It's one year after the death of Phil Coulson, and the team has moved on by splitting up. A small group has taken to space in search of Fitz's stasis pod, while the rest continue their mission of protection on Earth. And their latest foe turns out to be quite a surprising one.
One of the things I liked best about Endgame was the way it actually carved out time to take the life and death stakes seriously. I was moved by the sense of loss the characters expressed, and intrigued by how the film acknowledged tales of loss that might exist all throughout the MCU. I came into Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. eager to see how they might weave this into the background of their new season. The disappointing answer seems to be: not at all.
Look, I get it. The writers of the show don't really want to have a story forced on them from the outside. They have other things they want to build a season around, and they don't want "dealing with the extermination of half of all life" to overwhelm it. Certainly, they don't want to have to randomly eliminate any of their cast members to satisfy a Thanos story they didn't choose. Yet it sure appears that the next Spider-man movie is going to ask the audience to accept the unlikely math that all of its characters were "snapped" then restored. I'd be willing to accept that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s characters were all improbably spared; just give us brushes of that other world on the periphery.
Instead, the choice suddenly seems to be that it's not "all connected" anymore, as they once proudly proclaimed. With no acknowledgement at all of a post-Thanos world, the series seems to have decidedly they aren't living in one. Not even casual references to it with any of the new characters introduced. Again, I get it; I'm just disappointed that they didn't want to pick up any of the interesting possibilities offered to them.
As for the story they did decide to pursue? Well, I frankly found it rather confusing, teasing and fostering confusion more than legitimately tantalizing us with what this year's story is going to be. I'm usually supportive of the "throw the audience in deep and trust them to figure it out" approach, but they hardly gave us enough to work with before the episode was over.
I mean, I'm glad they had to conviction to stick with Coulson's death. And also glad they've manufactured a way to keep Clark Gregg on the show. But they've also done the "one of our heroes is now a bad guy" twist before with Ward (twice!). So I really want to know, sooner rather than later, how this time is going to be different. Or at least: what the hell is going on?
The Fitz story line hardly gave us anything either. Of course, it should not be easy to just get him back. But this episode made essentially no progress at all in "finding" him. The episode marked time on this plot, just to get us to a final scene... that was still more tease without context.
The only element presented completely enough to wrap your head around was that there's now a love triangle of sorts between Mack, Yo-Yo, and a new character -- and I can't say I immediately found that compelling. (I guess we also got a taste a new, more verbose May. Not exactly a story thread to grab onto, but at least something different and entertaining?)
Now, of course, it's entirely possible that once we get deeper into the season and have better context, this episode is going to look a lot better retroactively. But I really think the episode's job was to pull you back into a show that had fairly effectively concluded the last time we saw it. And I just don't think it did that.
I suppose the most fair grade for this episode would be "incomplete." But to put a more conventional label on it, I'd give it a C. It was not one of my favorites.
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