Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. love story hasn’t quite been a fairy tale. It’s almost as if danger is “Inescapable” for our favorite nerdy couple. The last time we saw Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge), she left with the Chronicoms so Daisy (Chloe Bennet) and her crew could go home. And the last time we saw Fitz (Iain De Caestecker), Enoch (Jeff Stoffer) knocked him out with some sort of gas.
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FitzSimmons wake up in the same room when Altarah appears. She informs Fitz of his duty to find a way for her to time travel to save her planet. The Chronicoms are desperate. Their planet, Chronica II has been destroyed. Fitz argues that it’s against the Laws of Physics and could create all sorts of paradoxes. Altarah doesn’t care about that. Simmons already confirmed that the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. have accomplished it. She has put them in a Cerebral Fusion Machine to fuse their minds together.
Inside that machine, they are sharing knowledge and memories…memories that Simmons isn’t ready to share. Altarah says the only want to escape is to come up with a time travel solution. The first thing Fitz does is ask Simmons to marry him. For him this is the first time he has asked, but for Simmons, they are already married. Fitz tells her about his adventures in space, but wants to know more about her trip to the future. That’s when it happens. Simmons reverts to being seven years old and runs away from Fitz.
Seven and A Half
Young Jemma Simmons (Ava Mireille) used to hide in her room to collect her thoughts, study the periodic table, and work out any problems in her head. She says she locks her troubles away in a music box. When Fitz tries to open that music box, Jemma distracts him with a book about him and Enoch. Fitz looks at the book cover and it’s the Darkhold. He throws down the book and takes Jemma back to the white room.
Fitz figured out that their minds aren’t the keys to unlocking the prison, their minds are the prison. He yells at Altarah when he returns to the white room, saying that messing with their minds is extremely dangerous. Enoch agrees with Fitz that using the cerebral fusion machine on humans is unethical. Altarah is confident her machine will be effective despite human’s emotional problems. She reminds him that they are fighting for their very existence. Enoch uses a phrase that Fitz says a lot, saying Altarah is being the absolute worst.
Fitz is losing patience with young Jemma, who is mixing up TNT to escape the room. They fight about the TNT, they fight about time travel, and Fitz just needs for her to grow up. So he threatens to bring AIDA into the picture to help him develop the time travel solution. Simmons returns to an adult and yells at Fitz for even thinking about AIDA.
Memories
Mack (Henry Simmons) appears and Simmons is not ready for this. Fitz tries to talk to him, but it’s her memory, so he can only observe. They go to S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ were the rest of the team are consoling each other. This is the day Fitz died and they are all worried about Simmons. Simmons explains that they were caught in a loop of the end of the world. Fitz died to end the loop.
Mack took Fitz’s death really hard, demanding a memorial service for Fitz. He was also very concerned for Simmons’ state of mind. She knew right away there was another Fitz in space. The problem was figuring out a way to get to space and find him. May (Ming-Na Wen) says they have a director who believes in miracles.
In this memory, Fitz also finds out that he and Simmons are already married and Coulson (Clark Gregg) is dead. Talk about a lot to take in. Simmons explains how everything happened, but it’s too much for Fitz to take so he leaves. Simmons plays out the memory as Coulson tell her to go find Fitz.
The next part of the memory is of Yo-Yo (Natalia Cordova-Buckley) and Daisy talking. Daisy asks Yo-Yo to go with them to space, but she needs to stay for Mack. She says he is pushing himself to hard. If she’s not there for him, something may break. And that is what’s happening with Fitz.
Leopold
The next memory is a shared one of when the two were at the S.H.I.E.L.D. academy. Fitz is very uncomfortable around Simmons, but he says he needs her to sort out the thoughts in his head. She’s really good at keeping him focused. This is the night that Fitz became comfortable with Simmons. And the night she put him in the friend zone.
Fitz is having issues with trying to figure out the time travel, trying to figure out how to get out of the prison and all of the bombshells that Simmons just dropped on him. She is trying to keep him calm, but she knows that Leopold is coming.
Leopold, the evil version of Fitz from the Framework is already there. No matter how hard Fitz tries to push him away, Leopold is there. He’s been trapped and now with Fitz about to lose it, Leopold has come out to play.
They run into Leopold in the hallway of the lighthouse and he orders his Hydra guards to start shooting at them. They run away and end up back in Jemma’s room. The music box starts shaking. Simmons is freaking out now and doesn’t see it. When she finally joins Fitz in looking at the box, it falls off of the dresser. And inside is a darker, twisted version of Jemma Simmons.
Simmons’ Dark Side
Evil Jemma attacks Fitz. Her hair is disheveled, her teeth are dirty and she has gold paint on her forehead. Simmons hits her with a pillow to stop her from hurting him. They jump into the closet and argue about Simmons’ issues. Her father told her to put her troubles away in a little box and they would go away. Obviously she was just suppressing them so no one would know about them. Something that Fitz says is very English of her.
