Agents of SHIELD season 6 episodes 12 and 13 review: The Sign and New Life

What went down in the two-part Agents of SHIELD season 6 finale? Spoilers follow.

The Agents of SHIELD season 6 finale, like most of its other season finales, was technically two separate episodes aired back-to-back. So technically you get two episodes in one piece in this review, of 6.12, “The Sign,” and 6.13, “New Life.”

But what happened last week in “From the Ashes” to set things up?

Izel (Karolina Wydra) escaped from the Lighthouse in the body of Yo-Yo Rodriguez (Natalia Cordova-Buckley), which Mack (Henry Simmons) allowed on the condition that he go with to her destination of an Incan temple in Peru.

To stop her, Sarge (Clark Gregg), May (Ming-Na Wen), Daisy (Chloe Bennet) and Piper (Briana Venskus) lead an assault on the temple and prevent the world from being overcome by shrike (dragon-bats that turn people into zombies).

Sarge had also recently reanimated from a coma after May shot him in the head, and there was much disagreement over whether there was any Coulson left in the whatever-he-was, since it seems as though he might be made of the same mystical scary stuff as the Ghost Rider was.

Once at the temple, Izel handcuffed Mack and Yo-Yo to a pillar as prisoners while performing an evil ritual and zapped Flint (Coy Stewart) back from the future.

Evil Ritual, Part One

In the first half of the Agents of SHIELD season 6 finale, Izel’s plan firstly involves building a new Monolith, which Flint accidentally helps with when he reveals that he’s an Inhuman who can move rocks. Once that is complete, she uses Yo-Yo’s body to shatter his leg, leaving him in agony and her captives focused on helping their friend.

The next part of the ritual involves a lot of eerie chanting, but first she has to create a lot more zombies, sending a swarm of shrike to infect a local resort.

Strike force

While all that is happening, the SHIELD team is arriving and trying to fight off the zombies using the special bullets FitzSimmons (Iain De Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge) developed along with their grandson Deke Shaw (Jeff Ward). It turns out the bullets work, though there are far too many zombies for them to be as useful as they ought to be.

Mack and Yo-Yo manage to get Flint to a Quinjet, where Piper then evacuates him from the area, promising to introduce him to tacos on the way.

Lighthouse keepers

Back at the headquarters of the Lighthouse, Fitz and Deke argue loudly for a while after Deke reveals that he set up a secret workshop of his tech company inside the base, kind of stealing SHIELD technology in the process.

When Fitz blows up upon learning this, Deke goes on a monologue of raw emotion, as he reels off the circumstances of his life, none of which quite went his way, and then he portals himself to the temple in a backpack based off the mysterious device the Remoraths used to zip around everywhere, which was responsible for sending everyone back into the present.

Evil ritual, Part Two

After more eerie chanting, Sarge and May find the heart of the temple and confront Izel, as Deke is trapped by zombies in one Quinjet, while Mack, Daisy and Yo-Yo are trapped in the other. There’s a lot of bickering back and forth of strategic decisions lately between the three of them, while Deke inventively stumbles his way into learning how to fly a plane.

In the temple, Sarge is unable to kill Izel and listens to dueling speeches on whether to give in to the rage he feels or accept that the pain is love — a valuable part of human existence.

After May delivers an eloquent speech remembering all Coulson did for her and for his handpicked team, Sarge then runs her through with the magic sword and shoves the body into a portal, much to Izel’s delight.

In space at a seedy bar, Enoch (Joel Stoffer) meets with a colleague in fellow Chronicon anthropologist Isaiah, who reveals that he’s been reassigned as a bounty hunter and attacks Enoch.

Lighthouse in trouble

In the second half of the Agents of SHIELD season 6 finale, the rest of those Chronicon Hunters, led by Malachi, invade the Lighthouse just as FitzSimmons learn that May was stabbed and, for good measure, they also take out all SHIELD communications and satellites.

Having all SHIELD secrets from FitzSimmons’ minds already (thanks to the events of 6.06, “Inescapable“), the Hunters find a secret bunker only to be used in the most dire emergencies and execute all the agents left, leaving FitzSimmons with the only option of hiding in Deke’s lab, which they had only just learned existed a few hours before.

