WARNING: The following contains SPOILERS for the Agents of SHIELD season 7 finale.
Agents of SHIELD‘s season 7 finale has introduced Marvel’s version of The Flash. After seven seasons, Marvel’s flagship television series has come to an end. Season 7 used time travel to explore the show’s rich mythology, with an arc involving everything from Chronicoms to Inhumans. Finally, with not one but two timelines saved from the Chronicoms, the SHIELD team completed their final mission.
When Enoch prophesied this would be SHIELD’s last mission together, everyone assumed that meant somebody was set to die. Instead, it referred to a secret he knew that the others were unaware of: that Fitz and Simmons had a child, Ayla, and they would want to retire in order to bring her up. The finale’s final scenes jumped forward a year later, to show the entire SHIELD team had broken up, with each member going their separate way. Mack was the new Nick Fury, complete with trench coat, while Quake was leading Zephyr Three on cosmic adventures as one of Earth’s most prominent “Galactic Ambassadors.” Yo-Yo’s scene was particularly amusing because it subtly referenced a DC superhero.
Agents of SHIELD season 7 had radically expanded Yo-Yo’s powerset, removing her traditional limitations. She’s now a typical super-speedster, able to move at speed for as long as she wants, and no longer snapping back to her starting point after a heartbeat. One year on, she now leads a SHIELD team of her own, working alongside Piper and a Davis LMD. But attentive viewers will note she’s wearing a red jacket, and that as she runs off on her next mission the music that plays is reminiscent of The Flash‘s. It seems Yo-Yo has become Marvel’s version of the Flash.
This is certainly an amusing and appropriate Easter egg. Barry Allen is the most famous comic book super-speedster, so Yo-Yo’s expanded powerset means the reference works perfectly. But it’s worth remembering both The Flash and Agents of SHIELD season 7 have focused on the idea of the Multiverse; in The Flash‘s various Earths, every timeline does indeed appear to have its own iteration of the Flash. Rather than competing against one another, viewers are free to imagine the Marvel and DC multiverses both being part of the same thing. Thus, Yo-Yo can arguably be considered Marvel Television’s Flash, with the one-year-later costume and the music supporting that idea.
The comics themselves have routinely enjoyed making just this kind of allusion. Infinity Countdown: Prime, for example, suggested Shazam is an alt-reality Captain Marvel; Action Comics #998 saw the time traveler Booster Gold insisting he can’t call his robot servant “Jarvis” because that’s a “whole other timeline.” Agents of SHIELD season 7’s finale joins in that tradition, raising implications that will make many viewers laugh with delight.
