Yikes! Some stuff occurred! I have a lot to say, and it's kind of mixed, but I will say that over-all I really enjoyed watching this episode and I'm excited for the final season next year.
Cons:
All season, I have been saying that Sarge was interesting, but that ultimately it still felt somewhat cheap to bring Clark Gregg back after Coulson's emotional send-off in Season Five. In this finale, Sarge is defeated, after being maybe kind of redeemed, and then flipping on that redemption, and at the last minute we see an LMD of Coulson who is there to help with the next big bad (the Chronicoms). So now we have not one, but two different contrivances to bring Clark Gregg back as a Coulson-adjacent character on the show. I get it. They killed him off, then got two more seasons that they didn't know they were going to have. But as much as I love Coulson, as much as I would love to watch these characters navigate their feelings of loss and hurt, it's kind of strange to have him there all the time. They did a good job with Sarge, and I hope they do a good job with the LMD as well. But on principle, I still have my issues with it.
And speaking of contrivances that get repeated over and over again, it appears going in to next season, that Fitzsimmons have been separated. There's time travel shenanigans going on, and I'm super excited to see that, but come on. If we spend next season with Fitz and Simmons in separate story-lines, and then watch them reunite at the midpoint or something, I'm going to be annoyed. They were a duo at the beginning, and then once they fell in love, it seemed like the only trick the writers had left was to separate them again and again for the sake of drama. Before this show ends, I want to watch this great couple actually interact with each other, and be a unit once again! Please!
Pros:
But as I said, this two-part finale was really enjoyable. Lots of drama and action and tension and pain and joy. There are so many elements I want to discuss, but I'm going to try and be pretty succinct about it.
Let's start with Deke. I wavered on my support of this character a little bit, when it seemed like we were leaning heavily in to the comic relief. But here, all of that comedy is underpinned but legitimate emotion, and I adored it. We see Fitz is getting along well with Deke, but they start fighting when Fitz realizes Deke's scheme of stealing S.H.I.E.LD. tech and marketing it as his own. Things get pretty rough between them, and then Deke bursts out and says he built his company because nobody likes him. He's alone, a fish out of water in a world and time that he can never fully belong to. This is an effective and interesting character arc for him. He desperately loves his grandparents, and he's so earnest about it, and to have that love become conditional so easily is ridiculously painful. And so he does something risky and reckless, to prove his worth. Sure, things go wrong for him very quickly, but it's also important to note - he saves Mack, Yo-Yo, and Flint. He does that. And there's that moment where Mack refers to him as an agent, and it feels like the perfect way of giving him his due, after his journey of acceptance in this season.
A few little moments with Deke that I loved: him telling his employees that Fitz and Simmons "identify as my grandparents." That was so funny. I also loved it when Deke yelled at Simmons, telling her that he could have helped her carry some of the pain when Fitz was dead. Deke is really forgiving of Fitz and Simmons for the most part, craving their approval. But he's got opinions, and he's been through some shit, and I appreciate him for standing up for himself in this way.
Obviously May broke my heart in this episode. I don't think I was all that worried that she'd be permanently dead, but even that assurance didn't stop the moment from feeling heartbreaking. I want so bad to believe in Coulson. And May learning to let herself have love was such an important journey for her character. So in that moment, when she trusts in Sarge's feelings of love, and his stabbed because of them, it's such a betrayal in every conceivable way. The acting was superb. Everything underpinning this moment was just so achingly perfect. And the fact that it was on camera, so a bunch of other characters had to witness it? Ouch! So much ouch!
Another enormously emotional aspect to this episode was when Yo-Yo was in danger of becoming a Shrike. I find it super annoying that defeating Izel managed to defeat all of her zombie minions (what is this, Game of Thrones? Or The Avengers? Sheesh). But setting that aside, the moment when Mack realized that Yo-Yo was in danger, was just so heartbreaking. It's like finding out a loved one has terminal cancer. It's not instant death, with all the shock and grief that comes with that. But it's the acknowledgment of the inevitable, the feeling of helplessness that overtakes you when you know what's about to happen and you can't do anything to stop it. It was really scary, and even if the way it happened was contrived, I'm terribly relieved that Yo-Yo is going to be okay!
Flint being here raises a lot of questions, but I think they're interesting questions that might get explored in future. Is he real? If he's only a manifestation of Yo-Yo and Mack's minds, is he the same as evil Dr. Fitz, or anything else that came from the mind/fear monolith? Now that we've got Chronicoms becoming the central threat, and an LMD Coulson, and Flint who may or may not be a real person... it seems like next season will be a chance to really dive in to the various forms of life and personhood that we've been introduced to over the seasons. I hope that we get an interesting exploration of this idea!
I was a latecomer to the Enoch appreciation club, but now that I'm totally in love with his character, I'm thrilled with the concept of more focus on the Chronicoms next season. They're fascinating to me, and when you couple them with the time travel element, I'm thinking we're in for a special treat. It looks like we might be back in the early days of S.H.I.E.L.D. Do I want Agent Carter to show up and work with the team? Yes. Yes I do. Do I think it's likely? Eh. Maybe not, but whatever. This is still going to be so cool!
As I said, it's annoying to me that Fitz and Simmons are being separated at this point, because I think it would be more interesting to spend the final season with them as an actual partnership. But, I loved that glimpse we had of Simmons, totally cold and efficient, putting May in that cryogenic chamber and accepting coordinates to get the team to safety. There's a lot of story to back-fill here, but clearly Simmons, and by extension Fitz, have been through something involving time travel. I liked the way the acting and the script writing made it so clear right away that Simmons had been away from the team for a while, doing her own things separate from them. The timelines don't match up, and that's interesting!
I'm ready to say goodbye to this show, if I'm being honest, but not because I don't love it dearly. I just think we're about at that point where it's time to wrap things up, complete some character arcs, and contemplate what the future will look like for these people, after everything they've been through. Fingers crossed that the final season will be able to achieve that!
8/10
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