyr jumps 481 days.  (GPS was somewhat functional by 1980, so this is plausible.)

May 17, 1983. The Team on the Zephyr cannot find Mack or Deke. Before they can take any definitive action, they jump again.

September 9, 1983. We see the scene at the end of 707, with Jemma telling May and Yo-Yo they have 27 days to find Mack and Deke. The door to the Quinjet hanger closes. Sousa makes an appearance, and Jemma reassures him that she has faith in her math. The Zephyr jumps.

October 6, 1983. Jemma, is still standing in the same place. For her and the Zephyr, no time has elapsed. The hanger door opens, and May, Yo-Yo, Mack and Deke walk off the Quinjet into the Zephyr.

Mack: So what's wrong?

Title card:



So, the Team has lost control of the time drive, and the ship will collapse into a singularity in two days. Or relatively speaking 20 minutes.

The Zephyr is jumping shorter time distances, and staying within each time frame a shorter amount of time. If it continues, they will:

Simmons: jump within a jump which leads to... Honestly, I have no idea.
Sousa: Finally, the scientist from the future and I are on the same page.

Hahahaha....

They can fix it, but there's a field around the component they need to removed which is cycling 49 times/second, and will disintegrate anything that touches it. So they need to find a way to slow down the pulses, or...

Fix Yo-Yo.

Yo-Yo: If the Shrike didn't take away my powers...
Sousa: Wait, what can you do? (lolol..)

Daisy makes an appearance, and suggests... they go to Afterlife and try to get Jiaying to help diagnose Yo-Yo. Oh boy, won't this be fun.

They reboot Coulson. He's only half-built.

Coulson (looks down): Couldn't wait 'till I was all here?
Daisy: Things are pretty dire right now, Mack wants you to weigh in.
Coulson: Good thing you built my head before my legs.
Mack: The Time Drive is malfunctioning. We can try to fix it, but our best chance...
Coulson: Disturbs the timeline? Just a guess.
Mack: We make a wrong move, it could mess things up in the worst way yet.
Coulson: Worse than losing your parents?
Mack: The difference is, at least I'd already been born. (Looks at Daisy...)


May and Yo-Yo take off in the quinjet for Afterlife. The Zephyr will head that direction, so their rendezvous will be closer.

Some nice SFX, where the Quinjet launches, and the Z1 time jumps.


May: Sit down. I can feel you worrying from here.
Yo-Yo: You can? I thought you needed to touch someone to do that. When did this start?
May: While we were in the Lighthouse. I was staring to feel more like myself, and then, um... I picked up on you and Mack's um... reunion from outside the room.
Yo-Yo (laughs): May, that's horrible.
May: Well, it wasn't all bad.
Yo-Yo: And invasive. (HAhahahahah...) You feeling what I'm feeling is just gonna stress the both of us out even more.
May: A negative emotion feedback loop. I'm well aware.
Yo-Yo: Could be useful with Daisy's mom, though. Wasn't she a murderer?
May: Only after Hydra cut her to pieces and left her for dead.
Yo-Yo: Still, can't hurt to stay on her good side.
May: Yeah.

Well. May has a superpower. It's gone from a liability to an important asset to have in the spy biz...

The quinjet lands in a spot where the trees have been cleared, in a seemingly disastrous way.  More likely a Kora way.

They leave the quinjet, only to see Li and Gordon chasing a girl named, Kora.

Gordon takes them to a secure room in Afterlife. Good thing Fitz isn't there. That could be awkward.

(Commercial)

Jiaying makes her grand entrance. A guard is holding a box. They don't believe what Yo-Yo is saying. They are about to leave, when May speaks in Chinese, saying Jiaying wants to believe her. Jiaying wants her to prove it.

Li (opens the box): This is a Diviner. Humans die if they touch it. But inhu...

Elena grabs the Diviner. Nothing happens. She smiles, and says, "It's a prosthetic," and touches it to her face. It begins to glow.

Jiaying: It's settled, then. We'll do what we can for you.

They are testing Yo-Yo, and May gets a feeling from Li. It's obvious May doesn't trust him. That's okay, he doesn't trust her, either.

We're shown several scenes of Afterlife from waaaay back in S2, including the place where Jiaying killed Sonic. (I think, I haven't seen S2 in a while...)


The Zephyr comes out of a time jump.

