The plan to preserve the timeline in Agents of SHIELD season 7 has not gone well at all. When the final season of Agents of SHIELD began, the team’s mission was simple enough – stop the Chronicoms from erasing SHIELD out of existence and invading Earth. Immediately after making their first landing in the 1930s, Mack and the gang committed to Deke’s “ripples not waves” motto, the theory being that the timeline could course-correct minor changes, but making major alterations to history must be avoided at all costs. That strategy quickly went out of the window. This was partly the fault of the Chronicoms, of course, but SHIELD too have been guilty of influencing the natural flow of time, intentionally or otherwise.
Mack and his brother are now growing up as orphans, Wilfred Malick is dead but his son Nathaniel lives on, SHIELD is advancing far quicker than it should (most recently the Triskellion was referenced) and Deke Shaw is now responsible for some of the 1980s’ biggest pop hits. As with any time travel story, the exact mechanics of manipulating history in Agents of SHIELD are murky, with even the characters themselves unsure of the full impact their meddling might have. For example, last week’s episode saw SHIELD desperately try to protect Jiaying because they feared Daisy would never be born if her mother died early – a Back to the Future-style disappearing act. That theory was debunked when Nathaniel murdered Jiaying and Daisy remained unaffected.
This week’s “Brand New Day” confirms what many Agents of SHIELD viewers have long suspected – that the time-traveling actions of SHIELD and the Chronicoms aren’t altering the timeline, but actually creating a new one. This reveal came from Kora, Daisy’s sister, while being “held” captive by SHIELD in the Lighthouse. Kora claims that by causing waves rather than ripples, a new Marvel continuity has been forged, one where Mack’s parents are dead, but she and Nathaniel are still alive, among various other changes. Kora believes she can make this timeline better than the original by assassinating a list of 30 specific targets that includes former HYDRA agent Grant Ward.
Confirmation that Agents of SHIELD season 7 is now set in a separate timeline abides by the time travel theory provided by the Ancient One in Avengers: Endgame. Tilda Swinton’s character tells Bruce Banner that any significant changes to the past won’t have an impact on his timeline, but would create an entirely new one for her. More or less the same appears to have happened in Agents of SHIELD, but rather than the Zephyr returning to the original timeline like the Avengers did after their Infinity Stone heist, SHIELD are still in the new timeline they helped create. To use the example of Jiaying’s death, there are now two Agents of SHIELD timelines: the original where Jiaying survived and Daisy was born, and the new one where the Inhuman leader is killed by Nathaniel before ever meeting Daisy’s father.
The creation of a new timeline doesn’t negate SHIELD’s efforts to keep history intact. Even if their actions in the past didn’t change the original timeline, creating an offshoot universe is dangerous business in itself. However, the reveal does reframe the original mission of the Chronicoms. Instead of writing SHIELD out of history to pave the way for an invasion, the aliens actually wanted to create an entirely new timeline where modern SHIELD didn’t exist, and the Chronicoms could easily seize control of this freshly-made Earth continuity.
There are certainly plenty of timey-wimey questions for Agents of SHIELD‘s final episode to answer. Is there any going back to the original timeline? Can the divergence be healed to reconnect the new timeline with the original? Will the SHIELD team return to regular Marvel continuity? As ever, a superhero time travel story has opened up a can of worms, and the bugs inside aren’t necessarily wriggling in the same direction. Throughout Agents of SHIELD season 7, Simmons has often acted and spoken as if reality was only one single timeline, and she’s meant to be the intellectual of the group. It certainly seems that Agents of SHIELD is now playing by established MCU rules, but how that affects the story and the SHIELD team remains to be seen.
Agents of SHIELD concludes with “The End Is At Hand” August 12th on ABC.
