Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Im not clear on what the change was that broke the loop but I'm okay with the battle being pretty short

It feels even more like an adventure game. Things go pretty swiftly once you do all the arbitrary bullshit that comprises the One True Path Forward

The one thing that actually seemed to change was Fitz and May running into the ship to save Mack and Robin's mom. But not only is it not clear why previous iterations of Fitz wouldn't have done the exact same thing, it's also not clear how this would in any way affect Skydaisies battling Graviton.

I guessing Coulson didn't give Daisy the serum in the other timeline or...something? Maybe?

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Say, didn't Yo-yo tell Coulson that the team was supposed to let him die before he gave the Centipede Serum to Daisy?

What else would he have done with it, though? He didn't take it himself. If he did, we would have seen him in the flashbacks and Daisy wouldn't have been yelling angrily at the Quinjet in the video.

Future Yo-Yo says they have to let Coulson die but by all indications, in her timeline, they did. So what the hell?

edited 22nd May '18 8:58:16 PM by TobiasDrake

See, we're all preconditioned to think "Stable Time Loop, that means a billion different itterations and they've gone through this over and over and over" and whatnot...

But the time loop doesn't have to be stable: it can be a fractal. So let's say I meet a time clone of myself. "Oh by the way, don't go through the red door." So I go through the blue door. Shit happens. Loop continues. Next time, I'd say "I said not to go through the red door, but you shouldn't go through the blue door either." So while events may be sufficiently similar enough to *appear* to be a stable time loop, what you actually have is a loop that, with each iteration gets slightly different until the resonance exceeds a certain threshold and the whole thing breaks down.

Basically, Armless Yoyo in the Future had been told something by another Armless Yoyo in the Future, but we don't know if it was the exact same thing. And, indeed, it rather strains credulity to think that it would be the exact same thing. I can tell you that if I were in a "time loop" and I knew what "I said" in the previous iteration of the scenario, I'd deliberately say anything different. Maybe you don't end up saying the exact right thing, but as long as it's different, you introduce more chaos into the scenario.

Basically, the reason the stable time loop broke is because there was no stable time loop.

I would have loved like a montage at some point of like various critical points in the various loops so we could actually see what went different in this one. But I get that they didn't really have the time for them.

i wouldn't say that Fitz is a Karma Houdini...if anything, it is now even worse. Because beforehand, he at least knew why he did what he did and could defend himself. But this time around he will feel guilty for stuff he hasn't even done yet. And it is not like the fact that he didn't do it yet will change much for Daisy, just knowing that he is able to go there will change her view on him.

But yeah, I called this too.

For the record, I would be very upset if Deke isn't still around. Not only would him blinking out of existence no sense, because in this case, none of the other agents would even remember the possible future, it would also mean that the future we saw doesn't exist anymore at all, rendering pretty much everything they did to ensure that the last margins of humanity had even the chance of a future utterly meaningless. We already had this with the Framework, I don't need this again.

It is possible that the Yoyo beforehand never told Yoyo to just let Coulson die.

edited 23rd May '18 12:21:43 AM by Swanpride

Could be that Deke disappeared because Thanos got him with the Snap. Plausible?

Nah, don't think so. Also, I never really got the 'Loop' thing.

How could any of their future self's have gone through this several times? Each version only went through all of this once.

None of their future selves did go through it multiple times. A time loop just means that their future selves went through the same circumstances, encountering the same future and meeting future selves that said and did the same things and then trying to achieve the same goal by making the same choices.

In a stable time loop, you cannot change history via time travel because your attempt to change history via time travel is already incorporated into the events that shaped history. You Already Changed the Past. Every choice you will make in an attempt to undo what was done has already been made and contributed to what was done.

Future Yo-Yo has only been through this the one time, but she stood on this exact spot. When she was Present Yo-Yo, she met Future Yo-Yo here. She received these same warnings. She made these same choices. She lost her arms the same way and tried to let Coulson die the same way. Every choice she made, she did it for the same reasons Present Yo-Yo does, and they achieve the same outcome.