Mack: Okay, we got about 10 minutes to troubleshoot before the Z1 jumps into oblivion. Deke, where are you on Plan B?
Deke: Okay. We should be able to cut the power to the Time Drive now. (To Sousa) Stand back. There's gonna be a big surge of electricity. Electricity's dangerous.
Sousa: Do I look like a Neanderthal to you?
Enoch: I spent time with a tribe of Neanderthals. Agent Sousa does not resemble one. He lacks the characteristic brow ridges.
Sousa (almost unfazed, like always): Can we just push the button, please?
Mack: Come on, work!

It doesn't work.

Sousa: How 'bout I jump to Plan C and get us ready to abandon ship?

And the Zephyr jumps again.

Back in Afterlife, May's watch says they have 5 hours 43 minutes. Jiaying enters the room, and confirms the problem with Yo-Yo is psychological, not physiological.

(commercial)

Jiaying thinks May can help Yo-Yo by finding her problem. Yo-yo laughs.

May: Oh, yeah, no.
Yo-Yo: Feelings aren't exactly her thing.
May: They're really not.
Jiaying: If there's a chance it could work, don't you want to take it?

(Didn't May say that to Coulson?)

So, May and Yo-Yo try it. They get nothing. So May has a suggestion. They start fighting. Of course! This is May and Yo-Yo!

Back on the Zephyr, Sousa is going to ready some parachutes to evacuate, because he's so 1950's. Jemma follows him with a case.

Coulson and Daisy have a heart-to-heart.

Coulson: I'm happy to see you healing. At least it feels like happiness. I wonder how many ones and zeros it takes to achieve that fuzzy feeling.
Daisy: Well, yeah, I was lucky. Sousa pulled me out of the wreckage, got us home. I'm glad he's here.
Coulson: That makes me happy, too.

Well, Sousa and Daisy. Make it happen.  Dad just gave his permission.

In the hanger:
Sousa: I was a paratrooper in the war. I like to be prepared. You ever jumped out of an airplane before?
Jemma: Twice, though I only had a parachute the second time. In the event we do get stuck here, I thought you should have this. I put it together after you came on board. Prosthetics have come a long was since the 1950's.
(YES! MAKE SOUSA WHOLE! )
Sousa: (sighs.) I was unfair to you back in '73.
Jemma: No. We pulled you out of time. You just wanted to go home.
Sousa: Still not an excuse. Guess we're all in the same boat now.
Jemma: Which reminds me, there's something I have to do.
Sousa: Agent Simmons, you forgot this.

He picks up her communicator and tosses it to her. Halfway though the air, the Zephyr jumps again.


Now at this point we go through about two minutes of how Yo-Yo got her uncle killed, which was totally not relevant to the plot. Why'd we see this? Hard to believe this is a plot point being planted so late in the series... However, she does say this one line:

Yo-Yo: I should have stayed still.

But then they hear Li calling for Jiaying. Kora is an inhuman that's can't control her powers. Like Daisy? Kora's stolen a gun, and is going to kill herself. She's about to do it, when the gun falls apart. She looks around, and...

It's little Nate in a Jedi costume.

Nate: Kora, you don't have to die today.

(commercial.)

So, Kora was supposed to commit suicide that day, except Nate shows up because Sibyl's seen the threads. little Nate want's her to join forces with him. He's going to invade Afterlife.


Back on the Zephyr, Jemma catches the communicator Sousa tossed to her. Nice transition there, fellas!

Jemma is leaving a message for Fitz, who once again, fails to show up. Apparently, Jemma lost contact with Fitz when she rescued the team from Izel's temple. Hmmmm...


Back in Afterlife, Nate and Kora confront Gordon, Li, Jiaying, May and Yo-Yo. Kora attacks Li, Gordon jumps Jiaying, May and Yo-Yo. to the Quinjet, which is interesting since Gordon didn't know the quinjet was there... May offers to take them to the Zephyr, but Jiaying won't leave Afterlife.

So Kora is Jiaying's daughter, or at least strongly suggested as such. May gives Jiaying the watch, and tells her that they'll send coordinates to it when they're ready to meet, and Jiaying should go into hiding until that time.

Back in the Zephyr, Coulson is finished. That is, he's whole and standing up.

Mack doesn't have a choice. He give the order to abandon ship.

(commercial)


And some very cool VFX of the Quinjet landing on the Zephyr, which jumps immediately. They're about to abandon everything, when Yo-Yo realizes she doesn't have to bounce back.

She races to the Time Drive, and pulls the power core.  Or whatever the thing was. They don't jump.

I'm callin' Elena "One-Way" from now on, lol.

