This year marks the end of an era as Marvel’s flagship television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. begins it’s seventh and final series — officially marking it as the studio’s longest-running television show thus far.
Though the series initially didn’t sit well with critics or the larger Marvel fanbase, it is now praised for how it consistently reinvents itself and has a large, loyal following of fans. So it should be of no shock that as of the time writing this, the series sits at a solid 7.5/10 rating on the Internet Movie Database. Curious as to how those numbers hold out for the individual stories, we scoured IMDB to collect ten of the best Agents of S.H.I.E.LD. episodes to date.
Self Control (9.5)
Directed by Jed Whedon, the season four episode “Self Control” is heralded by the fandom as perhaps one of the show’s darkest episodes to date. It follows the previous episode’s revelation that the team has been kidnapped and replaced with Life Model Decoys, leaving Jemma and Fitz the only humans left.
Except not really, because in a terrifying and traumatic sequence of events it’s revealed that Fitz has also been replaced and that Jemma and Daisy are the only ones left of the core group. It’s an episode that masterfully explores psychological horror, and gives us plenty of Skimmons (Daisy/Jemma) content to feed on.
S.O.S Part 2 (9.4)
The season two finale saw several big shake-ups for the series while finishing up the second season’s ongoing storyline. The episode takes Ward from anti-hero to full-fledged villain, unites both fractions of S.H.I.E.L.D against Jaying, and gives us some good ole’ FitzSimmons content.
It’s no surprise to us that this action-packed season finale ranks so high, after all, it left the fandom in reeling with its final cliffhanger: Jemma being sucked into an alien monolith, mere seconds after agreeing to go on a date with Fitz. Talk about a way to break our hearts!
The Real Deal (9.3)
Season five marked a huge milestone for the series, with the twelfth episode marking a hundred episodes. The monumental episode was filled with beautifully fraught emotion and brought us all to tears while proving to be yet another game-changer by revealing that Coulson is dying.
The team reels with this discovery while fighting off against their own worst memories thanks to what they believe is a fear dimension. The episode does end on a hopeful note with the return of Deathlok and FitzSimmons finally tying the knot at a beautiful wedding ceremony.
Rewind (9.2)
When the team was thrown into the future in the season five premiere, they were missing a core member: Fitz. That’s because IRL, Iain De Caestecker was filming the horror film, Overlord, so the writers found a way to write the season around his schedule.
After the fourth episode ended with the surprise reveal of Fitz disguised by a marauder, episode five picked up to explain to us the sequence of events that sent Fitz to the future. It featured the return of Nick Blood’s Lance Hunter and was a bottle episode filled with plenty of emotion and humor — both of which happen to be De Caestecker’s strong suits.
Turn, Turn, Turn (9.3)
When an episode begins with the jaunty tune of “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult, you know you’re in for a wild ride. When Captain America: The Winter Soldier released, it turned the Marvel Cinematic Universe on its head with the reveal that Hydra had been within S.H.I.E.L.D since its inception and was calling the shots.
That shake-up was one that changed Agents forever, specifically with this game-changing episode. It saw the reveal that John Garrett was the season’s bad guy “The Clairvoyant,” and the even more shocking truth bomb that uptight and honorable Ward was secretly a Hydra agent.
Inescapable (9.0)
When season five ended, it saw FitzSimmons once again separated in the cruelest way possible: death. Fitz is killed by a collapsed ceiling while evacuating civilians, but because of the timey-wimey nature of the season, another Fitz is still out there in the universe frozen in a spaceship as he takes the long journey to the future.
“Inescapable” saw FitzSimmons finally reunite inside a mind prison created by the Chronicoms, which meant each other had the ability to walk through shared and private memories at random. The episode is chock-full of humor, heart-wrenching emotion, and serves as an hour-long therapy session for both Jemma and Fitz as they finally air out everything they’ve been through.
The Dirty Half Dozen (8.9)
When S.H.I.E.L.D found itself caught up in the midst of a civil war, Coulson had little choice in making a deal with the devil by requesting Ward’s help to stop Hydra. The alliance lasted for several episodes but came to a head in “The Dirty Half Dozen” which saw the original “Bus Team” reunited for a final mission together.
The episode was fraught with tension due to Ward’s betrayal, with several emotional arguments arising among the team — including Fitz angrily reminding Ward how they had been a family before he betrayed them. The episode marked the thematic ending of that dynamic and era, even having the Bus blown up as part of a distraction.
A Hen in the Wolf House (8.7)
This episode rarely stops to catch its breath and provides us with plenty of tension and awesome action sequences. When Raina requests S.H.I.E.L.D’s help she comes with an ultimatum: help her by allowing Daisy to meet her father or she’ll release information to all of Hydra that Jemma is a double agent.
“A Hen in the Wolf House” is a scaled-back episode in terms of stakes, but it feels just as epic as any of the show’s season finales due to the intense emotion and tension as Daisy confronts the truth that her father is a killer, and Jemma attempts to escape Hydra. It also introduces Bobbi Morse into the series and has that hallway fight scene, so is it any surprise it ranks so high?
Fear and Loathing on the Planet of Kitson (8.5)
When Jemma disobeys direct orders to return to earth, she sends herself and the rest of the space gang hurtling towards a new lead on Fitz — which soon leads them to Kitson, a planet dedicated to brothels and gambling, where they (correctly) assume Fitz may have gone to.
While Fitz and Enoch try to gamble their way into affording a new ship after theirs is stolen, Jemma, Daisy, and Davis interrogate the two guys that stole Fitz’s ship — and accept some “space puffs” to eat, which they soon realize weren’t actually food but drugs. The rest of the episode is the crackiest Agents has ever gone and will have you on the floor laughing — a welcome change of pace for the series.
FZZT (8.1)
Heralded as the definitive FitzSimmons episode — it was the jumping point for hundreds of new shippers — FZZT saw the team investigating the deaths of several men who were volunteer firefighters that helped in the Battle of New York.
It doesn’t take long to uncover the source of the deaths: the men contracted an alien virus from a Chitauri helmet they salvaged from the battlefield. Unfortunately, this discovery comes with a shocking twist: Jemma has also contracted it. After a relative usually paced episode, the story takes a 180 and leads to the most emotional episode of the series at that point — and saw Fitz realize his feelings for Jemma weren’t just platonic.
