#aosmeta

Have I mentioned lately how much I’m loving this final season (I mean, have I mentioned TODAY...)

With a little side ramble where I bring in some Endgame opinions because that’s now extremely relevant.

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THEY DID IT! SOUSA LIVES!!!! Trolling us the entire time whether or not he’d be saved and in the end he was saved but without changes to the SHIELD history books or wall of valor. For the record I did fleetingly think of it—what if it wasn’t actually Sousa floating facedown in that swimming pool. “Not everything is in the books.”

Daniel Sousa appreciation. How smart, how badass is Sousa. He figured it out about Hydra about half a century before everyone else and was getting ready to expose them. His dedication to SHIELD and to rooting out Hydra so much so he’s willing to die for it. Also a disabled character, who walks with a cane, who is a physically skilled fighter, but he mostly relies on his brains.

AoS saved Sousa from the baffling plot hole Endgame carelessly threw him into. He’s never even appeared in the films and somehow the MCU managed to offhandedly harm the arc of this wonderful Marvel tv character. ACTUAL UNDERAPPRECIATED HERO OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE. But AoS isn’t having it, this is their Marvel TV territory, linked with Agent Carter, and they basically reclaimed him. That was an excellent sleight-of-hand. And now he gets to go on the zephyr and have time-travelling, saving-the-world adventures. STEVE ISN’T THE ONLY HERO PULLED OUT OF TIME. BOO-YAH. (I love Steve. But Sousa got erased as a character for all intents and purposes for the sake of Steve’s Endgame, so I am enjoying the tea poured by AoS very much)

There’s something really affecting about Coulsonbot playing dead to save Sousa, who will now have to pretend to be dead like Coulson did, after Coulson died and was resurrected, and then died and was uploaded into a bot. Coulson just keeps dying.

Coulson and Mack right out talking about how Coulson’s death was an inspiration for the Avengers, Coulson trying to self-effacingly brush it off of course and Mack won’t let him. Plus Sousa is to SHIELD as Coulson is to the Avengers. Both devoted SHIELD agents, both super smart and caring, both faked their deaths unwillingly, then went along for a greater good.

“May I cut in” DAISY!!! I feel like that was a very Peggy Carter kind of moment. If a bunch of hydra thugs are overwhelming and roughing up Daniel Sousa, that’s exactly how Peggy would have entered the scene to punch them in the jaw.

While we’re on the subject of Sousa and Coulson parallels, this episode expressly comparing May/Coulson and Peggy/Sousa. That HURT. But I also appreciate the acknowledgment of Peggy/Sousa, again given Endgame’s careless stepping on Marvel tv continuity. AoS couldn’t save the ship but the overtly spoken parallel there suggests that whatever broke up Peggy and Sousa there is a whole story there we don’t know and likely as complicated as May and Coulson’s love story. We don’t know the circumstances. She didn’t definitely leave Sousa just because Steve returned to her. There’s also the fact that eventually, Peggy thought Sousa was dead. Peggy, who mourned Steve, would also mourn Sousa even if their relationship was over. This just opened up a whole lot of thought and possibilities and untold story there. You also never know. It’s Marvel. I never would have predicted this—Sousa in a multi-episode arc of AoS’s final season being on the Zephyr with our team Coulson. And are we going to see Peggy this season. WILL WE SEE PEGGY.

This so far is everything I hoped for when they did the time jump to the 30’s at the end of S6, and I hoped they would cross paths with those early SHIELD characters from Agent Carter. Agent Carter was a show cut down way too soon, so this acts as a little bit of a needed coda for Sousa even without the Endgame tinkering.

“Anxiety attack” — YO YO SAID THE THING. I SAID THAT IN MY POST LAST WEEK.

Okay, so May suddenly being a powerful empath is probably more than mere emotional trauma. But what a twist for a character who has always buried her emotions deep while feeling deeply, and then, because of the tech that healed her and brought her back to life, has her emotions dampened to where she can’t feel, becoming an empath where she feels everyone else’s emotions too much.

May touching Coulson and picking up nothing with her empath powers. OUCH. Yes Coulsonbot is effectively Coulson with Coulson’s memories, attachments, moral compass, but it’s machine generated. Not organic. So that would probably be why May felt nothing off him. Does that mean Coulson bot’s feelings aren’t “real” — I don’t think so. Enoch is a bot and his feelings are real. Coulsonbot’s feelings are real. But it’s not the same as the og Coulson. When May’s emotions normalize, how’s she going to handle this Coulsonbot. Her lack of emotion is keeping her from having to deal with that right now.

And WHY is May suddenly an empath.

Entire SHIELD cast looks stunning in period dress of every decade, confirmed.

The black & white, the directing in this was stunning.

How much did Clark Gregg enjoy getting to read those noir Coulson voice overs, how much. A lot I’ll bet.

This ep is making me sad about the show’s ending. It’s not the last episode but it’s about endings, and changes, and what comes next, and experiencing loss.

Fitz’s “Be Safe” to Jemma was Fitz saying I love you right back, even though she didn’t hear it

God they love each other so much it hurts and I can’t wait for more “Be Safe”s in the future…  When one of them goes out in the field alone, and the other is left behind - when Jemma’s pregnant and Fitz goes out in the field. When they’re fooling around in the lab and being the adorable idiots that they are. When Fitz is shaking or when Jemma is mentally in a dark-place. Whenever they are saying goodbye - even if it’s just to go to the store for milk or tea. The possibilities are endless and that makes me so happy. Fitzsimmons’s “Be Safe” is the same as Huntingbird’s “Don’t die out there.”

“Be Safe” means “I love you” and I can’t wait for the first time that Fitz says it to Jemma and the realization dawns on her face exactly what he means because she knows what it means.

Simmons is a Xenobiologist who was so fascinated with supernatural abilities that she chose it as her field of study. She probably thought herself very knowledgeable about the subject. Then, weeks after going into the field, she gets affected by an alien virus, a virus she’d been fascinated with only minutes before.

Jump to season two. The first episode we see Simmons again, she’s chased by Donnie Gil, a boy she knew briefly, and was nearly killed.

In Aftershocks she had to watch her team carry pieces of Trip away. She may be the only one besides Skye to have actually seen Trip’s body. Then, her men were attacked and killed by Raina, who had undergone a shocking transformation.

I also believe Simmons’ reaction was heightened by the emotional state she was in. She’d just lost a friend and now Skye, someone so important to her, was in danger of being infected and changed like Raina. From Simmons’ point of view, she felt the need to be fiercely protective of Skye, to the point that she had to take a difficult stance to make sure that this never happens again.

Some people probably believe that Fitz is being more caring than Simmons right now, when it comes to Skye. That isn’t really true. Simmons is being just as caring, but in a different way. She wants to protect her team more than anything and she wants Skye to know that. If anything, she’s trying to comfort Skye in this situation, not realizing that she’s actually hurting Skye.

in the entirety of this season, we've seen absolutely no one look into the reasons behind who ward is, and what ward did. and if they did, they did it purely for their own gain. they've taken it all at face value, even when missions they were tasked with, made them double think. why wouldn't they do the same for someone who willingly risked his life for all of them? who was in the team because he was a specialist?

i refuse to believe that the writers aren't setting up for something big, something bigger than the ward reveal in season one. there are too many questions, too many instances where things just seem to be one big mess, too many instances where things are happening as a subtle change-your-focus-from-what's-actually-happening. there has to be something bubbling beneath the surface that we're missing.