They get away from evil Jemma by flipping backwards out of the memory and into the Lighthouse. Fitz says all of their trouble began when they met Phil Coulson. They walk into the memory of meeting him for the first time. Coulson is impressed by them. They are the two youngest scientist enrolled in the academy. And they created fuel for the quinjets. Fitz thinks they are being transferred, but instead, Coulson is recruiting them the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. field team. Fitz was apprehensive about being in the field. But Simmons kept telling him that everything would be alright and there’s nothing to be afraid of.
They start to talk about that memory. Fitz tries to tell her she was wrong. He turns to face her and it’s evil Jemma. She lunges at him and they go flying through a window into a quinjet. Simmons runs after him back to the lighthouse. She can hear him yelling for her, but when she finds him, it’s Leopold. He laughs at her for being an easy target.
Inescapeable
Leopold says Simmons has been keeping things from him. So he straps her to a brain machine that will extract all of her memories. At the same time, Evil Jemma catches Fitz. She says he causes pain and now it’s her turn.
Enoch is concerned. Fitz and Simmons are in danger of dying. Altarah doesn’t care. Enoch says if she continues and they die, she gets nothing. He tells Altarah to pull them out because it’s the right thing to do. She orders the guards to seize Enoch and tells him to work with them or be dismantled.
Leopold turns on his machine and Simmons screams in pain. At the same time Evil Jemma hangs Fitz upside down and stabs him with a wooden stake. She says she likes dissecting things and pulls out his heart. Both Fitz and Simmons tell themselves that they are not going through this alone as they scream in pain. They tell themselves that it’s not real. They don’t only have each other, they have their friends.
Good Friends
Daisy and Mack show up to save the day. Mack saves Fitz by shooting the ropes that hold Fitz. She runs and hides while Mack unties Fitz. He says he’s happy that “Turbo” is okay. Turbo is Mack’s name for Fitz. Evil Jemma jumps out of nowhere and attacks Mack. He tells Fitz to run while Evil Jemma chomps down on his neck.
Meanwhile Daisy burst into the room where Simmons is being held. She quakes everyone away from Simmons and releases her. Simmons jumps up and Daisy tells her to run. The Hydra guards get up and start fighting with Daisy.
Fitz and Simmons run to the nearest containment pod to get away from Leopold and Evil Jemma. While the dark versions circle the pod, the real FitzSimmons start yelling at each other. They fight about how their darker versions tortured them, about how Fitz hurt Simmons and Simmons hurt Fitz, and they fight about how they were trying to help one another. They fight about everything.
Unstoppable
They bring memory of when Fitz died the first time. He drowned in the ocean to save Simmons, causing him to have brain damage. The containment pod starts filling up with water. Leopold and Evil Jemma are waiting outside and he tells her not to get in his way.
The fight slows down as Simmons again blames Fitz for all of her pain, but she is the cause of all of his. She says she’s allowed to save him, and he doesn’t care if he dies saving her. She feels the same way because they love each other. So why are they yelling?
The water stops, but Leopold and Evil Jemma are still outside. Fitz says they have to fight them and they might die trying. Simmons takes his hand and say they are unstoppable together. When they exit the pod, they find Leopold and Evil Jemma making out.
FitzSimmons
They return to the white room. Simmons says they are made for each other. She’s sorry she can’t give him back the time he missed, but she can give him her. He says the whole universe couldn’t keep him from her. Altarah returns, saying they wasted the last five minutes and they need to get back to work.
Fitz says he’s sorry about her planet and he wants to help Enoch, but time travel is a nasty business and they don’t want any part of it. Simmons says if they have to spend eternity in the cerebral fusion machine then so be it. Altarah starts to tell them that they won’t be together, but she freezes up and an alarm goes off. Altarah falls to the ground.
Fitz and Simmons wake up on the Confederacy ship. Enoch incapacitated everyone and pulled them out of the machine. The couple is reunited for real this time. Enoch opens a breach and they step in. Simmons has one more thing to tell Fitz….he’s a grandfather.
Back at S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ, Daisy tells Mack that Fitz is alive. Mack is happy to hear that, even though he’s a prisoner of the Chronicoms. He thinks they will be fine. FitzSimmons can survive anything. Mack says he can’t send Daisy back to get them though. He knows about the destruction of Chronica II. They have footage of it. He tells Daisy that those responsible are on Earth. All Daisy can say is…okay.
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Thoughts
If there is ever a couple that needs their own Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode, it’s FitzSimmons. It was crazy to see them go back in time and be the young awkward and nerdy people they were. Then to also see the darker side of these characters. This is by far one of the better episodes.
I have to be honest, this episode had me feeling every emotion. Frustration, fear, sadness, and happiness. As much as I hate seeing these two separated, they do have some wonderful reunions. I just hope they get back to Earth with the same ease that they escaped the Chronicoms.
We are about halfway through this season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I have a feeling things are about to pick up.
News Editor, Senior Contributor, and Press Editor. Coordinate breaking news, trailers and press releases. I also contribute reviews, recaps and interviews. Creator of the Indigenerd Wire, a column dedicated to the Indigenous creatives in pop culture.
GGA's resident Indigenerd, a little bit rez, a little bit classy...with a love for all things Star Wars, zombies, science fiction, and Indigenous. My ultimate goal is to start my own podcast.
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