It’s the circle of life… one catastrophe averted, another arrives.
The crew confront Izel as she plans to destroy the Earth. Beating her will take a heavy price and leads to an unexpected result.
It may have come a little too suddenly.

SPOILERS BELOW

The two-hour finale (“The Sign” and “New Life”) had a lot of action as SHIELD tries to stop Izel from using the monoliths to open her world and overrun Earth with evil souls. Setting up the final season felt way too rushed.

Let’s start with Izel (Karolina Wydra). She recreated Flint (Coy Stewart) thanks to the Di’Allis Creation monolith, then possessed him to make the monoliths she needed. While Izel is scary, she’s a little too all-powerful to be really interesting. It’s her mission that makes her scary while she’s really bland even with her hair.

Izel uses her Shrikes to gather a zombie army, and they are relentless. As Mack mentions, it’s a Romero movie out there. They spend much of their time trying to keep the Shrikes back.

Deke confesses he had had a “little” help making gizmos for SHIELD… like some of his staff who are hidden at the base. This leads to an interesting discussion between Deke and Fitz on who’s the real tech genius. Fitz thinks Deke just “borrows” alien and future tech to make money, but Deke has an interesting explanation. He did it so he could find a place to belong, which he didn’t have even in the future.

Deke is able to come up with a jump drive that can send him anywhere. It works, and people applaud him for succeeding (or the fact he was gone?). It has some kinks, like battery problems. He even has to hot-wire a quinjet to save some people. While Deke may be a hacker, the fact that he can be the electronics expert is a good sign. Mack calls Deke “Agent Shaw”. He can go from hacker to genius very quickly when given the chance.

Back to Izel, she’s able to open the portal but the souls haven’t arrived yet. At this point, the battle goes all over the place. Sarge confronts her, unable to kill her. He says it’s due to the pain inside, and May says that is love. She still thinks that he’s somehow Coulson. She sees the truth when he brutally stabs her and shoves her through the portal.

The other side of the portal has the three hooded figures first shown last week moving forward (very Wolf, Ram, and Hart). May is somehow moving too. In that world there is no death, so she recovers from her wounds to kill the figures and stop the transfer.

It’s not over yet. While Elena tries to stop the Shriked people at the temple, a Shrike goes into her. It looks like she’s done for and tells Daisy to kill her once the parasite kills her. Daisy confronts Sarge with her seismic power, revealing the monster literally inside him. It looks like Predator wearing Coulson’s skin. Sarge is able to overcome Daisy’s seismic powers, which should have made him the Big Bad all along. It’s revealed that Sarge sent Izel out to get the Di’Allis, which was why he was made as Coulson centuries ago. It’s just strange the story decided to make him the boss at the last minute. It should have happened weeks ago.

This leads to two interesting battles: one with May against Izel, and the other with Sarge and Mack. May and Izel’s fight is choreographed very well. How strange that the souls preparation to come to Earth is shown as hundreds of people running through the desert when they were supposed to be formless. It looks like Izel has beaten May as Izel heads back to Earth through the portal. Just then May stabs Izel from behind with the special sword while both are on the Earth side. Mack has a tough time with Sarge, but Mack also gets the sword to literally slice Sarge in half. It’s a brutal image.

We see that Izel’s death kills the Shrike inside Elena as she coughs it out. May’s wounds soon overcome her. She’s going to die knowing Sarge wasn’t Coulson, saying she will see him again in the other side.

Suddenly Jemma Simmons arrives with a crew and no Fitz. When asked Jemma says she doesn’t know where he is… and can’t know. The Chromicoms have decided to take over the Earth as their new home, Chromica 3. They think it can be done if they destroy SHIELD and use it’s secrets. Remember they got a lot of info from FitzSimmons when they were in that brain machine in “Inescapable” episode.

Enoch (Joel Stoffer) had hoped he’d get anthropologists to help him, but they’ve joined Malachi as reprogrammed Hunters killing nearly everyone in the Zephyr. FitzSimmons plan to destroy the Framework tech and die with it to keep the Chromicoms from taking over the Earth.

Then someone stops these hunters. It’s Enoch with someone else’s skin. That’s almost as surprising as learning his last name is Coltrane. He tells FitzSimmons there is a plan to save everyone, which entails sacrifice.

This sets up the main plot for season seven, but maybe a bit too suddenly?
First Jemma gives May medicine that will heal her many wounds, but she’ll be out of action for a while. Then Jemma reveals the Chromicom’s plan and how they have to stop them. With some upgrades, the Zephyr leaves and the temple is destroyed, keeping those souls from getting to Earth. Thanks to upgrading Deke’s jump drive, they head for New York… in 1931! They arrive at the Empire State Building before it’s finished. Maybe Malachi (Christopher James Baker) thinks time travel is a terrible way to recover their old home of Chromica 2, but SHIELD is using it to beat his kind.
Come to think of it, it’s a variation of Avengers: Endgame.

There’s not much of a transition between Izel’s defeat and SHIELD’s new mission. Still fans get to see the urgency of it. FitzSimmons are split up AGAIN. As pointed out by the showrunners in TV Line, Simmons deliberately doesn’t know where Fitz is (or what year) so the Chromicoms don’t know either.

At this point fan wonder when Deke will suddenly vanish. After all, if FitzSimmons never marry, he doesn’t exist. That has to come up soon.
It’s not clear if Flint is still with them either. Since Izel is dead and the monoliths are destroyed, maybe Flint is gone, or maybe not. If he is still around, at least Deke will have a friend from other Days of Future Past.

There’s one more thing: in order to figure out how to beat the Chromicoms and their new boss, they need a unique person who has SHIELD history and special skills inside him. He has to be more advanced than a Life Model Decoy.

Folks, meet RoboCoulson.

So, how long will SHIELD hide in 1931, and will the Chromicoms decide to tamper with the universe, use time travel and battle them through the decades? How will May deal with being alive and seeing Coulson again? Will Deke vanish because true love failed?
Most of all, will they really meet Peggy Carter?
We’ll find out, sometime next year.