Agents of SHIELD season 5

When May got impaled in the season premiere, I remember thinking, "Yikes. Now the poor actress is going to have to fake a limp for the next several episodes."

Little did I know.

 

Didn't someone mention earlier in the thread (about a week ago or so) that Ming Na was injured in real life? I know I heard it somewhere before prior to this most recent story.

Yeah, I know and I'm always willing to look past that particular moment with Stark, but crescent Earth bothers me more than usual. I guess it's because of the scale of the unreality.

True, but it did seem strange that wasn't even addressed. A lot of that going on this season (yes, I'm still annoyed no one asked about the year).

Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks for bringing in that context.

Still, after the way she sneered at his whimpering, I wouldn't be surprise if she decides to ditch him now.

 

Before this week's episode, I would've agreed. But it seemed in this one that she's more firmly on his side, and that their personal bond is deeper than we realized. Kasius's brother offered her a chance to kill Kasius and move on to a higher-status position, but instead she was quite pleased when Kasius killed his brother.

 

That was me. Ming was tweeting about the injury and posting pics on Instagram of of her rehab during this past summer. Actually, I think her limp looks a bit exaggerated for the show. I don't think she should be limping that badly considering how far out from the surgery she is now.

 

Ah, good to know I wasn't imagining it...even if I was off by a month. It's all blur these days.

 

I had a similar reaction to

Spoiler: Thor: Ragnarok

Banner jumping out of the spaceship and face-planting into the bridge on Asgard. Even though it was just played for laughs, my reaction was straight, "Well, he's dead." Though, in his case, we already knew hulking out can heal him being shot in the brain, puny Banner's body being pulverized wasn't as totally over the top as Tony rocketing himself into the ground.

 

Well, this episode had some interesting developments. Kasius and Ball Girl are not as dead as I first thought, which is good-- but what's not good is that Ball Girl is not seeking revenge, although she was a bit miffed. It appears there is a bit of a relationship going on there between them, although I'm not entirely sure if it's been consummated or not-- either that or Ball Girl is using her boss as a stepping stone to his father. She's a sly one. But what was really surprising was that Big Bro bit the dust already, and at the hand of Kasius. If daddy finds out that he killed his favorite, Kasius will be sent to his tomb without any supper.

And you'd think everybody would start to trust the fuzzy mercenary guy at least a little bit at this point. He has been a big help, even if they didn't realize it at first.

I get a kick out of Fitz: "I did travel through time and space to come to your rescue and I think we're moving past that a bit too quick." And he got that earworm out of Gemma pretty good for a non-medical man. I don't think Daisy's will be removed so easily (unless it's thrown clear when their ship crashes and explodes).

And, boy, is May cranky. She really needs a long vacation after all this. I love her interactions with Fitz's bald alien benefactor (who I'd like to trust, but I'm still not sure if he has a hidden agenda of his own). But then came the big surprise: The little prophet girl is all grown up, having somehow survived the destruction of the planet, and she has been waiting for SHIELD. She must be pushing 100 by now, which is pretty good for a refugee living on the crescent shell of a dead world.

Oh, and the life support systems on the space station are powered by gravitonium-- is this the first hint that Daisy did not quake the Earth to pieces? Maybe she was trying to stop Graviton and just got blamed for it.

 

But she should be limping that much considering she had a pipe impaled thru her leg!

 

So this episode implied the time travel was predestined, and they’ve already gone through it before, and gone back in time only for the event to happen again.

 

Yeah, that was my take away. They're stuck in a predestination paradoxical time loop. The question is how do they break out of it?

Is Flint the key? Or is Flint part of how they travel back in time? Either way, how does Flint and his power help with either problem?

And if Flint is not the key to breaking the time loop, then how do they break it?

Regarding the post-Zephyr crash section of the timeline: Still no hard proof that Daisy actually caused the seismic event, just circumstantial speculation. May, Jemma, Leo, and Yo-Yo are survivors from the crash and are the lighthouse, presumably run by the Kree, who are supposedly saviors providing a better life. Yo-Yo doesn't believe it, presumably for subtle oppressive reasons and she directly becomes the reason the Kree are harsher on the human survivors. What happened to Mack? And where is Phil during that whole section of the timeline?

