S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Past Life' - Feb 3

AoS has taken a break for this February, what with the winter Olympics, and the ‘Black Panther’ movie and all. Where did they leave us?

The agents have returned to the present, the Kree seem to be all dead – though we never learned just how many of them there were, exactly – and the last of humans seem to be making a brand/great new world in the same old place…wait, what?

Here is the thing. MCU has been building this AoS episode, ‘Past Life’, to be something special – and then it shot itself in the foot instead. It actually began earlier in the week, when MCU’s news revealed that Dove Cameron will be appearing on the show as a new character – Ruby Hale, daughter of General Hale – who has a big fan girl crush on Daisy/Quake. This means that regardless of what the MCU clip of ‘Past Episode’ tried to play at, it was already shot in the foot – the Marvel fans knew that Chloe Bennett’s character, Daisy/Quake, is staying on the show, thus neutralizing the clip’s ominous atmosphere. Weird and depressing, but that is life. It does not have to be, not for MCU and AoS, but it is.

Fast forward to the ‘Past Life’ episode proper, and we have few things to think over. One is that Coulson chose one of the worse ways of bringing Daisy back to the present – by force. Basically, he took away her choices by ICIng her into unconsciousness and bringing her back into the present literally. Yes, ‘Past Life’ also did its best to show the impromptu family – Phil, Mel, and Daisy…but because Coulson and May’s relationship was all over the map in the show, the scene did not have quite the emotional impact it was going for, plus by now the audience knows that Daisy will forgive Coulson in the wrong run, though it would be nice if she made Coulson apologize, even if just for a tiny little scene.

While Coulson and May rescued Daisy by completely overriding, if not disregarding, her opinions as a person (and etc.), Yo-Yo had an adventure of her own: she found her alternate self. Few episodes ago, the audience learned as to what has happened to the agents in the original timeline; Yo-Yo, in particular, went to fight the Kree, (with one of their stabbing spears), and was never seen again. Now we learn as to what has happened to her: the Kree overpowered her, kept her prisoner, and tortured/forced her to tell them things from the past – and this was done several times already.

To elaborate. What the agents are caught is not exactly a time loop, more like a time horseshoe, with Robin in the centre. Thanks to Robin and Enoch, (and how did team Enoch have a workable Kree Monolith ready to apprehend Coulson and his team except for Fitz?), the agents get to travel to the future twice – once with the Monolith back, twice as ordinary people – by going directly through the time stream, facing the future as it becomes the present, and later on – the past. …I am sure that the FitzSimmons could have explained it zillion times better and clearer, but they are not here. They are fiction. Real life sucks.

…Getting back from the philosophies, what about the action? As Yo-Yo the Younger was leaving Yo-Yo the Elder, she ran into Kasius and a couple of his minions, and…was overpowered? On the show, what we saw was this. Mack went into the arena, where he was confronted by the Kree, and saw Kasius killing Yo-Yo – the Elder, as judging by the clothes. Then Kasius drank the berserker bug juice and went to fight Mack, beating the daylight out of him long enough for Jemma to come to the rescue by sticking one of those deafness-causing devices into Kasius’ ear, which disoriented Kasius long enough for Mack to get to his axe-gun and stab Kasius to the death.

That is right. Kasius was stabbed to death with an axe.

Here is the bizarre bit. The axe part of Mack’s weapon is reminiscent of a weapon like the berdiche used by Ivan the Terrible’s people in DW S3, a great-axe in game terms, or if you want to think in FH terms – the Dane-axe used by the Viking Raider. It really is not built for stabbing, Mack should have gone for the good old decapitation instead – or instead of an axe, he crossbred his gun with a bloody halberd – or as FH calls it, the poleaxe, (used by the Lawbringer of the Knights). Unlike the berdiche, the halberd has an axe-blade in the front, a spike on top, and a hook in the middle – a more versatile weapon of the two. It was the only weapon, (not talking about firearms, here), that DW had in all of its’ 3 seasons – the halberd was that good.

….The Kree melee weapon of choice, incidentally, resembles a glaive or even a naginata – a slicing spear, used by the Nobushi of Samurai in FH…but we digress.

And so, Mack won with Jemma’s help – and Yo-Yo immediately ran in to her hero. Again, racial stereotyping, though not very extreme or noticeable. What should be noted is, firstly, this was Mack’s moment to shine, and he did not. In yet another earlier episode, Gryll, (later killed by Flint), made a big point of calling Mack ‘a beast’, and Yo-Yo made an equally big point of telling Mack that he wasn’t. Here, in ‘Past Life’, AoS actually had a perfect opportunity of having Mack struggle with those two views of himself and reconcile this inner controversy of his, and triumph, at least morally, by being a better person than Kasius was – and that never happened. Instead, we had a completely unnecessary fight…and some shifty behavior from Yo-Yo. (Yo-Yos?) Seriously, she is a better fighter than Jemma is, (no offence to Jemma), maybe even than Mack, but…she did not help. Why?

Yes, there were Kree with Kasius, but Mack gunned them down rather easily – AoS never got to flesh out the Kree fully during the time that the agents were in that dystopian future, so there was no reason as to why Yo-Yo could not help, but she did not. Another plot hole? Or a sign of another plot twist to come?

And finally – just what will happen to the humanity now that the Kree are dead and the agents have left back for their own time? Yes, they won their freedom, and are now free to live…exactly how they did before, on a desolate planet, in a lighthouse, with xenomorphs that not even the Kree could properly and fully control…yeah. Not the fairy tale ending you expected to have, (and why did Tess and Flint end up together? So that AoS could have a ‘proper’ interracial relationship, no matter how token, at last? Cloak & Dagger are so impressed!) Frankly, you could’ve had a final 5^th season with the agents staying in the future and becoming a part of a new hope, (yes, there were some SW associations, the way that Deke and Enoch perished was reminiscent of the ‘Rogue One’ movie, for example), but instead…we’re going to get something else.

And why this season may be the last? Because Coulson is dying, apparently, and now that he has a limited time left to live, he got to wrap some things up, yeah? And Daisy may yet end up the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. – a new S.H.I.E.L.D. since the old one is gone for good.

…Unless, of course, what Coulson is actually dying off is old age, and he still got several decades left in him instead – he just has not figured it out yet. Either way, ‘Past Life’ was good, but it could have been great, if not for some RL factors. See you all soon, then!