With SHIELD almost completely destroyed and a Chronicom fleet now backing up Nathaniel, Kora and Sybil, can the team pull off one last win against the odds?

If I had to pick a word to sum up this double episode finale which wraps up seven seasons and indeed seven years of one of the most oddly persistent and difficult to quantify genre shows, I think it would be confusing.

Not entirely in a bad way – the nature of the show has always been that it occupies a very odd niche, being simultaneously part of the grand MCU multimedia vehicle but also curiously apart from it. The show has been carving its own distinctive path for quite some time, and has bounced from the supernatural to the hard science fiction and back again with nary a worry. This is a show that was built to be confusing, and indeed which often thrived on it. This finale is no different, involving so many different elements and character beats that it will make your head spin as you watch it all unfold.

But it’s also quite hard to follow. I’ve been watching the show from the very first episode, and I’ve stuck with it through a lot of weirdness and even I found myself struggling to keep up. Part of the issue is that part one of this finale focuses on the immediate, devastating aftermath of last week’s events and the determination of our heroes to try to pull one last win out of the bag against odds heavily stacked against them, whereas part two then decides to go on a bit of a backstory detour as it tried to wrap up the enduring mystery of where Fitz is, why Simmons can’t remember him and exactly what the long term plan has been all along.

In order to follow that plan you’ll need to remember all sorts of details from the previous season (and by extension details from many seasons past). You’ll also need to follow and extremely convoluted series of events and indulge the writers a fair bit in some of the more hand-wavy elements of what they’ve come up with in order for it all to work.

If it sounds like I didn’t have a good time here, I actually did. When it isn’t baffling you with uber-complex labyrinthine plot elements this is a SHIELD finale through and through, with so many emotional beats and character payoffs you barely know where to look. Most of these land well, regardless of a lack of internal logic on occasion. Some land rather less well – it’s been an absolute joy to see James Paxton reprise the role played by his late father all the way back in season one and he brought a real energy and heart to proceedings, so his eventual fate here and the series of events that lead to it can’t help but leave me feeling a little short-changed. Similarly, for reasons of plot convenience, Kora’s potentially fascinating character has to be shunted through several developments extremely quickly which would have landed infinitely better had they been given more time to breathe.

I kept saying that it felt as the show neared the end like it had so much more to give, and unfortunately that feeling translated in this ending, as too many things had to be rushed because this was the final season and things needed tying up. That said, the very ending, in which our heroes effectively get to hint as to what they’re all up to when the dust has settled, is a nice way to round things off. It can’t help but feel like exactly what it is – the cast saying goodbye both to one another and to the fans – but it’s tough to feel like this show and this cast haven’t earned that final indulgence.

I think ultimately, it feels odd because of the nature of the various threats the team has faced over the years – HYDRA, Ward, AIDA, the literal end of the world in a future where Daisy had destroyed everything and then Sarge. Travels to other dimensions, across the galaxy and into the future. By contrast, Nathaniel Malick’s petty crusade for vengeance and the Chronicoms’ odd vendetta against SHIELD just don’t feel like the things that should finally have brought things to a close.

Verdict: Alternately bittersweet and confusing. At its last, SHIELD gets to be about as SHIELD-y as it’s ever been. 8/10

Greg D. Smith