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Managing editor & film and television critic with a Bachelor's of Arts in English Literature with a Writing Minor from the University of Guam. Currently in graduate school completing a Master's in English Literature.
Marvel‘s fan-favorite science-fiction action series returns for one final journey — saving their organization from extinction.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s premiere episode of its seventh season is titled “A New Deal;” it is written by George Kitson, and directed by Kevin Tancharoen (The Flash, Arrow, Iron Fist, Titans).
Some spoilers ahead for those of you who are not up-to-date with the series or not caught up with this episode. If you haven’t done either, you should get to that now, then return to this article!
The final season is off to a great start, and it will only travel upwards from there. Tancharoen has worked on intriguing episodes of other superhero-related series in the past and has already established himself as a director of AoS‘s previous episodes, so it’s safe to say he has done right by the show.
Kitson’s writing is pretty good, mixing early-1930s’ history with that of the show. Patton Oswalt returns to the series as an ancestor of the Koenig characters, and character Wilfred Malick is introduced during the Franklin Roosevelt arc of the episode as predecessors of what will soon become Hydra and SHIELD. Two films from 1931 (Carl Laemmle’s Dracula and The Phantom of the West) are featured in the background of a scene as posters, and interestingly enough, they could count as allusions to the episode’s plot. The Prohibition Era and the use of speakeasies are a neat stage set-up for the season.
“A New Deal” features a group of monsters from the future (Chronicoms) “procure identities” of police officers, and the SHIELD agents investigate as a Canadian group on the case. Daisy Johnson/ Quake (Chloe Bennet), Life Model Decoy Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), and Deke Shaw (Jeff Ward) are led by Alphonso “Mack” MacKenzie (Henry Simmons) in the field. Meanwhile, Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) and Elena “Yo-Yo” Rodriguez (Natalia Cordova-Buckley) interrogate a captured enemy Chronicom as Chronicom Enoch (Joel Stoffer) helps heal Agent Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen).
Coulson copes with the knowledge that his body isn’t actually his since he is an LMD of an actual individual. He is just a vessel with identity and memory. Similarly, Simmons, gives Yo-Yo new prosthetic arms not just as aesthetics to blend in with humanity — especially a society from the past — but so she can have the sense of touch again.
The team is still trying to get used to the concept of time travel, having done so two or three times in the past couple of seasons. Although it seems that they are improving. Their aircraft, the Zephyr, functions as a time machine “in a sense.” The members out in the field worry about the butterfly effect and that every move they make might change the course of the future as they know it. As Mack says, “Ripples, not waves.”
The episode also has delved into the racist and sexist undertones of the early-twentieth-century. Mack is a black man and Johnson is a woman (of color), both acting in leadership roles, in 1931. (Mack has two brushes with discrimination: when Koenig refers to him as a “shadow” and when a bar patron at an event almost lets out a racial slur. A police officer does not treat Johnson as a human being of the workforce.) A post-Civil War and post women’s suffrage United States of America still has a lot to learn and can make these matters difficult when they need not be.
The final season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. shows great promise of what will be closure to a seven-year journey for the group, and an even longer-lasting one for Phil Coulson, who has served the Marvel Cinematic Universe for a dozen years since his appearance in Iron Man twelve Mays ago. The series fantastically combines some United States history with Marvel lore, along with some under-the-nose themes of racism and sexism and a larger focus on technology as juxtaposed with 1930s culture. Its time travel storyline makes for a good Terminator– and Back to the Future-esque feel of what’s to come.
9/10
What do you think? Have you seen this series? If not, do you plan to binge it sometime in the near future? Let us know! For more Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., action, science-fiction, and Marvel-related news and reviews, follow The Cinema Spot on Twitter (@TheCinemaSpot) and Instagram (@thecinemaspot_).
Managing editor & film and television critic with a Bachelor's of Arts in English Literature with a Writing Minor from the University of Guam. Currently in graduate school completing a Master's in English Literature.
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