Agents of SHIELD season 5

[Reverend]

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.

The problem with that is that it requires conscious thought and effort which runs you smack into the bootstrap paradox. A closed temporal loop as no "first time", just a four dimensional event horizon.

I was thinking of variations more at the quantum level. The exact locations of entangled particles across the entire universe, the exact path and spin of a single photon, that sort of thing. That may sound insignificant, but anything that's finite that can compound an infinite number of times can lead to exponential change and alter the probability curve.

 

[David cgc]

The problem with that is that it requires conscious thought and effort which runs you smack into the bootstrap paradox. A closed temporal loop as no "first time", just a four dimensional event horizon.

That's why I'm trying to be petty about it. If it's a true closed time loop, then there's nothing you can do about it, but it should be fairly easy to confirm by just trying to change something easy. This isn't "Arrival," nobody but Robin has simultaneous awareness of the potentially-alternate future while they can affect it in the past, so there's no problem of what you see is what's going to happen, because if something else happened you would've seen that instead. It may well be a false loop where it's physically possible for differences to accumulate with every iteration that'll eventually prevent events from recycling.

Anyway, when you try to contradict what you already know from your trip to the future, if circumstances conspire against you to get the exact result you already observed, congratulations, you're boned. On the other hand, if Daisy walks out of that Quinjet with a blond undercut, then aside from looking ridiculous, she already knows that there's no fate but what she makes, because she's guaranteed that when the clock rolls back around, at the very least, where her past self arrives at the Zephyr in the future, she'll see a different video than the one she remembers when she traveled into the future.

 

[Christopher]

If it's a true closed time loop, then there's nothing you can do about it, but it should be fairly easy to confirm by just trying to change something easy. This isn't "Arrival," nobody but Robin has simultaneous awareness of the potentially-alternate future while they can affect it in the past, so there's no problem of what you see is what's going to happen, because if something else happened you would've seen that instead. It may well be a false loop where it's physically possible for differences to accumulate with every iteration that'll eventually prevent events from recycling.

Yeah, that's the problem. They're presenting it as a self-consistent, single loop, something that doesn't have "repeat cycles" but merely doubles back on its own beginning, so that every event within it happens only once. Fitz seems quite convinced that that's how it works. Yet in order for the story to resolve the way it must (since the Earth has to remain intact for future MCU movies and shows), it has to turn out to be changeable after all, which contradicts the loop idea as presented. They're trying to have it both ways, and I don't see how it can work.

Unless... Hmm. One theory of quantum time travel says that a time-travelling object will follow multiple allowable paths at once, each one a separate timeline. Which means that if someone goes back and tries to change history, there would be (to simplify) one timeline in which they fail and nothing changes, and one in which they succeed. I suppose it's possible that there could be some decision point that branches in two possible ways simultaneously, one that just feeds back into the closed loop and one that breaks the loop.

I don't know, though -- if that were the case, it seems there'd be numerous points where events could branch more than one way, and rather than a single loop with one way out, you'd have a wider range of branchings. But maybe there's just one specific point within the loop where the quantum conditions are flexible enough to permit such a branching? Maybe?

 

[Tuskin38]

https://www.reddit.com/r/shield/comments/7rx2c2/spoilers_this_picture_from_episode_5_suddenly/

Robin drew a picture of herself dying, you see it in Episode 5.

Wow.

Also a VFX supervisor on the show says the flashbacks in the last episode is the timeline where they never went to the future.

Though I'd rather hear it from an actual writer, not some VFX guy.

 

[JD]

Hmm, so I wonder if they knew how she was going to die before hand, or if they came up with a way for her to die that fit the picture?

 

[Christopher]

Hmm, so I wonder if they knew how she was going to die before hand, or if they came up with a way for her to die that fit the picture?

They were only 3 episodes apart, so "The Last Day" would surely have been already scripted when they shot "Rewind." And the staff probably broke the entire story arc in advance, before they started writing the individual scripts.

 

[Snick27]

Do we have a date or time frame to when the earth shattered? Wonder where the Avengers are and if any of the Netflix marvel hero's made it out alive?

 

[JD]

They were only 3 episodes apart, so "The Last Day" would surely have been already scripted when they shot "Rewind." And the staff probably broke the entire story arc in advance, before they started writing the individual scripts.

Oh, I didn't realize episode 5 was that recent, I thought we were farther into the season .

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Do we have a date or time frame to when the earth shattered? Wonder where the Avengers are and if any of the Netflix marvel hero's made it out alive?

Sometime in 2018 going by the date for the first flashback.

 

[gblews]

Unless... Hmm. One theory of quantum time travel says that a time-travelling object will follow multiple allowable paths at once, each one a separate timeline. Which means that if someone goes back and tries to change history, there would be (to simplify) one timeline in which they fail and nothing changes, and one in which they succeed. I suppose it's possible that there could be some decision point that branches in two possible ways simultaneously, one that just feeds back into the closed loop and one that breaks the loop.

FWIW, in a conversation with Daisy a few episodes ago, Deke mentioned that they were dealing with a "multiverse" rather than a single timeline. This is the first episode where it appears that this may be the case.

