Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s eighth episode of its final season, “After, Before,” continues the trend of this season of highlighting a team member for the majority of the episode. “After, Before” is Yo-Yo’s turn in the spotlight.
There’s many thing to love about “After, Before,” from the May-Yo-Yo team-up to the return of an old face in the form of Daisy’s mother, Jiaying. All the while, that slimy worm Nathaniel Malick continues to try to screw around with the timeline.
So let’s talk about the positives and negatives of “After, Before.”
POSITIVES
- Insight into Yo-Yo’s past. Jiaying and May help Elena go through a number of memories in her life to try to figure out how to gain Yo-Yo’s powers back. Turns out one of the things causing it is a incident when she was younger that led to her uncle being murdered. Having Yo-Yo’s lack of powers be due to mental block instead of physical works well in exploring these characters.
- Final seasons can be tough in walking that fine line of letting characters have episodes mostly to themselves while also sticking to the main plot. Unlike other shows however, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is succeeding at not being overwhelmed in either direction unlike other shows.
- May having to remind Yo-Yo to touch the diviner with her face to prove she’s a Inhuman was a nice little moment.
- May and Yo-Yo team-ups rule.
- Jemma giving Sousa a new synthetic leg. Yay! Also a good way to have Sousa in those action scenes that you know are coming up later this season.
- Simmons’s video message to Fitz. Almost forgot how hard those FitzSimmons feels hit.
- Reliving the past works as Yo-Yo is able to regain her powers and help fix the time regulator that is making the Zephyr continue to time jump. But also it didn’t work as the Zephyr makes one more jump and…..????
- Sousa’s heart eyes for Daisy.
NEGATIVES
- No Fitz.
- Kora. Now I’m not saying negative to the character but how she was introduced in “After, Before”. So apparently Jiaying has a daughter here in 1983 by the name of Kora and she ends up being recruited by Nathaniel Malick. Finding out Daisy has a sister should have been a really cool moment but feels like such a throw-away moment in “After, Before”. The scene where Jiaying tries to help Kora from turning to the dark side is good but also lacks a emotional punch that could have been helped if we had more than two scenes before with her. Also not having Daisy meet her sister is just plain cruel in a way.
- If we don’t get a Daisy/Kora scene later this scene, we’re going to be ticked off.
- Malick looks like such a tool with that facial hair/jacket combo.
- Lovely Daisy/Coulson moment but was way way too short.
- Malick has a bunch of the Inhumans captured in the past. That’s not good. Not good at all.
What did you think of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. “After, Before?” Let us know in the comments section below!
