As Talbot’s obsession threatens to bring about the very future the team are trying to prevent, our heroes find themselves arguing about the use to which they should put the centipede serum – save Coulson or destroy Talbot?

It’s all there in that episode title really, isn’t it? The End – such a final, ominous moniker for any instalment of a TV show (save perhaps Red Dwarf). After a whole season of build-up, this is the closer, the episode that will wrap up all the threads and give us the conclusion to what has been an epic arc of SHIELD. But can it deliver on all that promise? Short answer: yes, in spades.

Last time out we finally saw that the knife edge choice YoYo’s future self had warned her about in sharp focus – there’s only one extant sample of the centipede serum, which represents the only way to save Coulson from dropping dead of heart failure at any second. The issue is, it’s also all that can be (possibly) used to stop Talbot from literally cracking the world apart in his mad quest for more gravitonium.

How that choice plays out is at once classic SHIELD and also endlessly surprising. We know that YoYo wants to make the sacrificial play to save the world, and we know that May, Daisy, Simmons and frankly pretty much everyone else wants to save Coulson at any cost. What the episode does which is very clever is take this very binary choice and use it to power the key conflicts and emotional beats of the first half of the episode, while also introducing surprising variation and nuance to the issue for the second half in order to deliver a satisfying narrative conclusion to events.

And make no mistake, there’s emotion here throughout. Long term fans of the show are going to want to have hankies at the ready and to seriously brace themselves because there’s a whole bunch of affecting stuff here as the writers really yank at the heartstrings of the audience. Interspersed with it is a rare bit of naked promotion of the armed forces and emergency services, but thankfully it’s done in a context and a way that not only makes sense but actually adds to the weight of what’s going on.

What I will say (carefully, in service of avoiding spoilers) is that I finished the episode confused on two separate counts – first there is a narrative beat at the end which completely wrong-footed me, such that I had to actually rewind and watch again and even then I am not 100% sure I follow. The second is that all the promotional stuff about this finale led me to believe that there would be a grand amount of tie-in to the events of Infinity War – if there was such, I missed it, and I was looking for it quite intently.

But none of this detracts from the quality of proceedings here. In a season that’s been pretty generous with its FX shots, this one stands out as feeling almost like some of the FX budget was saved elsewhere to go really wild here. The action is thick and fast, the emotional beats land and honestly, this has to be the most emotional finale of SHIELD to date. Recent news that the gang will be returning for a shortened sixth season to tie up all remaining loose ends was welcome, but doesn’t do anything to detract from how very final a lot of this feels.

Verdict: All the clichés apply – emotional rollercoaster, big finish and so on and so forth. That a show like this can still deliver stuff this powerful five seasons in is a testament to the strength of the cast, the writing and the characters. Just perfect. 10/10

Greg D. Smith