Agents of SHIELD S07E02 Review: Surprise Tie-In

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, Season 7, Episode 2: Know Your Onions

Okay, I guess that's what you do when you are unashamed of referencing the long, long continuity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and its on-off 'is this part of the same universe' TV shows). "Know Your Onions" basically ends up throwing our cast, still stranded in 1931, into dealing with basically the formation of the Hydra that would menace not just the Agents of SHIELD in their own show, but also the MCU heroes in The Winter Soldier. After last season being more or less divorced from the obligatory tie-in to Infinity War/Endgame, and the fact that more and more of the other supposedly-MCU shows like Runaways, Cloak and Dagger and the final Netflix seasons all had nothing to do with any other show, I really wouldn't have blamed Agents of SHIELD's final season for absolutely ignoring MCU's continuity and doing their own thing.

But here we are anyway, in the final season of Agents of SHIELD, and the show just oh so casually mentions Red Skull and Abraham Erskine, as seen in a movie released some time ago; and how Gideon Malick would rise to power in a couple of years, as seen five seasons ago.

And there's a huge drama, here, the same drama that plagues most fiction dealing with time-travel. Sure, maybe our heroes don't quite get the chance to kill Hitler (or Red Skull, in this case). But they have a way to severely prevent history from happening. Without proto-Hydra obtaining their super soldier serum, Johann Schmidt wouldn't become Red Skull and Hydra wouldn't be formed. And sure, you could argue that it would mean that SHIELD itself won't be formed... but what about all the people that Hydra would've hurt in their way? This ultimately comes to a head with poor Deke being trapped between two orders. Daisy tells him to take the shot and blow Freddy Malick to hell and damn the consequences as long as Hydra isn't formed, while Mack keeps them focused on target and not become the very time-changing criminals they're trying to prevent. (After all, two seasons ago they already had to deal with a 'wrong' timeline)

Ultimately the episode itself is very... simple. It's more period drama as Mack and Deke try to figure out what Freddy Malick's deal is and the fact that he's basically a (mostly) friendly face instead of this ominous 'the sire of Hydra'. We get to see Koenig Senior (100% the best part of the episode) be recruited into SHIELD, essentially by Coulson's team, and it's always welcome to see Patton Oswald joke around. And there's an obligatory shoot-out scene between the Chromicom cops and SHIELD. Ultimately, history is preserved, but not without cost. The Zephyr can only 'skim' time windows so there's a finite amount of time before it jumps through time, and poor Enoch couldn't run to the Zephyr in time and gets stranded in 1931 at the end of the episode. Thankfully, he's an alien robot and he ends up getting a job at Koenig's bar, clearly helping to support the dude in creating SHIELD and giving him a chance to show up in other time periods.

There are a bunch of B-plots that run throughout the episode, too. Yo-Yo is feeling off about her powers and some of the characters also realize it. She just 'froze', and whether it's part of the Shrike infection leaving some lasting damage, or something psychological, Yo-Yo isn't the most reliable Inhuman at the moment. May, too, is also out of sorts. Part of it is clearly her outright disdain and spite at the LMD Coulson, but she's also not really behaving like herself, and almost... devoid of emotions, I guess? Like she just wants to throw herself into the mission and damn the consequences? Granted, that sounds like regular Melinda May, but maybe that's why it doesn't feel too different? There's also the show dodging the question on how long Enoch and Simmons have been preparing for this, too. I wouldn't be surprised if, at some point, we get the revelation that Simmons is also an LMD or something.

I dunno. This one was a fun watch but not one that really ended up feeling all that impactful when I sat down to write a review of it. There are a lot of neat, smaller moments... but I don't think that this episode ended up being memorable on its own; it's just something to bridge episode 1 and 3.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Various aspects of Captain America: The First Avenger gets name-dropped here. The Super Soldier serum, the scientist Abraham Erskine, and the original Hydra leader, Red Skull/Johann Schmidt. The fact that Hydra would be burrowing their way into SHIELD and other organizations, as seen in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the first season of Agents of SHIELD, is also referenced.