Agents of SHIELD, Season 7, Episode 10: Stolen
Okay, after last episode's pretty fun but ultimately standalone time-loop episode, we sort of go back to the Inhumans-vs-Neo-Hydra storyline that was set up in episodes 7 and 8. And it's around this episode that I really did get a sense that the story is building up to something huge and not just either delaying or doing standalone episodes. And... and there's nothing essentially wrong with either of those, but for a season that's basically built up to be the grand finale or whatever, I've felt like a combination of the lukewarm Chronicrom threat and a lot of unanswered questions regarding the FitzSimmons or the Zephyr time-travel situation felt like they were just being dragged on and on for no real reason.
And... well, Nathaniel Malick is apparently going around recruiting minions from time. It's cleverly all the seasons that don't quite get represented in season five's original finale, so we've got an evil (or, well, misguided) Inhuman in Kora and the extremely welcome and unexpected return of young John Garrett, played to the hilt as a SHIELD agent's equivalent of a frat-bro by Bill Paxton's son. Nathaniel Malick isn't like, bad or anything (especially compared to the Chromicoms), but he's kind of stilted and John Garrett hamming shit up is a very, very welcome addition to the ever-growing Clubhouse of Villains With No Supervillain Team Name. Malick seems to really like the word 'anarchy' but that doesn't quite fit as a supervillain team name either.
It's a bit odd how Jiaying and Gordon seem so gung-ho with SHIELD basically disappearing and reappearing, but hey, they're here, and they are allies. Malick's group (I'm going to call them Neo-Hydra until we get a better name) has taken over Afterlife off-screen and is funneling Inhuman powers into Malick's goons. The show doesn't need to show off a huge scale war or anything, but this is one where I really wished they had shown more because from what we get, I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking that Afterlife had like, a population of maybe ten Inhumans tops. Also, RIP Li, whose powers are drained to fuel one of Malick's goons, Durant.
This also means that sending in actual Inhumans into Afterlife is dangerous because Malick will be hunting for them, so Jiaying and Daisy have to sit this mission out, while Gordon and Yo-Yo are only used sparingly. Of course, this ends up with Jiaying dropping the casual bombshell that Kora is her daughter, leading to Daisy having to confront May... and the clueless pre-trauma Jiaying about her stance on motherhood. All Jiaying can see from Daisy is that she's also a young girl that's hurting after some bad blood with her mother, and she doesn't quite realize just how much her own advice about 'trying to do the right things, but it comes out all wrong' ends up clicking with Daisy in a way.
Speaking of emotional sequences with your own parent-that-is-much-younger, we get Deke talking to nana Simmons and we get a pretty interesting question from Deke, which seems to be the huge question that's bothering Simmmons. What if the time drive isn't actually communicating with Fitz? Simmons have been having faith more than anyone, but Daisy's description of Simmons' absolutely distraught reaction does raise some questions. What if Fitz was already dead, or incapacitated with some way? A very, very great scene.
That whole emotional sequences with Daisy and Simmosn were great, but not so great is SHIELD's attempts to get into Afterlife. Apparently Sibyl and Malick have predicted it, and they quickly capture Gordon and funnel his powers into John Garrett. Who also gets to meet Coulson and ham shit up with "buddy!!!!" and being absolutely terrified of the potential of becoming an eyeless Inhuman like Gordon.
Turns out that while Coulson, Mack and Yo-Yo were raiding Afterlife (and freeing like the six unnamed Inhuman extras), Malick takes teleporting Garrett and bamfs over to the Lighthouse. Everyone assumes that they are after Jiaying, which seems to be the case, but May is a bit overwhelmed by John Garrett's teleporting around, while Malick shows up and starts rambling, telling Jiaying that Daisy is her daughter from the future and the 'terrible mom' Daisy is talking about is actually her. The scene isn't completely unexpected, but there is a great twist of the knife when Malick brutally kills Jiaying in front of Daisy just to spite her.
Also, turns out that Neo-Hydra's main plan wasn't even to get Jiaying, but rather Simmons. As Garret uses his powers to run circles around May and Sousa, he captures Simmons, evacs Malick from fighting a very angry Daisy, steals the Zephyr and buggers off. Speaking of something unexpected, in Afterlife Gordon gets killed (rather anticlimactically) while Kora seemingly surrenders and offers to help. I don't trust her at all, and the actress does play her as being pretty shady. We'll see.
The episode ends with the revelation that Deke, who is obsessed with his walkman, not realizing that the Zephyr was raided and has taken off with him in it, while Malick reveals that the reason he captures SImmons is that he wants to find the location of Fitz from her brain, because according to the Timestream Fitz is the only factor that will cause him to fail in his ambiguous plan of world domination and timeline-shattering.
Also, while Sousa does lampshade it a bit earlier when he tells Daisy to talk to Jiaying, the timeline's pretty much already fucked, huh? Some of the changes SHIELD has done might be handwaved with 'well, maybe the end result is the same if the specifics are different'. Like the death of Mack's parents, or the Lighthouse being active years before our SHIELD got to it, or Enoch being stuck in the history, or Wilfred Malick surviving a couple of extra years... but now actual characters who are involved in things we see have clearly befallen different fates. Jiaying and Gordon are dead, while John Garrett knows a whole lot of future knowledge and has superpowers now.
Ultimately, more of a setup episode with a couple of huge twists near the end, but I've never actually held too much faith about this season being 'the untold adventures of SHIELD throughout history' or whatever. Which, admittedly, would be pretty cool if we had one where they influenced and 'righted' history in some way or other, but at the same time this storyline of them basically fighting an alternate timeline history or whatever is certainly a pretty neat one as well. I do know that I am far more invested with this eclectic group of villains in Malick, Garrett, Kora and immobile-Sibyl moreso than I ever did with the Chromicoms. We'll just see if the final couple of episodes will conclude the story well.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- John Garrett, of course, is the main villain in the first season of Agents of SHIELD, played by late actor Bill Paxton. His son James Paxton takes over the role as a younger John Garrett here.
- Garrett brings up Coulson's first death at the hands of Loki in The Avengers movie, although he doesn't quite know Loki by name.
- The Triskelion, most prominently featured in the movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier, shows up here.
- We get another "discovery requires experimentation" line, a reference to Daniel Whitehall's catchphrase from the second season.
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