With half the season done with and the show coming to an end, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has to be conscious of what stories it’s going to tell for its final hours. No episode should feel wasted. Each installment should feel integral to the plot. We can’t get time back.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 7 Episode 8 ‘Before, After’ follows last week’s cue by focusing on character. The central character is Yo-Yo (Natalia Cordova-Buckley, Coco). Elena has had trouble with her powers since coming in contact with the Shrike. She has been unable to help her fellow agents at crucial moments because of this.
The show has spent much more time with other agents than it has with Yo-Yo. She did appear in her own web series, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Slingshot, but it’s not part of the series proper. I would still recommend watching it, though. It’s on ABC’s YouTube channel. Slingshot centered on Yo-Yo’s relationship with her family, specifically her cousin who was killed. There’s a clear parallel between the web series and this episode. ‘After, Before’ flashes back to her uncle’s death. Her cousin is even in this flashback. This event in her life is the key to the guilt she is harboring inside. It turns out this is holding her back, not the Shrike.
While I welcome the additional character development for Elena, it does feel a bit odd that we’re getting it so close to the end of the show’s run. It also is an awfully big coincidence that this happens right after the Shrike incident, but then again, guilt and psychological conditions manifest in different ways.
Our heroes come to these revelations by going to Afterlife, the Inhuman sanctuary headed by Daisy’s (Chloe Bennet, Abominable) mother, Jiaying (Dichen Lachman, Altered Carbon). It’s here that we get more plot. We already have reason to distrust Jiaying, considering her actions in Season 2. But she happens to be on the side of the good this time. The real threat is Nathaniel Malick (Thomas E. Sullivan, The Rookie), who didn’t die a couple episodes ago. In fact, he now has Daisy’s powers.
The agents are able to evade Malick, fortunately, and make it back to the Zephyr. This is where Yo-Yo comes to self-actualization and gets her powers back. This allows her to fix the ship’s malfunctioning Time Drive. The major difference is she no longer has to bounce back to her point of origin when going fast. While it’s nice to see some progression in her powers, which is something we don’t get a lot of in Marvel besides new Iron Man suits, her superspeed is now rather run of the mill. It’s better, yes, but it no longer stands out from the crowd. She’s essentially the same as the Flash now.
Just when we think Elena has fixed things, turns out the Time Drive is still broken. Looks like things are about to get crazy next week.
