Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 3.15: "Spacetime"

“Lincoln and I will chase down any intel we can on the homeless man. Daisy, remember every detail you can about where this happens. And then we’ll send May. No one else goes. I won’t pick up a gun until this is finished. And FitzSimmons will stay out of the damn snow. Are we clear?”
-Coulson

Every great work of fiction that involves time travel or the ability to otherwise know the future, from “A Christmas Carol” to “Doctor Who” to “Lost” has to lay out the rules of the game. Once the future is known, can it be changed without apocalyptic consequences? Can it even be changed at all, regardless of greater consequences? Often the answer is somewhere in the middle. On “Doctor Who,” for instance, time can generally be changed (although there are creatures who might try to eat you if the paradoxes get too bad), but there are certain events so important that they become fixed points that can’t be changed. This particular episode of “S.H.I.E.L.D.” involved the team trying to prevent a vision Daisy had seen courtesy of another Inhuman from happening. As May observed, Daisy was so confident in her powers as an Inhuman that she truly believed she could change what she saw in the vision. As you might guess, however, things didn’t go as planned.

The episode opens in an alley, where a homeless man is carving a wooden bird. A man who owns a restaurant on the alley asks the man to leave. He is about to reopen his restaurant, and he doesn’t want the homeless man to scare off customers. Because the homeless man seems like a nice guy, though, the restaurant owner tries to give him some money. When their hands touch, the restaurant owner stands still, and both men see a vision. The restaurant owner then calls 9-1-1, saying he’s about to die and he needs to see Daisy Johnson. S.H.I.E.L.D. picks up on the 9-1-1 call, naturally. The man, Edwin, has no history with any intelligence agency, but since he used Daisy’s name, the team heads to New York to check it out. Edwin tells Daisy that he knew her name because he saw a moment (very close to the current moment) with her in it when he touched the homeless man, Charles. He says Hydra is going to show up soon, and indeed they do.

Daisy realizes Charles is an Inhuman, but she can’t prevent him from being captured by Hydra. Before he’s taken away, though, Daisy touches his hand, and she has a vision. She sees a woman crying, FitzSimmons holding hands in the snow, Coulson shooting, and Charles lying in a puddle of blood. When the bird Charles was carving falls at her feet, Daisy realizes she has seen a vision of the future. She tells the rest of the team what she saw, but Fitz is adamant that the future can’t be changed. Coulson thinks they should try anyway, and he suggests deliberate steps like only sending May to the site of the vision, since Daisy didn’t see her in the vision. This is also where we get the Quote of the Episode. Lincoln thinks that maybe the future can be changed. Inhumans are given their powers with a purpose, so maybe this is Daisy’s purpose. I’m with Fitz on this one. As they say on “Legends of Tomorrow,” time wants to happen.

Meanwhile, Ward/Hive and Gideon do some more conversing. Hive wants to know why Gideon brought him back to Earth, considering Gideon had a pretty good life and could have bought anything he wanted before getting involved with Hive. Gideon responds with a story about his family legacy, but Hive surmises that Gideon really wants true power. Charles is brought into the room as Hive reveals he has Coulson’s hand. They then head for the Transia Corporation, which made some important components of said hand. Gideon tells the Transia Board of Directors that he wants to buy the company, but the chair refuses. Some threatening ensues, and Hive ends up killing everyone but the board chair. Hydra takes over the entire Transia building, and Hive encourages Gideon to put on the exoskeleton Transia as been working on. It’s Gideon’s chance for true power. Naturally, Hive encourages Gideon to use his new power to kill the board chair. And kill him he does. With gusto.

Daisy thinks the events from her vision are going to happen soon and that Charles is probably being transported there. FitzSimmons offer to use server space not taken up by the search for Andrew to help with the search for the location of the vision. Charles’ wife, who appears in Daisy’s vision, then walks into S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ. He walked out on her and their toddler daughter when he experienced terrigenesis, because following the transformation, every time he touched someone, he and the person he touched would see a vision of a death. Daisy produces the carved Robin. Charles’ wife says their daughter’s name is Robin, and she starts crying, just like in Daisy’s vision.

Daisy is sulking that she won’t get her chance to change time, but May gets her into gear by asking her to show her exactly how to defeat the scenario she saw in her vision. Enlisting the other team members, Daisy stages an elaborate mock scenario for May to run through, and Daisy times May on each attempt. Just as May has beaten the scenario in the time she needed to hit, and just as the team learns where Hydra has taken Charles, Andrew walks in. It has become more and more difficult to transition back to himself after being Lash, and Andrew fears he is about to become Lash permanently. He wants to say goodbye to May properly, and while she protests at first, May eventually decides to stay behind from the mission and let Daisy take over.

May sits with Andrew as he awaits his final transformation. He has an IV in his arm delivering the vaccine Simmons has been trying to develop from Creel’s blood. Andrew wants to make sure Lash is in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s control, because he worries they might need him. He is at peace with the idea that there is a little of Lash in him and a little of him in Lash, although the piece of him in Lash has been fading. Resigned to his fate, he takes out the IV. May leaves the containment unit where Andrew is being held and watches in horror (and some sadness, I’d imagine) as he changes for the final time into Lash.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. team taps into the CCTV in the Transia building, and when they see what looks like Ward, they know something is very wrong. As in something came back from Maveth that shouldn’t have come back. Daisy bursts into the room she saw in her vision and takes out a bunch of guards, but she wasn’t counting on the two-way mirror. Coulson shoots at the mirror, which is what Daisy had interpreted in her vision as Coulson shooting at her. Meanwhile Hive says that his team should only kill S.H.I.E.L.D. agents if they are fully human. Lincoln eventually passes out after fighting Giyera over a fire extinguisher. Daisy makes it to the roof, but then she gets in a big fight with an exoskeleton-clad Gideon. Gideon is about to deliver the fatal blow to Daisy when Charles touches him and they share a vision. Gideon grabs him by the throat until Daisy pushes him away. Charles isn’t going to survive, but before he dies, he shows Daisy the vision of the exploding space ship we saw earlier this season. A billboard burns above them, and the ash is what Daisy had interpreted as snow falling on FitzSimmons.