YoYo is the team’s only hope of stopping the malfunctioning Time Drive, meaning she must enlist the help of an old adversary to try to get her powers functioning again. Coulson grapples with the reality of his situation.

After really letting their hair down last time out, this week the writers get the SHIELD gang back to serious business. The Time Drive is not only malfunctioning, but doing so in a way that presents a threat to their very existence, and the only one who could stop it is a fully powered YoYo. That means she and May get to go on a little trip to meet up with an old adversary from a previous season, as they try to find exactly what the blockage is and hopefully fix it.

Ming Na Wen actually hasn’t been given a great deal to do this season to this point, and neither has Natalia Cordova-Buckley for that matter, so it’s nice to not only see them take front and centre in this episode but also get to play off one another in ways that we don’t usually get to see from their characters. YoYo has never been anywhere near as closed off as May, emotionally, but she’s not exactly the most forthcoming person either, and watching them have to get touchy-feely as they try to work out the problem, before mutually agreeing to take a different, more in-character approach for the pair of them is a lot of fun.

Added to this, they have an additional mystery presented to them on arrival, and one which unfolds slowly in parallel with YoYo’s own journey. As things reach the climax, yet another perennial bad guy arrives and things start to go really sideways, leaving the duo with a difficult choice to make as the clock ticks down towards their absolute last chance to save the Zehpyr and everyone on it.

While all this goes down, the rest of the gang are facing their own demons back on Zephyr One, none more so than Coulson who’s got to deal with being back from the dead(ish) again. I’m starting to wonder if the season isn’t going to end with him voluntarily pulling his own plug – much as he described his ‘superpower’ in a previous episode as dying and coming back, it’s clear he isn’t happy. Ironically, man-out-of-time Sousa seems to be taking things in his stride much better.

Verdict: Though it mainly focuses on May and YoYo, this one gets a lot of storytelling done for many different characters, and also brings welcome tie-ins to the earlier seasons. 8/10

Greg D. Smith