Agents of SHIELD S07E03 Review: Picking Up on Agent Carter

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, Season 7, Episode 3: Alien Commies From The Future!

Yo, what? Okay, and I can't believe I geeked out over the whole Johann Schmidt thing last episode. Turns out that the MCU movies aren't the only things that Agents of SHIELD is tying together, because after half a decade of the show being utterly ignored, Agent Carter finally got a nod! And I know, that show's version of Edwin Jarvis did cameo in Avengers: Endgame, but the fact that this episode is essentially a 'distant finale' for the cancelled, forgotten Agent Carter TV show is an amazing one. And to think that I thought that this was just going to be yet another period-appropriate hijinks episode! I mean, look at the title, for crying out loud!

Again, just like the previous two episodes, the actual episodic plot of "Alien Commies From the Future" is... middling at best. This one feels a bit more concrete, but it's another show of the Chromicoms wanting to wipe out SHIELD by sabotaging an ion fusion reactor in Area 51, Project: Helios. A very simple and respectable supervillain plot. Meanwhile, our heroes have to stop it by infiltrating Area 51, with Jemma Simmons cosplaying as fellow British-accented SHIELD agent, Peggy Carter. That alone, I thought, was going to be the big wink-wink-continuity-nod moment of the episode, only for the episode to completely blindside me by bringing in not just a character from Agent Carter, but also a bunch of neat baggage that I'm going to assume is going to lead to some of the hanging plot threads of that show being wrapped up. Welcome, Daniel Sousa and your badass cane.

It's a shame that good old Daniel Sousa ends up fucking everything up. As Simmons and Coulson try to figure out who the LMD in the base is through a very hilarious montage of being dicks to random scientists, Sousa shows up to talk to "Agent Carter"... only to, of course, recognize that Simmons is an impostor. On one hand, it makes Sousa look like a complete putz. On the other hand... very on brand for Sousa. Daisy later shows up pretending to be the CIA in hunt for Hydra, and we learn that at the very least, Sousa is somewhat suspicious that Hydra has infiltrated SHIELD. Good on you, Sousa.

Ultimately, though, Sousa sort of gets left in the wayside as more important things end up taking precedence. An evacuation is forced to go underway anyway, LMD Coulson fights a Chromicon and both robots get fried by the EMP, Yo-Yo and May both get hit with their own respective PTSD and fucked up in the first half of the fight... all pretty neat stuff, but perhaps not quite that interesting. Again, a good chunk of the plot is pretty basic sci-fi stuff. The highlight is still in seeing Coulson and Simmons hamming things up in trying to figure out who's the Chromicom infiltrator, as well as Sousa thinking he's in a regular spy drama only to be caught up in, well, crazy time-traveling spy-infiltrating alien-robots stuff. The good thing is, Sousa has captured LMD Coulson, so we'll be having him for another episode, at least.

It doesn't help that the B-plot is kind of shrug-worthy, I feel. Mack and Elena fail to extract any information from their hostage because he's racist. They send Deke in, and then they sort of... toss him out and he goes crazy and runs into a diner screaming the title of the episode? I dunno. I just felt like it was kind of a weak joke, and ran on for too long without adding anything to the episode.

Ultimately, as enjoyable as it is, this episode is kind of a slow one, and I will fully admit that if you didn't squee at Daniel Sousa's unexpected cameo as I did, this would be kind of a drag of an episode.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• In addition to the obvious nod to Agent Peggy Carter from the MCU movies and her own show, the Agent Carter TV show gets multiple mentions in this episode. Major character Daniel Sousa makes an appearance here. Other aspects of Carter and Sousa's adventure through their own TV series, namely Isodyne Energy, the Council of Nine and Hugh Jones, are all name-dropped at some points of the episode.