Looking past the timeline complexities, the rest of the episode was thankfully more straight forward. Mack, Yo-Yo, and Flint deal with the roaches fairly easily after Kasius unmercifully released them unto the Lighthouse population, but not before many more people die. Kasius really does hate all humans at this point and only really cares about Daisy for his power games. Honestly, I'm just bored by him at this point.

I didn't think it was possible, but I actually feel bad for Deke not being able to reunite with his father. Must really suck thinking your father was dead for years, then think he's actually alive and you might be able to reconcile with him, only to find out that he's actually still dead.

 

Agents of SHIELD is Marvel's highest rated show on Rotten Tomatoes.

https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/marvel-tv-by-tomatometer/

 

So I wonder why we haven’t run into any descendants of the SHIELD gang that survived? Guess none of them got with anyone.

Though I have a feeling Deke’s father might have had a connection some how.

 

^ I suspect that Zeke is the decendant of a certain Sheild pairing from the Zephyr

 

Same here. Deke's father's name was Owen, which can be a Scottish name (or Welsh or Irish).

 

That's cool. who would have thunk it 5 years ago.

 

Didn't the exact same thing happen in tIH though? Though in that case the question is more "why did the pavement shatter?" because even if you frame-by-frame it, he's was still Puny Banner all the way down. He should have been street pizza.

I actually really like that they're sticking to the 4th dimensional rules established earlier in the show with Robin's father and not just coasting on by, hoping nobody notices. Of course they'll have to break the loop somehow, but at least they're acknowledging it is a loop.

Maybe it's some kind of weird quantum uncertainty and/or butterfly effect thing. With each repetition of the loop, *something* is always slightly different no matter how infinitesimally minute. And any cumulative finite variation expressed over infinite repetitions would significantly alter the course of even predetermined events and break causality.

I think it's a safe bet that she's the one trying to stop whatever was happening in that city, but her powers weren't strong enough to counter it.

 

That's what happened in the first season of The Magicians. At the end it turned out that they had repeated the loop 39 times, and it wasn't until the current loop, where one of the characters ended up playing a totally different role that they were finally able to break the loop.

Yeah, it does sound like some kind of disaster was already happening before whatever happened that broke the Earth, and Quake was probably going off to stop it.

There were some very interesting reveals in the flashbacks, the time loop thing was a surprise, but does make sense with everything that's been going on.

For the last few episodes I was starting to wonder if they going to end up staying in the future, but with this one it's now pretty clear that they will end up back in the present fairly soon.

I'm curious to see what they have planned for Flint, it does make sense that the guy who can manipuate rocks would have a role to play with the stone(ish) monoliths.
May raising Robin in the flashbacks was an interesting development, and a nice bit of character work for May given her history with young girls with superpowers.

 

I found it kind of weird that Robin called May mom, she's old enough to remember her own mom, I would have expected something like Auntie

 

That was, like, 2006. I can't remember that far back.

I was thinking about how I might try and break out of a timeloop like that one, and the first idea was to try and force it to not be a loop, no matter how petty it was. My idea was, increment the loops. Just make a note of whatever giant number is spray-painted on the side of the Zephyr in the future, and then spraypaint the next-highest number in its place when you get back to the past. And then, just because the subtle difference that people are bound to treat loop twenty different from loop two just because they know how many there have been probably isn't enough, plug the incremented number into the computer as a random seed, so any calculations and simulations that use random values will come out different, and hopefully those will propagate and give some nice variation in the futures the SHIELD team encounters with every loop.

Other ideas: Daisy saw herself in a security video just from before the world ended. Cut or dye her hair, or get a prominent tattoo. It shouldn't take much to break history. Worse comes to worse, just go full Homer Simpson in the time of the dinosaurs and beat the crap out of everything you saw was intact in the future.