Season 7 is the final season of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and so while I will talk about how I feel about this season in particular, I also want this review to serve as a reflection on the series as a whole, and a final goodbye to it. I have been watching this show since the very first episode aired, and so I’ve grown along with it in the seven years that it was on-air.
When you consider what this show was when it started versus what it turned into, it’s really an incredible journey. When this show first premiered, we were still very early on in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, only being seven films in at the start of Phase 2. Now, as the show ends we’re coming up on Phase 4 of the MCU, being 23 films deep into it, with plenty of other TV series to have accompanied it. However, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was the first of its kind, being the first TV series to take place in the MCU.
Due to its experimental nature, it had a bit of a rocky start. This was always the biggest tragedy of the show, because I witnessed it become a thing that tons of people were watching, but hardly anyone liked, to becoming an amazing show that no one was watching anymore. I’ve been a huge advocate for the show in all of its years of being on, and unfortunately no one ever really listened, and so it eventually became the show that got overshadowed by the Netflix Marvel series. Unfortunately the show just needed to find its own identity, since in the beginning it was always focused on trying to connect itself to the movies. Once it stopped doing this, it found its own magic, and leaned into what made the show good, rather than just trying to reference events from the movies over and over. It’s ironic, but the less it became tied to the MCU, the better of a show it became.
While the show did fluctuate in quality a little bit throughout its run, for the most part I largely felt like it kept getting better and better, with seasons 5 and 6 being my favorite seasons of the show. It’s with this that I unfortunately have to admit that season 7 was one of my least favorite seasons of the show. The plot for the season was set up in the finale of season 6, with the team trying to stop the Chronicoms from taking over the world, all while traveling through time. The season starts out with the team in the 1930s, but they slowly move through time as the season progresses.
I just unfortunately thought that the story was kind of weak in the early parts of the season. For a show that kept me hooked more and more as the series progressed, I got kind of bored at a few points this season. One thing heavily working against it is that Fitz is absent for all but the last few episodes of the season, and his absence is heavily felt.
Luckily, the season does improve as it goes on. It’s kind of ironic that this is the show’s final season, because it came full circle with me feeling the same way about it as I did with the first season. I thought it had a weak start, but then by the end of the season I was hooked again. I’d say that the second half as a whole is way more interesting and fun than the first half. There is one episode in particular where the team finds themselves trapped in a Groundhog Day-style time loop, and it’s probably my favorite episode of the whole series. So, while I was slightly disappointed by the show not keeping the momentum going from the previous two seasons, there is definitely a lot to still love about this one.
The other thing that the show fortunately nails is its finale. I was really satisfied with how the show ended, and so even if the final season had a bit of a rocky start for me, I’m happy to say that I do feel like it definitely stuck the landing. I felt very emotional saying goodbye to these characters and this show in general, because I spent seven years watching it, and I’ve had the pleasure to grow along with it. I believe the final episode count of this show is 136 episodes, and so while I get that that’s a bit of an undertaking at this point, I still think this show was worth the watch. It was a hell of a ride, and so it feels bittersweet for me to be saying goodbye to the most underappreciated corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
4/5
