Coulson and Talbot find themselves on the Confederate ship and in a position to bargain, but can Talbot really fix everything? Meanwhile, the team on the ground race to put together the space-going modifications to Zephyr One to go and rescue Coulson and Talbot, while dealing with various tensions between them.

If Agents of SHIELD has a failing as a show, it’s that for all the investment that it puts into developing characters and sustaining arcs, it does somewhat fluff the landing on occasion, with conclusions that start to feel a little rushed, like everything including the kitchen sink is being thrown at you all at once. The only other failing the show used to have was when they used to try to tie it in with the movies a little too overtly, flinging around the names of MCU characters and events as if simply invoking them might somehow add a layer of credibility to the show that it didn’t need. This means that I’m sort of perversely happy with this week’s episode being a bit weak, because it jams in all of those elements but isn’t the finale – the optimist in me simply hopes the writers got it out of their system with this one.

First up, there’s Talbot, now fully infused with all the Gravitonium that SHIELD had squirreled away and apparently handling it much better than Ruby did. That a man so obviously mentally fragile suddenly seemed so calm after all that Gravitonium and the various combative minds it had swirling in it seemed so calm and in control at the end of last week’s instalment was troubling, and Adrian Pasdar is a decent enough actor that all the way through the initial calm and reasonable stage, we, like Coulson, are on edge because something isn’t quite right.

And of course it isn’t. The negotiation with the Confederacy is nothing of the sort, and things take a violent turn quite quickly. It’s clear from this point on that the biggest issue that the gang find themselves facing may not necessarily be aliens.

Back on Earth, the rest of the gang are variously falling out with one another for all sorts of reasons. Mack is still very upset with YoYo,… and sorry, but this seems a little forced to me. Ruby literally cut YoYo’s arms off and nearly killed her, Mack is desperately in love with her, and they both work in a job where they have to put down bad guys a lot. It doesn’t sit right that Mack is suddenly all righteously annoyed at YoYo for killing one bad person in an attempt to save everyone and possibly the world, let alone the same person that lopped her limbs off not all that long ago. Maybe it’s my bias, but it doesn’t ring true. At any rate, there’s various other rankling going on – YoYo and Daisy, Daisy and Simmons, Mack and Fitz – it feels like everyone has beef with someone for some reason, and whereas it adds to the dramatic tension when the team is already facing bigger threats, it also starts to feel a little cluttered, especially when certain feuds feel artificial. Add to that the way that some elements (like the fact that Daisy just dug up her mother’s corpse) are just fleetingly glossed over by both the characters and the script, and it just adds to that whole kitchen sink feeling.

And then we get to the other awkwardness – the shoehorning in of reference to wider events in the MCU. Here it’s a pretty massive one, and it works against the show for two reasons. Firstly, there’s the issue of this being a TV show with a fairly tight focus airily referencing what is a massive event in-universe without any sight of it at all. Secondly, the very weight of that threat sort of rains more than a little on the world-ending threat that the show has been building up for the entire season. It’s an odd juxtaposition, and it can’t help but feel like it’s been shoehorned in to ill effect. As the show closes, I’m left with a feeling that unless something really clever is up the writers’ sleeves for the conclusion, then this one may end with more of a whimper than a bang.

Verdict: All the worst tropes of what is an otherwise damned fine show make an appearance in one episode together and it just doesn’t work. I’m still watching, but by the standards of the season, this is the poorest entry yet. 6/10