'Agents of SHIELD' Season 7 Episode 3 delves into systemic racism and segregation in 'golden age of innovation'
Spoilers for 'Agents of SHIELD' Season 7 Episode 3 'Alien Commies From The Future!'
'Agents of SHIELD' Season 7 is continuing its exciting trip through time and SHIELD history and in Episode 3 'Alien Commies From The Future!', the show proves that the greatest superpower a time traveler can have is white privilege. And even during one of the brightest eras in American history, the scourge of racism was as powerful as ever. Early on in the episode, we see a waitress throwing dirty looks at Alphonso "Mack" MacKenzie (Henry Simmons) and Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez (Natalia Cordova-Buckley). During the same scene, Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) starts fanboying about how the 1950s (the time period they are currently in) was a golden age of innovation but Daisy Johnson (Chloe Bennet) points out that there are still segregated washrooms and plenty of racism to go around.
This gets even more overt later on when the team abducts Gerald Sharpe (Michael Gaston), a high-ranking Department of Defense official who also happens to be a deeply racist old man. Experienced SHIELD agents like Mack, Yo-Yo, and Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) all fail to get him to crack under interrogation specifically because he doesn't take them seriously, simply because they're not white.
We did see some subtle hints of racism when the team was stranded in 1931 but by the time they reach 1955, it's clear that it's only grown, not reduced. In the end, the job falls to the inexperienced Deke Shaw (Jeff Ward), who actually manages to get some information out of the old man because of what he calls "Stupid white privilege." It's nice to see that even while the show celebrates the good sides of the eras they are in, they're not blind to the evils of the past either.
And it's not like racism only belongs to the past. The timing of the episode is impeccable, considering the growing protests against systemic injustice that are raging across the nation. And when you realize the episode was filmed nearly a year ago, it becomes extremely clear how timeless this issue really is.
'Agents of SHIELD' Season 7 airs Wednesdays at 10 pm ET on ABC.
