#AgentsofShield Season 7 Episode 9 "As I Have Always Been" Recap and Review
Daisy wakes up and gets out of the healing pod. She talks to Daniel and then goes to the command center of the plane. They are currently in a very pretty death trap. We get the title card floating in that death trap.
The Quinjet is going haywire, but Yo-Yo is working on fixing it. It’s radiation.
Deke comes in to tell them that they are stuck in a time storm and hurling toward a vortex that will most likely make as if they never existed, but he isn’t entirely sure.
Mack then gets blasted by one of the radiation flares and is blinded. He’s taken to Simmons. Enoch comes in to fix the time drive, but Simmons wants to help Mack first.
There is a fire that Daisy puts out and then they jump again.
She wakes up again and goes to command to find out the time drive has overloaded. She’s in a time loop, and we get the title card again. The Quinjet’s flight systems are fried, and she keeps Mack from being blinded by closing the door. She goes to see Simmons to tell her about the time loop. Cue Enoch and the fire.
She wakes up again. Daniel is still asleep, and so she goes to “wake up” LMD Coulson. He knows that she’s in a time loop and he’s irritated with her. She’s died 14 times. They’ve done the loop 87 times that he’s aware of. She doesn’t always wake him up. They can’t fly out of the vortex because the radiation has fried the navigation. They need to fix the time drive, but time is the one thing they are running out of. Every loop they are getting closer and closer to the vortex.
Daisy tells the team that they’re repeating time.
Deke goes to see Simmons. He tells her about the loop. If they take out her implant, then she might remember how to fix the time drive. LMD Coulson and Daisy eavesdrop. Once the loop resets, her implant will still be in place, so all in all it will work out.
Simmons asks Daisy to prove that they are in a time loop, which she does. She then goes to remove the implants, starts coughing, and dies in a locked room.
The next time Daisy goes into the room with her and they both die from a gas leak.
It was too clean to be accidental. Someone is willing to kill to make sure the implant is never removed. The obvious suspects are Simmons, Deke, and Enoch. Since Simmons died, she’s less of a suspect. All of them deny any involvement. Why would they murder their friends?
Yo-Yo might be fast enough to get the implant out of Simmons, but it takes too long to get her out of the Quinjet.
Daisy notices something weird about the scanner. In order to test it, she wants to use it on herself. Daniel won’t let her. If she dies, she’ll forget everything. If he dies, the loop will reset. I cannot tell you how much I literally adore him, though I will several more times. He uses the scanner and dies.
She tells LMD Coulson all of this in the next loop. He starts on a rant. He hates having to watch them die over and over again. It’s soul crushing, but he’s not even sure he has a soul. She tries to say that of course he has a soul and she has had to watch him die over and over again, but he says it isn’t. He’s a machine that will watch every single person he loves die because he was programmed that way.
That’s it. Enoch was programmed without his knowledge to protect the implant by any means necessary. Once they realize this, Enoch begins to choke Daisy. She quakes him.
After Daisy wakes up again, she asks Daniel why he cares. He simply says, “because you don’t.”
They try to get the implant out without Enoch knowing. It doesn’t work.
Daniel tries to distract Enoch long enough for them to get Enoch out. It doesn’t work, but it is completely adorable.
Simmons asks Enoch to let them. As it turns out, countermanding that order is password dependent.
They try to use everyone to beat him. That doesn’t work.
Daisy is going nuts and she tells Sousa everything. He doesn’t seem fazed and she asks him why. He is fazed. He just doesn’t show it. She asks why he always helps her without even being asked. He says that he knows her type. Some of his favorite people, stab me with a rusty fork, are her type. They are the type that focus on the greater good at their own expense, the type that pretend to be loners but always end up surrounded by a team, and they run full tilt at the walls that come up. He’s the person that picks people back up when they hit those walls. I love him.
After her therapy session, they use subterfuge to trap Enoch in another room while they take out the implant. They aren’t fast enough.
This time Daisy kisses him. I was on the fence about this ship, but I may have been pulled on board by this.
Even with that distraction, they are fast enough to get Simmons’ implant out in time. Enoch can help with the time drive. He has something which is relatively equivalent to the human heart. If they take it out to fix the time drive, it will kill him. She then starts to sob.
Daisy asks Simmons and Enoch to meet her in the LMD lab. They are less than one kilometer from the vortex. She tells them about Enoch. Simmons protests, but Enoch just pulls it out with absolutely no qualms. Simmons and Deke go fix the time drive while LMD Coulson and Daisy stay with Enoch.
Enoch explains that he didn’t understand the feeling of loneliness until he met the team. He is afraid of feeling lonely when he dies. LMD Coulson tries to explain that he isn’t alone. He and Daisy will be there with him until he dies. That is what scares Enoch. Eventually, he will go through it alone. LMD Coulson explains, as only he can, that that feeling is temporary for the person dying. It’s harder and more lasting for the people that survive. Enoch apologizes to Coulson. Daisy thanks Enoch. Enoch tells her that while her friends will live, this will be the team’s last mission. It’s as if he’s speaking to us and not to Daisy. Daisy and LMD Coulson explain to him that every living being encounters the cycle of life, which means that he is not alone in experiencing it. He dies as they jump successfully away from the vortex.
Nathaniel is training Kora, who has also transitioned to traditional villain garb. She also knows about Daisy.
My heart is broken about a million different things at this point. Of course this is the episode where I’m on vacation and don’t have any tea on hand. Poor sweet Enoch. We should have known. After all, his last words are the episode title and I thought beforehand that they were something he would say. 9/10.









