After, Before

We're now beyond the halfway point of the final season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the show does seem to be answering questions more than posing them. This week in particular answered a recent question (why did the Zephyr time-hop so quickly?) and a more long-running one (what's up with Yo-Yo?).

With the Zephyr skipping like a stone through time in ever shorter bounces, repairs must be made or the ship must be abandoned. But time is very much of the essence -- we're talking milliseconds -- so only super-speed will be sufficient for the task. May and Yo-Yo leave to seek help restoring Yo-Yo's powers from the Afterlife retreat, where Daisy's mother Jiaying is still operating in this time. But Afterlife is threatened both from within and without.

I think most people could have guessed that the trouble with Yo-Yo's Inhuman abilities was all in her head and not physical. Still, the revelation didn't have to be surprising to be satisfying -- and I did find it satisfying. Yo-Yo and May are a fun pairing, and the episode did a good job of exploring their similarities and differences. They're both emotionally buttoned-up characters whose demeanor is largely informed by a particular past trauma (May's as the "Cavalry"; Yo-Yo's as we learned in this episode). But May has always worked to be detached from all emotion -- even embarrassment, as Yo-Yo very much isn't. (And of course, May's emotional detachment makes her new abilities especially resonant.)

It flowed well that the key to helping Yo-Yo was Jiaying first helping May embrace her abilities better. If I were to have made a list of characters from earlier in the series I would have hoped to reappear in the final season somehow, I doubt Jiaying would have made the list. Nevertheless, the character was used well here. In some ways, she's an embodiment of the moment when the show embraced having superpowers on a regular basis. (Hard to remember, but everyone was pretty much a "normal human" back in season one.) Plus, if Jiaying continues to recur, we might just get a little mini-Dollhouse reunion with actors Dichen Lachman and Enver Gjokaj.

While the Afterlife story line was the key one of the episode, there was interesting stuff happening aboard the Zephyr, too. I enjoyed the time-hopping jeopardy as a fun gimmick for the episode. But I was drawn into the illumination of two characters' pain: Simmons and her need to help everyone, and Coulson confronting multiple indignities to highlight that he is not in fact human. Both characters are the type to soldier on, of course, but neither is in a good space right now.

As for the villainy of the episode? Meh. Nathaniel seems a pretty rubber-stamp, mustache-twirling villain with only a vague sense of purpose. The season seems to be setting up for a climax that'll be particularly Daisy-centric: the Big Bad has Daisy's powers, and now his main "henchman" is her sister. (Half-sister?) That could yield some good drama. It might even be setting the stage for a big sacrifice on Daisy's part? But some more work needs to be done making Nathaniel and Korra into enemies I actually care about hating.

Still, I enjoyed the episode overall. I give "After, Before" a B+.