For most of the season and even most of this episode, that's how the time travel was presented. Every glimpse of the future Robin has comes to pass. Glimpses of the past seen from the future come to pass. Even the "last video of Daisy Johnson alive" occurs identical to the footage Daisy was shown. The events of the second half of the season create the context for why those things happened the way they did despite the travelers' knowledge, but every event still comes to pass. Because of course it does; they're standing in the same place they've always stood, making the same choices they've always made. Not changing history; doing their part to contribute to the events they already knew would come.

But, as noted, time loops are tricky to write with because it takes some serious bullshit to write one's way out of them and are usually only meant to be utilized in a Shaggy Dog Story. So the episode ends with an awkward, "And then they somehow did something different. Because reasons."

edited 23rd May '18 6:21:08 AM by TobiasDrake

Could Deke's presence be the wild card somehow?

I don't know of any time loops where that hasn't been the case. Sooner or later the loop breaks because someone made a different choice, otherwise you don't have a story.

My guess is that Coulson either didn't put the serum in Daisy's gauntlets or she didn't realize she had it in time. I'm thinking it's the latter since Robin didn't say "Something's different" until Daisy saw the serum and used it. The only issue is Fitz. He was already buried under the rubble which couldn't have happened in the destroyed Earth timeline. Maybe things had already shifted subtly by then and in the other timeline Mack was buried and they had to leave him behind.

Imagine if all along the lynchpin was the Fritz had to die

I don't know how that would change everything but just imagine.

Imagine if that was what message Future Yoyo had told her past self.

I think they should have played more with the Nightmare Realm, personally. Put more emphasis on that. Add in some nonsense about it existing "outside of time and space, growing stronger with each interval" and that could easily justify breaking the loop.

edited 23rd May '18 11:47:16 AM by TobiasDrake

Look, all I'm saying is, Dormamu, I've come to bargain.

Dormamu, I've come to offer you great deals on your auto insurance.

So.

Um.

Not to beat a dead horse, but last season we discussed that some of us felt robbed by Coulson's bargain with the Ghost Rider. Specifically, that it really should have been Jemma's moment. It would have made more sense for her character and been a fantastic moment in which she flips the tables on AIDA, who was functionally Fitzsimmons's villain more than anyone else's, and would have avoided making her seem yet again like she's just there to be the Damsel in Distress.

The main argument against it was that the Ghost Rider exacts a heavy toll, and Coulson would never let one of his people pay that toll in his place.

So.

Now, we know that the cost the Rider exacted upon him was that it burned out all the Kree Juice keeping him alive. Without the T.A.H.I.T.I. process in him, his body has been regressing to its natural state of being stabbed to death by Loki.

That was the toll they were talking about.

Which means that if Jemma had hosted the Rider instead of Coulson, he would be alive and well today with absolutely no negative drawbacks, because she has no Kree Juice sustaining her. Jemma hosting the Rider instead of Coulson would have been the objectively correct decision in Watsonian logic too, not just Doylist.

Coulson died for nothing so that he could hog the spotlight.

Eh. It's possible that, absence Kree mojo, something ELSE would have happened.

I somehow doubt the Rider's bargain is Kree specific.

There's the question of whether the rider would have even offered the deal if it didn't eventually result in someone dying due to losing alien blood

Wanted to burn that sweet cosmic blue

See my problem with Coulson dying is that it would have been a great note to end the series on, given that it only existed due to his popularity. But now that it's getting another season I do think killing him here lacks that poetry, so in hindsight I do have issue with him becoming Ghost Rider.

I genuinely wanted Coulson to die because, last season or not, it would've been a perfect moment of passing the torch. The show ends, he's dead and it dies with the guy who's the big reason why it even existed. The show gets renewed, it'd feel like a passing of the torch from Coulson to the crew who the audience have grown to love throughout the years. They should've written his cause of death differently.

I get the feeling Ghost Rider would have taken a different price from someone else if they made the deal. Generally speaking deals like that are in exchange for your soul so kree mojo could very well have been the substitute that was acceptable.

Makes sense.

He came to Robbie when he was dying, and when Robbie took him back from Mack, he had to agree to stick with him for the long haul.

Whether Coulson burning up his Knee mojo was the specific price for taking him on temporarily or just the consequence of that one moment (I mean, Coulson offered because the Rider really wanted Aida's head and was willing to do anything to do it) is something we'll never be sure about.