However, once there, they’re trapped. Until Enoch reveals that he killed Isaiah when he was ambushed in the bar and took his skin, and he has a plan – not a good one, but a plan – to get his friends out of there.

Plane insanity

On Zephyr One, Mack, Daisy and Yo-Yo fight off a zombie invasion successfully, only to have a shrike fly into Yo-Yo’s mouth at the last second. This also comes at the same time Deke lands his Quinjet more or less successfully.

Yo-Yo gets Daisy to reluctantly promise to kill her once the zombie virus starts to take over, since Mack obviously wouldn’t be capable of doing so.

Evil ritual, part three

Inside the portal is purgatory, where three gatekeepers in black robes move stones, serving as keys, into an ancient rock-like mechanism that would release a horde of demons onto the Earth. But May isn’t dead yet, so she somehow extracts the sword from her stomach, kills the gatekeepers and flings the keystones back into the temple.

Meanwhile, it seems as though Izel and Sarge were once lovers centuries ago, and they have a lot of issues, but seem content to work together for now.  When Izel enters the portal, she and May have an epic Princess Bride-style swordfight in purgatory, which ends in a draw after Izel concedes and portals back to the temple.

Don’t mess with our friends

Mack, Daisy and Yo-Yo fly into the temple to attack Sarge, while Deke stays behind to shoot down any zombies. When Daisy Quakes him, Sarge turns out to be a muscular alien creature with an insect-type head after losing his Coulson-skin. May permanently kills Izel with the magic sword before perishing of her wounds, while Mack cleaves Sarge in half, permanently dusting him as well.

Where things currently stand

Izel’s death turns all shrike into oily goop, which means that Yo-Yo and all the other zombies are free, when suddenly a very businesslike Simmons appears from nowhere and takes everyone to safety, possibly saving May’s life by putting her in a cyrochamber.

Thanks to some time-traveling upgrades to their plane, they are taken back in time to a 1920s New York City, where the Empire State Building is the tallest thing on Earth, and Simmons claims to not know where Fitz is. Since the Chronicons are intent on making Terra/Midgard/Chronica-3 their new home, and have Fury’s toolbox to boot, they needed an expert in SHIELD history to fight back, which is a Coulson LMD to perhaps serve as Mack’s second-in-command.

Simmons and Mack think this is an awful but maybe necessary idea, but Daisy pulls the trigger and okays it. The episode ends as the LMD wakes up for the first time.

SHIELD shrapnel

• “….Am I even real, then?” Flint asks Mack and Yo-Yo after they try to explain how he got to the temple. “You look real to me,” Mack nods.
• “Don’t know why I didn’t think of that before,” Sarge says about the bullets made from dagger fragments. “But then I’ve never been on a planet that’s so into guns.” Just then they see possible bogey on their radar. “I killed all those birds already,” Daisy pauses. “…And I just jinxed us, didn’t I?”
• “My plan, of course, does have one significant drawback,” Enoch pauses in his pompous way. “What’s that?” FitzSimmons ask. “It will change the natural course of your lives forever.” “Oh. That again,” they say resignedly in unison.
• We don’t know what happened to Deke, I don’t think. Last we saw he was fighting zombies in the hallway.
• May looked very dead by the time Simmons showed up, so…. we don’t technically know if the cryochamber worked or not.
• The Coulson LMD is either based on the pre-Loki stabbing version or (much more likely) the Season 1 Coulson, who was the first version of the man FitzSimmons knew. Of course, given that nearly everyone in the cast has played multiple roles at one point or another and, given circumstantial changes essentially forcing them into playing new characters every season, that’s most likely because Coulson in later seasons would be too dangerous or disheartened to be very helpful.

The Agents of SHIELD season 6 finale was a wild ride that leaves a lot of questions unanswered, as it should.

Agents of SHIELD will return for its seventh and final season on ABC “soon,” according to the voiceover narration at the end of the episode, though all indications pointed to a summer 2020 release.