'Agents of SHIELD' Season 7 Episode 8 Review: Yo-Yo's powers may have returned but Zephyr is still in trouble
Spoilers for 'Agents of SHIELD' Season 7 Episode 8 'After, Before'
Much of the focus is finally on Yo-Yo (Natalia Cordova Buckley) who finally rids herself off that mental block that was limiting her powers. Her inhuman abilities might have temporarily saved the day, but the battle is far from over. There's also a new threat on the block — Nathaniel Malick (Joel Dabney Courtney). So even as Sybil, the Predictor takes a bit of a backseat in the episode, Malick comes in and while he may not necessarily be on the same level as some of the previous baddies the agents have fought, he's quite a handful.
Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) is back with a new android body but the larger part of the story is about Yo-Yo and the bond she shares with Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen). The latter plays an instrumental role in helping Yo-Yo regain her abilities and this might also be the start of a good friendship between the two. Daisy Johnson's (Chloe Bennet) mother, Jiaying (Dichen Lachman) makes a return and is one of the characters helping Yo-Yo. The action quotient is relatively less as the episode is more on trouble-shooting.
The highlight is when May and Yo-Yo spar in an attempt to get her powers to re-trigger. While it doesn't, what it does bring back are haunting memories, and in the end, the simplest message of bouncing back does the trick.
The Zephyr is malfunctioning and the agents risk becoming part of a jump cycle. The episode earns brownie points for looking back at the 20 months from the ship's perspective. Yo-Yo and May have two days to find a cure while the plane essentially has 20 minutes to make sure the jump drive is fixed. There is a heartening moment in the episode when Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) leaves a video message for Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker).
In a way it also a sense of confirmation that Fitz was the man behind the team's destinations that they have traveled so far on the show. Even as May and Yo-Yo figure out a way to get the latter fixed, it is quite easy to deduce every agent in the team is going through a sense of loss and suffering — physically and mentally. The hope rests on Yo-Yo and the final minutes of the episode see her pull out the field generator, but that doesn't fix the problem entirely and they find themselves in a time loop.
While the next episode is all set to include references to 'Groundhog Day' and 'Edge of Tomorrow', 'After, Before' comes in as another episode that sees one agent get back in the groove. With Fitz's arrival seemingly imminent, the season is all set to dish out a massive showdown.
'Agents of SHIELD' Season 7 airs on Wednesdays at 10 pm ET on ABC.