TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews The Agents Of Shield Season 7 Premiere!

I find it both interesting and iron that both Arrow and Agents of Shield are ending in the same year. Both were the “beginnings” of their television universes (in the case of the Arrowverse) or their long run of TV shows (like Marvel with Agent Carter, the Netflix collaborations, Runaways and Cloak & Dagger). The question was, with the “time travel in reverse” premise, would the “Final Mission” be worth it. Right now…jury is still out.

Let’s recap really quick (since AOS didn’t bother to do it despite basically being gone a year), after the events of the Shrike invasion, the death of Sarge and his partner, the near-death of May, and the Chronicoms getting info from FitzSimmons, everyone was sent back in time to the 1930’s in order to stop time from being altered.

Because that hasn’t been done before in comics or comics TV/movies…

Part of the luster of this season has already been lost because of the trailers for the final season. In that we were going to meet key players from the past (including ones from Agent Carter) and that “to save Shield, we have to save Hydra). That would’ve been a great stinger for this first episode, but instead, the trailer ruined it. Oh well.

On the plus side, seeing the Agents (and Deek) in the 1930’s was fun, and their reactions to various things was cool. As was the historical accuracy with certain things like the Speakeasy, FDR needing an aide to get around, that kind of thing. Like Coulson, I’m a history buff, so this stuff matters to me.

Which brings us to Coulson, the other stinger for last seasons finale was that Coulson is an LMD. And it’s…kind of cool? The “2 years in 10 seconds” bit was a bit odd. You’d think that Simmons would’ve made sure this LMD was ready for work and not just…Coulson without a mental safety net. And there’s a button to turn him off…ok…

Look, having Coulson back is fine, but as I noted in Season 6, the show had the chance to move on from Coulson after Season 5 (when the series was SUPPOSED to end) and they chose to do the Sarge storyline instead. And now, we have LMD Coulson. If they don’t end the series with this LMD being shut down for good…they haven’t learned anything.

I will give props though for making the Chronicoms feel more threatening this go around. From stealing identities, to going after Gideon Mallick’s father, and more, it’s a clever way to “pull the thread” and I am curious to see what other threads are potentially pulled as the Agents and their foes go through time.

Oh, and May being May at the end? Priceless. Deek being Deek? Not so much.

Also, I like this somewhat colder version of Simmons. It’s implied that she’s been away from the team for years, and that also means she and Fitz have been apart (again) for a similar amount of time. What she does going forward has me very interested.

In the end, “The New Deal” was a fair way to bring the show into the new paradigm. But whether they capitalize on it remains to be seen.