Agents of SHIELD season 7, episode 1 review: The New Deal

Agents of SHIELD season 7’s premiere marked the beginning of the end for the show as the final season debuted with “The New Deal.”

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD season 7 kicked off the show’s final chapter with its first episode, “The New Deal.”

But before we get into what happened in the latest chapter of the story, where were viewers (and characters) last left?

About a year ago in realtime, 6.13, “New Life,” saw the terroristic Coulson alien doppelganger Sarge (Clark Gregg) and his equally-murderous sort-of-ex-girlfriend Izel (Karolina Wydra) and their army of demons defeated.  Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) was last seen put into a cryochamber after surviving a swordfight in Purgatory, and Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) claims not to know where her husband Leo Fitz (Iain De Caesticker) is. The last we saw of their grandson Deke Shaw (Jeff Ward), he was fighting off a swarm of shrike, bat-like creatures, that could turn people into zombies and Elena “Yo-Yo” Rodriguez (Natalia Cordova-Buckley) recovered after ingesting one of them.

Thanks to their ally Enoch (Joel Stoffer), the Zephyr One has been upgraded into essentially a DeLorean or a TARDIS, and the team found themselves in 1931 New York City. Also, Daisy “Quake” Johnson (Chloe Bennet) and Director Alphonso “Mack” MacKenzie (Henry Simmons) reluctantly agreed to the creation of a Coulson LMD (Gregg).

Also, the Chronicoms, a Cylon-like alien race, are trying to take over Earth to use as their new homeworld.

Life is great…for a Depression

This episode takes place in 1931 New York City, where Prohibition hasn’t quite ended and the Great Depression still has a ways left to go. Still, time travel is fun, right? That is, until Chronicoms melt the faces off a group of corrupt cops in a bootlegging rendezvous gone south. So our favorite SHIELD agents have to pass themselves off as detectives to sneak into the crime scene and gather what data they can.

Deke and Daisy survive a brief skirmish that results in a stolen pickup truck and a captive, while the Coulson LMD and Mack go investigate a speakeasy for clues on what the Chronicoms’ target might be.

Life in quarantine

As fitting for this moment as that is, given everything that’s happening in the world, it’s Yo-yo who’s stuck in quarantine while Simmons and Enoch try to figure out what the shrike has done to her body. Bad news is, it’s basically decaying. Good news is, Simmons crafted her a set of new arms that can pass as human, which was a touching character moment in an episode filled with them.

Once Deke and Daisy show up with their prisoner, Simmons goes into Dark Mode (to everyone else’s dismay) and tortures the Chronicom to get the information they are seeking – Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Party time

So, what better way to stop SHIELD from existing than by assassinating the President before he can create the Strategic Scientific Reserve, right? Which means that the team has to try to stop them, which they are successful in doing.

It turns out that the target isn’t FDR at all, though Coulson does get to shake his hand (a huge moment for a history buff like him).

There is also a fight in the kitchen that calls back nicely to the show’s first-ever fight in the cold open of the pilot, where Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) beat up a bunch of dudes with ordinary kitchen gizmos.

The Chronicoms are actually after a teenage bartender named Freddy, whose full name is Wilfred Malick – as in, the future father of HYDRA leader Gideon Malick.

Summary

So, in order to save SHIELD, Mack, Daisy and company have to first save HYDRA. Because Freddy Malick is on the loose with a vial of something that looks suspiciously like GH-325 (a vitally important healing serum from early in the series).

In the tag, May escaped from her cryochamber, and this probably won’t go well for Enoch.

There is a decent amount of darkness and edge to the action onscreen, though it’s a little light in that aspect for an episode directed by Kevin Tancharoen. Still, strong yet quiet character moments abound, which is another hallmark of this series in general and Tancharoen’s episodes in particular.

SHIELD shrapnel

• “Ripples, not waves.” That’s probably going to be a phrase we hear often this season. Also, Deke’s description of multiverse theory (a stream, with fixed points represented by sticks) is much easier to grasp than either The Ancient One in Avengers: Endgame or Cisco Ramon on The Flash.
• Patton Oswalt returns as yet another Koenig! This time their ancestor Ernest, a smarmy bar manager, his fifth character in the series. Seriously, Ernest is very unpleasant.
• A Coulson LMD is weird for everyone – himself included – but the apology scene at the party between him and Daisy was especially great.
• Daisy attempting to speak 1930s slang was hilarious and very Skye-like.

Agents of SHIELD season  7 continues on Wednesday, June 3, at 10 p.m. ET on ABC with episode 2, “Know Your Onions.” Did you enjoy the Agents of SHIELD season 7 premiere? Let us know in the comments below!