Gotta watch this one again though, my head was spinning.

 

[Gaith]

Yet in order for the story to resolve the way it must (since the Earth has to remain intact for future MCU movies and shows), it has to turn out to be changeable after all, which contradicts the loop idea as presented. They're trying to have it both ways, and I don't see how it can work.

Sounds like a job for Dr. Stephen Strange and his Time Gem!

(I mean, seriously... isn't it time for another Avenger to appear on the show yet?!)

Speaking of which, I wonder if the broken Earth might turn out to be something to do with Thanos. Maybe Infinity War will climax with Tony's nightmare from AoU turning true, with the Avengers dead, and Earth defenseless, hence the cataclysm our team has been dealing with? Only for a Time-Gem-Hail-Mary to rewind things, and give them all one last chance in the Avengers film formerly known as Infinity War Part II?

 

[RJDiogenes]

Finally, it showed up on On Demand. And I got home early enough from my doctor's appointment to watch it.

So now we supposedly know more about what's going on. Or what went on. Or what might have gone on. Or what will may have gone on. Clearly the situation is very tense.

In 2018, the world is destroyed, but the Zephyr and the Lighthouse survive. Some of our SHIELD team survive, but some don't. About four years later, the Kree arrive and offer to help-- there are strings attached, but humanity is not in a position to negotiate. Fitz and Simmons design a time travel machine, but it is not finished for decades by other hands. Possibly their descendants. We still don't know where the roaches or the white monolith came from, I don't think. What we do know has been told to us in flashbacks, but are they all from the same timeline? Maybe not, because at one point Fitz tells us that they have tried to change the timeline, but are still in the same loop because you can't change time-- but if you can't change time, how does he know they've repeated the same loop?

Robin survived the end of the world and made it to old age, but she never outgrew being cryptic. Beefy Guy was also aware of the time loops, because he believes that killing either Daisy or Robin would be enough to disrupt the cycle. I don't know what he hoped to accomplish by killing Fuzzy Guy's father-- unless he opposed killing Daisy-- but the father's voice was heard on the radio, so unless his death was very recent, he's not as dead as we're supposed to think. And if Fuzzy Guy's father built the time machine, he is likely to be revealed as the descendant of Fitz and Gemma.

And we still haven't seen Daisy destroy the world-- so either she didn't do it, or they're not showing it just to lead us to believe she didn't do it.

 

[ITL]

As far as TVTropes is concerned, it plays out like this:

Stable Time Loop: We are treated to a series of flashbacks of young Robin with the team, who already know about Flint and Voss, indicating that it is a Flash Forward from their perspective, after they've already returned from the future. However, Robin implies that the loop is not actually stable, and that they're doing things a little bit differently every time, inching closer to finally saving the world. Word of God explains that those scenes are from the original timeline when Enoch never abducted them from the diner.

But if they were never abducted, how can those scenes be after they return from the future they never went to?

 

[Turtletrekker]

But for Fitz to know they had been in a loop, wouldn't he have had to have already gone through the whole cycle? Been to the Future and back?

 

[Gaith]

But for Fitz to know they had been in a loop, wouldn't he have had to have already gone through the whole cycle? Been to the Future and back?

 

[Ovation]

Like all time travel stories, this one does not survive scrutiny. Just go with the flow. Much easier on your blood pressure.

 

[Lyon_Wonder]

I think Kasius wasn’t the first Kree overseer at the Lighthouse after they took it over in the 2020s since he didn’t recognize Fitz masquerading as Boshtok the Marauder. My guess is that another Kree was in charge until Kasius’s father exiled him from the Kree Empire, which could have been a few decades before 2091. Either that or Fitz managed to keep a very low profile after the Kree took over.

 

[JD]

Sounds like a job for Dr. Stephen Strange and his Time Gem! (I mean, seriously... isn't it time for another Avenger to appear on the show yet?!)

Now that the movie and TV divisions of Marvel has separated I doubt we'll be seeing many more movie characters on the show.
At this point we'd probably have a better chance of seeing one of the Defenders, Punisher, or if they are in the same universe, the Runaways or Cloak & Dagger.

Speaking of which, I wonder if the broken Earth might turn out to be something to do with Thanos. Maybe Infinity War will climax with Tony's nightmare from AoU turning true, with the Avengers dead, and Earth defenseless, hence the cataclysm our team has been dealing with? Only for a Time-Gem-Hail-Mary to rewind things, and give them all one last chance in the Avengers film formerly known as Infinity War Part II?

Same thing goes for these kinds of story connections.

 

[Christopher]

Same thing goes for these kinds of story connections.

Indeed. Note that the show's last two storylines have taken place in a virtual reality and a possible far future. They're keeping the action pretty far removed from the present-day world of the movies.

 

[Morpheus 02]

Is there an article on the TV/Movie separation? I think that's pretty stupid... it doesn't work for the DC Film Universe... Marvel doesn't need the segregation. It will in fact encourage oversaturation and separation of audiences rather than shared fans (and free social media).

I like this season, and hope to see a 6th season