***This review contains some spoilers***
Watch my SPOILER review on YouTube
The seventh and final season of “Agents of SHIELD” stumbles a bit as it tries to touch base with everything in its past, while also trying to avoid feeling too much like a clone of “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.” But, some great callbacks, fun period pieces, and a thrilling and emotional climax allow the show to finish strong…although it still ran two seasons too long.
The time travel plot, combined with its execution, leads to the inevitable “Legends of Tomorrow” comparisons. While in a lot of ways this is accurate, “SHIELD” provides its own twists. Attention to detail, costuming, and period appropriate title cards help sell that our heroes have traveled to different eras in time. The story itself is sound: Aliens have traveled back in time to conquer Earth, and SHIELD must follow along to stop them. Things start to get tense as the villains begin to majorly corrupt the timeline, leaving the fate of the future up in the air. Things take an odd twist as the Chronicoms are stopped midseason, and a new big bad arises to torment the good guys, who now have a broken time machine.
As far as the bad guys go, the emotionless robotic aliens do the job, but none of them particularly make things feel personal…not even the sly Sibyl. The introduction of Nathaniel Malick is a mixed bag. While his early appearances as a wild card with a quirky personality work well, his push towards becoming the season’s biggest threat derails the “stop the aliens to save Earth” plot in its tracks. Initially, his recruiting of foes from SHIELD’s past seems like a really cool idea, but the mostly lackluster and unknown crew he assembles leaves a lot to be desired. His very generic evil plan of “anarchy” isn’t anywhere near compelling as the alien threat, and even when he does team with the Chronicoms, they still don’t feel like a coherent force.
Thankfully, the returning cast of characters continues to be the best part of the show. This season largely does a good job of playing off of the seven years’ worth of stories about this crew, and pushes them in interesting new directions. We also get a few new character pair-ups that create new bonds between people that haven’t had a lot of time to interact. As far as individuals, there are some strong character arcs through the season. Coulson, now an android, goes through a crisis of faith as he tries to determine if he’s really “alive” or not. But, he also gets to have some fun having a super strong robot body and a computer for a brain. May’s new power to feel other people’s emotions is a nice twist for her stoic character. Watching the normally unflappable Calvary being overwhelmed by strong emotions is jarring to watch, but it’s interesting seeing how this makes her more in touch with her own feelings. As far as Mack, Yo-Yo and Deke go, none of them have too pronounced of a story arc, but they all encounter something that they must overcome to grow. Unfortunately, since Iain De Caestecker was unavailable for filming most of this season, we get virtually no Fitz, which leaves Jemma’s story in a weird place. While the memory block stuff doesn’t always work as well as it could, the payoff absolutely makes up for it. The season’s biggest surprise is Daniel Sousa from “Agent Carter.” While initially seeming like a one-off character, he becomes a strong addition to the crew, and adds a great emotional anchor for Daisy, who catches a lot of heartbreak this season. And I can’t forget to mention Enoch, who’s emotionless characters shows just enough emotion to make you laugh, and cry, more than you would expect.
Overall, this season looked amazing, even though we still seemed to end up in the lighthouse half the time. The costumes and period sets were spot on, and so were the title cards and music cues that reflected each time period. (Personally, nothing topped the 70’s intro, complete with announcer reading off the names of the main cast.) The special effects were top notch, and as usual there were some well-choreographed actions scenes.
“Agents of SHIELD” ends things somewhat anticlimactically, as it spends most of the season on a victory lap of sorts. Things wrap up a little too cleanly, especially after multiple character death fake outs. But, after watching these agents weathering some major storms the last seven years, it’s nice to finally see a rainbow
***1/2 out of *****