Surprisingly positive thoughts on the Agents of SHIELD series finale

[sholio]

Mainly the Agent Carter related parts of it.


If you just want to watch the part of the ending including the last Daniel Sousa scene, you can watch it on Youtube here (for however long it stays up).

I am having an interesting mix of feelings. I was not expecting to get as emotional as I got over that final shot of Daniel on a spaceship, looking out with wonder. But it's also that sort of ... way you feel over a comic (or other bit of extended canon) that does something really cool which is also outside the part of the canon that's "yours."

It's a very comic-booky sort of feeling. It's that thing where you get to have some really neat scenes for your favorite character where they're part of the Avengers while also, in your head, they are very firmly NOT on the Avengers because your head is very firmly stuck on their solo book run from ten years ago when they were paired up with a character you never wanted canon to stop pairing them with. So it's like ... what a very cool thing that just happened, I really enjoyed it, now I will go back to being firmly stuck in 2008 with whatever the comics were doing then, and pretend it stayed that way forever.

(Comics are like this a LOT.)

But Daniel deserves his time travel, outer space ending. You go boy.

Also, he's now technically part of the Cosmic MCU and could conceivably meet up with the Guardians of the Galaxy or Carol Danvers out there. I'm just saying.

Also also, now that I know his canonical ending, I have an immediate fixit in mind, which is Daniel rocking up in a SPACESHIP circa 1958 or so (a couple of years after Peggy and Jack think he died) and Space Things Happen. I will totally write this if it ever develops more of a plot in my head. I mean, in general I'm probably just going to carry on with Agent Carter as a closed canon that ended in 2015 and ignore this the same way I'm ignoring Endgame (it's semi-canonically a different timeline anyway), but yeah, the feels are nice feels, and that visual of Daniel looking out at a nebula or whatever is a really cool final shot for him.

And they all got a nice ending. I was never that into this show, not in the way I've been into a lot of other, similar shows, but it's really nice to have a long-running sci-fi show that ends on an up note, with everyone who made it to the finale ending up safe and alive and happy. That feels good.

Comments

[kore]

While I was not 100% down with the new prosthetic -- it effectively erased his disability, which was hurtful to some disabled fans I know who'd identified heavily with him

WHAT? Oh, that makes me really unhappy.

[chelseagirl]

Yes, it was pretty uncool.

[kore]

Aww man, the actor was so great at doing it realistically, too. (Well he's great at everything.) (He KEPT HIS SSR BADGE, how fucking adorable is that. https://collider.com/agents-of-shield-enver-gjokaj-interview-agent-carter/)

[chelseagirl]

So adorable. I really like Enver Gjokaj and hope he gets some more really good roles.

[kore]

In his interview he said he tries to write five items for a gratitude list every day in quarantine and had an older mentor (hmmmm!) who told him, "On Sunday we do Sunday shit. On Monday we do Monday shit. We don't do Sunday shit on Monday or Monday shit on Sunday." That's great.

[sholio]

See below comment for my reaction to this. I have a disability similar to Daniel's, and part of my love for Daniel was because of that, but I also felt like having the tech available and not using it would have felt like a profound oversight to me.

The actual problem that I, personally, have with this kind of thing in media is that they don't generally deal with the adjustment period and/or downsides of this kind of miracle tech, but I'm also willing to handwave it because of the TV episode format and the show not actually feeling like that's something they want to spend time on, in the same way that I can handwave terrible TV CPR. I mean, obviously different viewers will have different reactions to this kind of thing, but the show keeping Daniel at his canonical 1940s level of disability in 2020 would have felt a lot more wrong to me, tbh.

(Also, I do really appreciate getting canonical confirmation that it actually IS a prosthesis, which we never actually got in AC.)

[kore]

(Also, I do really appreciate getting canonical confirmation that it actually IS a prosthesis, which we never actually got in AC.)

Hunh, I thought that was confirmed in the pilot:

You know, after I got hit, at the field hospital, the chaplain asked me was there anybody I wanted to send my effects to should, you know, the worst happen. I told him I didn’t think my dad had much use for two pairs of green socks and an old paper bag. Let him remember my life, you know? Of course, I didn’t die, which was inconvenient because the chaplain had already trashed my footlocker. Still missing half my stuff....I can’t find my leg anywhere.