Agents of SHIELD - Season Five - SPOILERS!

[Lupine]

New episode tonight!

[RJDiogenes]

Getting down to the wire. I hope we don't experience any fatalities.

[Lupine]

^None yet (at least among the main cast) but things are coming to a head and the previews hint that danger looms.

It's looking pretty certain that Talbot will be the one who brings about the destruction of Earth and the team is running out of options on how to deal with him. Only his son seemed able to dial him back briefly. It was fun watching May and Deke taking out the Marauders and weirdly enough they made a pretty good team. It was also fun to see Coulson's super-hand in action scanning the walls and once again producing the shield-while making out with May .

[RJDiogenes]

That was a great moment. "I thought that would shut you up." And then Daisy: "Copy that, Hot Lips."

And Deke came to the rescue not once, but twice. He doesn't seem very popular with the audience, but I hope he sticks around if they get another season. And he knows "zero."

But poor Talbot has totally lost in his hopes to be the hero who saves the world and impresses his son. Unfortunately, his damaged brain is high on power and he doesn't know what he's doing. I find it interesting that he says he can't trust his wife anymore because she was the one who read the trigger command to him over the phone, because at the time I wasn't sure if she was doing it knowingly or not-- and I'm still not entirely sure. She could have been HYDRA all along.

And even as May and Deke singlehandedly, or doublehandedly, defeat the alien invaders, Mack proves again what he brings to the team by figuring out Talbot and where he would go when everyone else has just written him off as being in full-on villain mode. He just wants to "make things right."

Now it's down to the wire as we see what Future YoYo was talking about when she said to let Coulson die-- it would have been nice if she had offered a few more details. But thanks to the shortage of the centipede serum, it comes down to a choice between Talbot and Coulson. I wonder if they could substitute inchworm serum.

[Orpheus]

I'm just going to leave this groundles horrific speculation here

ABBC3_SPOILER_SHOW

What if the Framework is not as over as we thought it was? There's been a lot of stuff that could be twisted into "foreshadowing" in hindsight (e.g. Michael Peterson's remarks outside the dream-realizing gravitational anomaly) and it would neatly tie up all outside complications from what was expected to be the last season of S.H.I.E.L.D., leaving the MCU untouched.

[Lupine]

The spoiler is so classified that I can't see it.

[RJDiogenes]

I guess the spoiler code is one of those additional features, like the youtube code, that must be reinstalled. Oh, well, I think we can post this openly:

What if the Framework is not as over as we thought it was? There's been a lot of stuff that could be twisted into "foreshadowing" in hindsight (e.g. Michael Peterson's remarks outside the dream-realizing gravitational anomaly) and it would neatly tie up all outside complications from what was expected to be the last season of S.H.I.E.L.D., leaving the MCU untouched.

It would certainly help with the devastated personal relationships that we currently have. It would also give Fitz the solution to breaking the time loop: Once he knows that it's really a programming loop, he could figure out a patch.

[Lupine]

I was wondering that myself. Like RJ stated it would clear some some of the mess the characters have gotten themselves into this season.

At any rate we'll find out tonight if this is true.

[RJDiogenes]

I'm anxiously dreading tonight's episode. At least we know now that the show will be back.

[Lupine]

^Which is kind of strange was it was set-up like it could be the final episode.
This was an emotional roller-coaster. It really looked like time was going to repeat itself but Coulson did manage to pull off a Hail Mary by slipping Daisy the centipede serum to take down Talbot, though it's sad that they couldn't save him . Fitz's death was shocking, then irritating, but then it was revealed that there was a way to get him back- possibly next season that they're getting one. Whether this is actually the end for Couslon, we won't know until the show returns. Deke's fate is rather up in the air as well and I wish they would have given him some closure.

[RJDiogenes]

Coulson better come back. He's really the heart of the show.

[Lupine]

Yeah, it wouldn't be the same without him. Mack would be an OK leader, but he does get a little self-righteous at times.

[RJDiogenes]

Yeah, they've really been playing up the religious angle with him for the past few episodes.

[RJDiogenes]

That was an emotional roller coaster, all right. I didn't really like everything about it, but it was a great episode, and would have made a grand finale if the show were cancelled. Things ended pretty well for all the main characters, story-wise-- even Fitz, who is lucky enough to have a spare self in cold storage.

Dramatically speaking, Coulson's story ended perfectly. When he prepared to leave, I expected him to hop into Lola and fly off into the sunset. But the show began with his resurrection (and the mystery surrounding it), so to end up on a beach in the real Tahiti with May, as his extra years of life drew to a close, was genius and I wish I thought of it.

And everybody ended up back on good terms again, which I would hardly have thought possible. There were lots of great character moments-- the biggest being Daisy's command decision to leave the command decisions to Mack-- but also YoYo coming to Coulson to explain herself and him agreeing with her decisions, as well as Mack's reaction to Fitz's death.

As for Fitz's death, I really hate it when they kill off a major character in the finale-- but in this case, maybe they had to. The original Fitz is out there in space somewhere with the android guy, which means he'd wake up in 75 years to a broken time loop and all his friends dead of old age, which means that he'd never have reason to figure out how to break the loop, which means that he'd never return to the present, which means that the Fitz who came back and died is just kind of a detached-in-time extra Fitz, which means that once the team realized that the original Fitz is out there and went to save him, they'd have two Fitzes. Ow, my head.

I didn't care much for the spaceship crashing into the city and crushing all those buildings, and probably killing thousands of people-- especially with Talbot responsible. And it's just a shame that poor Talbot was unrepentant to the end and had to be killed. That final scene of him drifting off into space, frozen and dead, was very sad. He deserved better than that. But that showdown between Daisy and Talbot was pretty epic, with lots of nice little touches-- like the ground cracking under Daisy and all the windows getting caught in Talbot's jet stream as he got flung out of the atmosphere.

After this, I don't feel so bad about waiting over a year for new episodes, because whatever happens next will be more like a sequel than just another season. I'm sure they'll find a way to save Coulson and I'm sure they'll locate Fitz-- although space is pretty big, so maybe that's why they need a thirteen-month hiatus. But this felt like a good way to end the story that began with Coulson's resurrection.

[Lupine]

It would have been a fitting series finale.