Know Your Onions

Last week's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. may only have been the second episode of the season, but it was already redefining expectations of what the season will look like. We're not in for a playful romp in the 1930s, but rather, a time-hopping adventure throughout the past.

As Deke and Mack protect Malick on a bootlegging handoff with secret significance, the rest of the team hides out with Koenig at his speakeasy. Meanwhile, aboard the Zephyr, May reawakens and clashes with Enoch.

This is all fertile ground for the final season of a television series: set up a premise that lets them play around with the history of the show itself. Yet I'm as much nervous as I am interested in what's to come. It's the larger MCU that's causing my concern. Avengers: Endgame kind of just did this "time travel into the series' past" gimmick (and very well), so there's an extra challenge here to take a similar concept and do something notably different. Adding to the challenge: season 6 of the show (in the aftermath of Avengers: Infinity War) saw an abdication of the "we're all in the same universe" conceit. That was almost certainly the right choice for the series, but it does mean that whatever rush you're supposed to feel when, say, our heroes brush up against Version 1.0 of the Super Soldier Serum is considerably diminished.

Fortunately, though, the series seems wisely more interested (so far) in its own history than that of the film franchise. The episode almost felt like an elaborate contraption built to imply to the audience where the identical Koenigs of the future come from. Besides being a great showcase for guest star Patton Oswalt, the episode suggested that maybe this time travel story isn't one about changing the past, but about going back and causing things to be the way you've always known them to be.

It's good that somebody spoke up as the voice of "when you have a time machine, you use it to go back and kill Hitler" -- or in this case, Malic. Daisy's a fitting choice for that role. It feels like there's a lot in her past she'd happily risk, and she's always been more impulsive than cautious. Her role in this story was really the best character showcase of the episode.

There were other character-focused elements... though I think it remains to be seen how effective they'll really be. Yo-Yo's story about PTSD and the loss of her powers feels like it hinges on the question of "why now?" She's endured many traumas before this; is there something about this time that makes it different? And May's story about "coming back from the dead, but emotionally numb" has sort of become a genre staple. Hell, even this series has already done versions of that with Coulson -- so I think the writers had best either tie this thread off quickly or spring a very clever plot twist on us soon.

There was fun to be had in this episode, for sure. But it also didn't feel as slick or polished as last week's premiere. I give "Know Your Onions" a B-.