It’s a magical place.

You’ve outdone yourself you deserve a trip to Tahiti.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t followed the last few seasons of AoS so I couldn’t comment on Coulson’s characterization these days. I guess so long as they move CM’s action mostly off Earth, and make it clear they think Carol is dead/gone they’d have no real reason to mention it to anyone. The weird thing is though is that…

Agent May totally deserves to be in this. Having said that her appearance would mean MCU acknowledging that Agents of SHIELD exists and Marvel Studios seem allergic to doing that.

I’m trying to come up with a marvelous pun for this article, but I’m just not kreeative enough.

Oh, I love me some CSM. He was like the X-Files’ “Big Bad” before “Big Bad” was a thing. 

In a weird way, this season has reminded me a lot of season four of Angel; definitely the series’ darkest, but also, I think, the season with the most apparent theme. This season has had a lot to say (or at least has tried to) about fate/destiny, the cause and effect of the choices we make. And, also like season four…

Did CSM clip two of his own agents by his own hand for their failures? Hale did. Just sayin’...  

I honestly don’t mind seeing HYDRA again since it’s an intrinsic part of the SHIELD mythos (kind of like Joker to Batman, or Reverse Flash to the Flash), but I get your complaint. It’s not like my jaw was dropping at the reveal of HYDRA, it was more of a “Oh, they’re back. Nice.” I just hope it’s a somewhat creative…

Well, I think it doesn’t help that the tone is dour and the lighting is REALLY DIM/DARK/GRAY! Both the tone and the lighting did make viewers (including me) feel a bit.......I don’t know.....maybe numb, as you said.

I think we’re all missing out on the important bit from this episode: 80 years into the future, The Sandwich has literally become the stuff of legends!

Ok.......sorry, I thought you guys were talking about how dark & dim the lighting is this season. In terms of the tone, I agreed that it does need to lighten up a bit, which it did for parts of episode 11 & 12 (mostly the funny Deke).

Agreed, especially the VFX! They managed to have impressive effects even though they clearly have fewer budget each season. The VFX supervisor Mark Kolpack and his VFX team are really good at making the most out of the budget!

To be fair, season 4's villain is mostly Aida (maybe originally Radcliffe), not another evil organization.

At least AoS usually does a great job of not drawing things out much. Jemma was lost in space for all of what, 2 episodes? Any other show, and that would have covered the full season.

With how swiftly the rift got closed here, it’s not a stretch to think the showrunners just used the Fear Dimension as an excuse to cover up the reveal here—that Fitz’s losing it—while it also provided a nice way to bring in some cameos for the 100th episode.

It really has. In past seasons I’ve had an emotional distance from the ups and downs, but this year it’s sticking with me. Seeing armless YoYo in the future was just haunting - she was tortured over and over again. Poor Fitz, poor Gemma. Maybe it’s worse this year because there are no good options and the darkness is…

Yo-Yo’s silence on what she knows defies logic, which is a shame, because it detracts from the strong performance Natalie Cordova-Buckley is giving. She’s turned what I considered a throw away character into a person with grit and struggles and along with Henry Simmons has made the Mack/Yo-Yo relationship worth caring…

FUCK.

It’s been a pitch-black season is what it’s been.