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TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews The Agents Of Shield Series Finale

August 13th, 2020 by Todd Black Comments

I find it almost poetic that in the same year, Arrow and Agents of Shield ended their runs. Because one was an attempt to start a new universe, and the other was a chance to branch off the movie universe with a familiar face and some new names.

I have reviewed Agents of Shield since the first episode, and have only missed a few reviews since it started (timing, storms, that kind of thing). And here we are at the series finale and I was wondering just how good…or bad…it would be. And not unlike a finale I reviewed yesterday (Stargirl) it ended exactly how I thought it would…right in the middle…and a lot of things being made redundant.

Let me start off with the positive. Obviously, the ending scene was a nice touch with all the remaining agents being brought together after the “last mission” and showing their new lives. Yo-Yo is a full-on superhero with Shield, Mack is now fully Nick Fury 2.0, Daisy and Sousa are together (you had to get that ship in…) and are “astro-ambassadors”, FitzSimmons are indeed together and have a kid (more on that later), May is a teacher (more on that later) at the new Shield, and Coulson is…assessing his situation.

But he has Lola, and that’s what matters.

I know that in my old age (I’m 30) and my time as a writer that I’ve gotten a bit critical of storylines in recent years. That beings said, I do believe in the power of a happy ending, and this team honestly did deserve that, so seeing them all get that happy ending was nice. But…

…they a little too many strings to get to that happy ending. And to do it in the way they did…it felt a little too much like fan-service.

For example, one of the reasons that Arrow’s finale was so dramatic was that was after Crisis on Infinite Earths, Arrow was dead, the Multiverse had been rewritten, and everything was better…until it wasn’t. And everyone coming together to mourn Oliver (and seeing reborn lost friends) was a nice touch. It was about honoring the legacy of what had happened and tying up lose ends.

With here though…they basically made the entire season irrelevant with a single reveal…there are two timelines. Yeah, and apparently, that was the point the whole time. To (long story short) make the jump back in time, survive what comes long enough to get certain pieces in place, and then…jump back to the original timeline…because why the heck not?

Anyone wondering how this didn’t happen in Avengers Endgame…you got me.

Think about it like this, the moment Fitz showed up, he noted that he had the plan to fix everything and save everyone’s life as well as take out the Chronicoms. There were only a few variables he didn’t know about…and they didn’t matter in the long run. And everything worked out exactly as planned. Which kind of takes the sizzle out of everything.

Furthermore, unlike Arrow in its final season, there wasn’t a real cost to anything. Deke was the only “casualty”, and he’s still alive, and SOMEHOW is now the head of Shield in the new timeline…which I hate on infinite levels, and infinite Earths. He shouldn’t have come back after Season 5, and this proves why. He was a patsy the whole time.

As if that wasn’t enough, there was some serious Deus Ex Machina’s put in to help ensure everything went right. From Kora being able to save Daisy (which granted she tried that with her mother but remember, she failed, and Daisy was just as dead), to the 0-8-4 message randomly bringing all those Shield agents together (nice touch with Gamble and Victoria Hand btw), and ALL of those agents that just so HAPPENED to survive had the pieces they needed to summon Fitz. Very convenient.

Plus, who sent out that signal? How were they able to use the Chromicon device just because Sybil gave her “access code” (let alone May using it) and using her emotional powers…to give empathy? How does that work exactly?

I know it sounds like I’m nitpicking here, but honestly some of this just didn’t make sense at all. Including apparently FitzSimmons spending YEARS to just…live a life…and then deciding one day to just go and save everyone. I mean, really? Plus, how is their daughter blonde? No, really, how is she blonde when bother her parents have brown hair?

Finally (yes, I’m almost done), the “One Year Later” helped reinforce the craziness of just about everything in regards to not talking about it and assuming everything was fine. Did no Avenger notice the massive spaceships blowing up in space? How is it that there is Shield academies again? Why didn’t Coulson just “shut down” like he said he wanted to earlier? And so on and so forth.

Agents of Shield was supposed to end with Season 5. Coulson dies, Simmons goes to look for Fitz, and a new phase of Shield began, but a departing President of ABC decided to “gift” fans with two more seasons. Did those seasons really add anything? No, they really didn’t. And while I am happy that these characters did get happy endings…there is such thing as a forced one. I will miss Agents of Shield, but more specifically, I’ll miss when they were firing on all cylinders and not just…existing.

Todd Black is reader of comics, a watch of TV (a LOT of TV), and a writer of many different mediums. He's written teleplays, fan-fictions, and currently writes a comic book called Guardians (guardians-comic.com). He dreams of working at Nintendo, writing a SHAZAM! TV series, and working on Guardians for a very long time!