We are now treated to a montage. Daisy is getting back into the healing chamber and Sousa (whose now whole with a new leg) sits on his seat to watch over Daisy. Yep, if they get out of this...

Couson needs to charge, and Simmons tells him he'll have to power down for a few hours. Simmons let's Coulson power himself down.

Deke and Enoch are talking.

Deke: So what do you think? Can this thing get us home?
Enoch: I am guardedly optimistic.
Deke: Okay, I'll take that. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of stuff that I'm gonna really miss about the 80's. Hey, do you play the drums by any chance?

Lololol... The Time Drive starts back up.

Deke: Wait, what's happening?
Enoch: It didn't work.

The Zephyr jumps.

Commercial.


Epilogue.

Nate and Kora enter a room with a bunch of tied up Inhumans.

Nate: This just feels right, don't you think? You here, them there. Everybody finally knowing their place.
Kora: What are you gonna do to them?
Nate: Let's call it a redistribution of wealth. Take Stabby here. (lol, Nate does have some pretty good lines.)  Did he ever do anything to deserve that power of his? No. Just following an ancient set of ancient practices. You know, all these rules, who's given a gift, who's given nothing. Who lives, who dies. It's all written in the stars. I feel like we should shake things up. Give the world a little something new.
Kora: And what's that?
Nate: Anarchy.

End program.


Guesses and comments.

What happened to the Deke Squad? They were sorta just left on the cutting room floor, no? I have this feeling we'll see them again, in some fashion. (I honestly though there was a chance Deke was going to stay in the 80's.)

May and Yo-Yo had 27 days to find Mack and Deke. It didn't take them that long, so maybe the Deke Squad was disbanded during that time. Or maybe we'll see that later...

And how about May. She's got a superpower. It kinda worries me though. It's evolved from a liability of not feeling to being able to detect feelings from afar. What's next? Being able to implant feelings into others? I feel like we're being set up for something. (I'll save you the reply. "Do ya' think?")

And little Nate wants to become Aida like and have a dozen inhuman powers. I've got a better idea than the horribly agonizing, painfully slow death. How about they just drop him on Maveth? Might be the same thing, but it seems so fitting to put a Malick there...

The Zephyr did not jump by accident the final time. One-Way did fix the problem, but the final jump wasn't because of that problem. Did Fitz cause the jump? Sibyl?

Talking about One-Way, what was the point of the story about how she got her uncle killed? Seemed to be an unnecessary way to get her power back.

I have this feeling May giving Jiaying the watch was a mistake. That's makes it a piece of tech that can be traced back and communicate to/with the Team. We've seen that Sibyl can play "Edgar" and live in the power grid. If she can do that, then she can probably upload herself anywhere.

(Edgar is a reference to the movie, Electric Dreams. If you've never seen it, it's a 1980's computer owner's worst nightmare. It's probably in my top 25 movies (or at least my top 25 movie soundtracks), even though it's not a very good movie, lol. Just turn the volume up if you see it, 'cause the tunes are rockin! )

Kora is Jiaying's daughter? Daisy'll be happy to hear about that. On the other hand, Jiaying had been alive for how many generations? She may have had several kids.

Talking about Daisy, it sure seems like they're setting her up with Sousa. To wit:

Daisy: Well, yeah, I was lucky. Sousa pulled me out of the wreckage, got us home. I'm glad he's here.

Yeah, the Zephyr is home. I wonder how she'll feel about having a family? I wonder if Cal's around? He's one of the few that wasn't killed off, an appearance might be nice. Might be nice to see Daisy have a family again, too, if they can turn Jiaying to the light side...

If it's true Jemma was in contact with Fitz before she rescued the team from Izel's temple, then we're probably not done with Season 6 yet, 'cause I bet we're going back. So as I said before, S6 and S7 might just turn out to be a single 26 episode season...

Only 5 more eps left. Almost time to turn it up to 11. (Hey, another 80's reference, lol...)

Just a quick note on Coulson's rebuild.  I just checked back on S4E20 and confirmed, Ophelia was constructed from the feet up.  Probably the same for the LMDs that were made previously, but I didn't confirm those.  So yes, it is rather convenient they happened to go the opposite direction for Coulson.

Edited my above reply to contain some actual content.

Well, I would assume that any episode that has May with the most dialogue would be a very quite episode to begin with. Or one where she's possessed or something.


They actually gave us a de-aged Cal before in "The Things We Bury" back in S2. Although I will admit that it was just for one pretty dark scene (visually and plot-wise ), so having him on for longer would obviously be far more expensive to do.