Agents of SHIELD, Season 7, Episode 11: Brand New Day
So this is... uh, kind of interesting. As the buildup to the two-part finale, "Brand New Day" ends up focusing a fair bit on Kora, Daisy's unknown sister, who totally buys into Nathaniel Malick's speeches, although she claims to at least want SHIELD on their side so that they can clean up the timeline of evil villains before they can do their villainous plot -- citing Grant Ward as one being that the timeline would be infinitely be better off without. It's certainly a pretty interesting concept, but other than a couple of shocked reactions from our characters, we really don't give this offer to essentially clean the world of all its supervillains too much thought. Maybe it's because it's veering too close with playing god (although arguably they also did the same thing in season five with 'righting' the timeline) or maybe because apparently the multiverse theory is in full play here, and that our SHIELD agents have been mucking around in an alternate timeline from day one in this season. Which is why Jiaying, Gordon and all the other characters can die before they are supposed to.
The thing is, though, this episode... is not the most interesting one. Nathaniel Malick is still kind of a bland villain other than his insistence on not being called 'sir'. Kora's ties and parallels to Daisy is neat considering how Daisy is easily one of the main characters in the show, but she also seems to be a rather obvious plot device character. One of the biggest problems that this season and the previous one really has is the lack of good pacing, the lack of having our characters actually sit down and consider just the sheer impact of what's going on. Sure, we get that nice little Mack montage and the Elena-therapy episode, and Daisy/Coulson in the time loop is neat-o... but as far as the big plot revelations go, things like Kora or the alternate timeline are basically dropped onto us as bombshells and sort of just handwaved aside as the characters scramble to save the day. It's like... didn't we have this whole little sub-story earlier in the season about half the team wanting to kill Wilfred Malick before his descendants can fuck people up? And now everyone's just 'nah, changing the timeline is the worst'? I wouldn't have minded it if there was an admission moment or whatever, but I dunno.
Another thing that I'm not a big fan of is how the Fitz/Simmons story is being handled here. I'm not even frustrated that we're not getting answers, because at this point... I really don't care? Whether Fitz is dead all along, or if we roped in an alternate universe Fitz, or if he's a Chromicom or whatever, I dunno. It's been stretched out for so long and Malick trying to dig into Simmons's mind and just going through a bunch of flashbacks of them living together or whatever is just kind of utterly underwhelming. Henstridge and Caestecker have amazing chemistry as always, and are a delight to see finally interact with each other on screen, but their scenes really felt like it's lacking any sort of huge impact. The fact that Malick and Sibyl keeps insisting that no, Fitz is so important and will be the only thing that can screw up their plans also feels very lukewarm.
Another thing that is rushed very quickly is Kora. The actress, Dianne Doan, is competent and charming enough, but she's just this ball of ambiguity that I really am not at any point convinced that she's actually willing to join SHIELD/ Sure, there's that moment with her seeing Jiaying's corpse, but again, Kora's been so one-dimensional that I was never ever swayed in thinking that she's anything but a Malick loyalist. Maybe if the show had given us more time to actually get to know her as a character beyond 'troubled teenager who is now a huge Malick fangirl', I would've questioned her loyalty to Malick more... but when, surprise, she betrays SHIELD and blows a hole in their base, it's not like it's anything surprising. (Also, Durant dies when Kora wants to prove that she's totally on the good guys side. Yawn.)
LMD!Coulson and May accepting who they are and making do of their new powers -- Coulson being able to 'read' digital and May finally reveling in abusing her emotion-reading powers -- is kind of a neat scene, but, again, like everything else here sort of happens a bit too quickly without the huge punch of an impact that the moments deserve. I really felt like that whole 'we are not who we used to be' sequence could've been given more oomph, or at least more of a follow up.
Credit where credit's due, for all of my complaints about plot points not being given time to breathe, one of the strongest scenes in this episode is Daisy, Mack and Sousa on board their ship as they fly off into space and try and do something unpredictable, with Daisy confessing that Enoch's little prophecy-statement about how this is their last mission together has gotten her shook because she's not sure who she is without SHIELD. Mack and Sousa kind of palling around talking about Daisy is also fun, with Mack essentially playing the protective dad/big brother figure... and making fun of 'Quake' as a superhero name is actually kind of funny, as is Daisy pretending to not know how to fly a ship.
Speaking of moments that this episode does well? Kora's Iron-Fist-meets-Dragon-Ball-Z powers. I'm honestly not quite sure what her powers are beyond 'me blow shit up', but it sure looks pretty. Also pretty and actually impactful is the huge CGI explosion of the Triskelion as Sibyl summons in a gigantic Chromicom fleet to arrive and blow up SHIELD bases all over the Earth. Oh, and Simmons also loses all memory of who Fitz is from her little mind-jaunt with Malick. That's a fun setup, with our SHIELD agents up against the huge threat of the combined supervillains and a giant alien fleet. Next up is the two-part finale, and... well, the setup is neat, I guess. It's just could've really been better. Thankfully, as usual, Agents of SHIELD has the benefit of a pretty fun and charming cast, so the episode is fun to watch as rushed as it is.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- Yo-Yo's callsign is '616', which, of course, is a reference to Earth-616, the multiversal designation for the 'mainstream' Marvel comics universe.
- Among the various characters in the show's story that gets brought up, Grant Ward from the first three seasons is noted as one of the biggest targets they could pre-emptively take down. Dead characters Andrew Garner (Lash), Lincoln Campbell and Rosalind Price are all brought up.
- The Triskelion from Captain America: The Winter Soldier totally gets blown the fuck up!
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