This episode was promoted heavily as a huge game-changer for the season; after seeing it a couple times, I’m still not quite sure what this is supposed to have accomplished in that regard.  It’s a solid episode, to be sure, but is it a drastic shift from what has come before?  I’m not convinced.  That said, such things are typically more obvious in hindsight.

 

 

Playing with the notions of precognition can certainly be fun, especially on a show where the motivations and actions of characters are constantly in doubt due to the nature of their work and the world they live in.  It allows the writers to engage in any number of narrative tricks to give an otherwise straightforward story a bit more intrigue.  And there’s always the open question of whether or not events were always going to play out as they ultimately do, or if knowledge of the future becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

Still, the narrative conceit has the same restraints when all is said and done.  There is a definitive endpoint and that must be met to allow the story to keep moving forward.  Anything more expansive simply wouldn’t work, given that Agents of SHIELD exists in a much larger contextual universe.  Unless the writers were opening the door for the series to exist in its own alternate universe/timeline, which doesn’t seem to be the case.

 

 

So by the rules more or less established in this episode, how concerned should the audience be regarding the Quinjet explosion or Daisy’s apparent death in orbit?  Probably not too much.  But it does give the audience another supposed “fixed point” for the story to be working towards, now that everyone is aware that “Ward” is alive.  It gives the rest of the season a well-defined scope, even if that scope was already pretty well established by now.

 

Since the previous episodes reduced Coulson’s field team options down to a minimum, there are extended sequences to prove the point that May and her protégé Daisy are the women getting it done.  (I’ll also point out that between Bobbi and Hunter, it was the woman getting the job done, more often than not!)  That should change soon, but given the dynamics of the plot and the relative lack of May’s presence lately, this was a strong showing.

 

 

Counterpoint to much of the action and wibbly-wobbly timey-whimey was the exploration of Andrew’s final conversion into Lash.  It was a nice way to show that Simmons’ vaccine was still a work in progress, since it didn’t work, but otherwise it was a reminder that not all of those undergoing terrigenesis are left with the option of living a relatively normal life.  So from that perspective, even if Daisy is right that it could threaten Inhumans as a whole, there are some who might benefit from having a horrifying “ability” removed.  That debate is likely to be at the core of the season going forward.