The Story of Fitz...
(Late Review: This episode aired on 22nd December)
After last episode's thrilling cliffhanger which revealed the up-until-then unseen Fitz, 'Rewind' takes us back and shows what exactly has happened on his end since we last saw him at the diner, why he wasn't taken, and how he managed to join them nonetheless.
The episode begins at the diner from which the agents were abducted, but this time, seen from Fitz perspective: One second he's sitting there, surrendering with the others, the next he's alone at the counter. Before he can process what has happened, the government agents they were originally expecting burst in and arrest him while frantically searching for the rest. Since no one can explain where the agents of SHIELD have gone, they take the only likely explanation available --Fitz has done something to help them escape. After numerous interrogations tough, they are forced to accept his claim of ignorance, and his willingness to help them get answers.
Fitz remains in their top secret facility for a whole six months, being given every book he requests to investigate exactly what happened at the diner, and a TV with which to watch soccer. However, his theories get wilder and wilder and the officers are soon fed up. Just when they've decided to throw him in a hole and forget about him, his 'attorney' shows up --Lance Hunter, whom he had managed to contact in a message disguised as a soccer fan letter, and the two immediately break out and go on the run.
Unencumbered now, Fitz continues his investigation of his fellow agents' disappearance. He sees what the government officers had missed on the surveillance tapes --similar vans with different insignias appearing in different cameras while tracking the first, and realises the case breaker: they are all the same van, and the one in which the agents of SHIELD were taken away. He and Hunter track the van, leading them to the house of the strange man who had led the abduction. Except he's not a man at all, but a humanoid alien: a Chronicon called Enoch, sent to observe the evolution of humans 30,000 years ago. Enoch reveals everything to them --the agents were taken and sent 75 years into the future to save humanity from an Extinction Level Event predicted by someone called 'the seer'. Fitz demands to know why he wasn't taken along and demands to see the seer. Enoch obliges and takes him to a park, where they realise that the seer was no other person than Robin Hinton, daughter of Inhuman Charles Hinton.
At that point, the government agents, since tracking them, catch up and they have to run. Enoch takes them into the bunker he had sent the agents to in the future, and Fitz gets his answer: He wasn't sent with the others because they would need him to save them. To fulfill this new prophesy, Enoch tells them of a cryogenic chamber they can use and he breaks back into the the facility he was held to get it, escaping on SHIELD's huge aircraft The Zephyr. Since the monolith is closed, there's only one thing he can do --put himself in cryogenic hibernation until the set time, while Enoch would wait to wake him up, and together, they would work on a plan to rescue the other agents and the rest of humanity.
What a premise! And in case you missed it, 'Enoch' is apparently supposed to be same Enoch mentioned in the Old Testament. Yup... he definitely lives long! Cool stuff, bringing back Hunter and the Hintons, but the episode, though modeled after 3.4 in which Simmons underwent a similar isolation from the rest, felt like pulling the show back from a high point in 'A Life Earned'.
Agents of SHIELD returns with 'Fun and Games' on 5th January 2018, only on the CW
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