WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the latest episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., "Brand New Day," which aired Wednesday on ABC.
The final season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. may not tie directly into the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe films, but it does offer somewhat of a thematic connection. In Avengers: Endgame, Earth's Mightiest Heroes traveled back in time to steal the Infinity Stones and use them to bring everyone Thanos had killed back. This allowed the film to revisit a decade of MCU films. And, for its final season, the ABC series features a similar mission: with the Chronicoms intent on erasing S.H.I.E.L.D. from history, the synthetic aliens started traveling back in the past to unravel the timeline.
As a result, the titular team has been on a non-stop mission across the time stream, revisiting past eras of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Marvel history. This allowed some members of the team to go through some of the same emotional beats the Avengers did. And now, in the series' latest episode, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. recreates yet another Avengers: Endgame moment.
At the end of the previous episode, Nathaniel Malick kidnapped Simmons and stole the Zephyr, taking it out into space to find the only person who can stop the Chronicoms: Fitz. Now, in "Brand New Day," the rest of the team is stranded on Earth, and trying to figure out what to do next. Malick has Sibyl, the Chronicom A.I. that is able to run numbers to predict the future, which means all of the team's possible moves have already been foreseen by her.
Therefore, Daisy instead opts to do something unpredictable: she commandeers a quinjet along with Daniel Sousa, and she means to fly it out into space -- even if it's not designed for deep space travel. Surprisingly, Mack agrees with her plan and joins them for the mission.
Before long, Mack, Sousa, and Daisy break through the atmosphere of the planet. They are then left floating in space, plotting a course to intercept the Zephyr. However, since the quinjet isn't exactly designed to last in space, the team must cut off everything but the ship's life support systems and gravity.
For the remainder of the episode, all three characters are stuck in a spaceship that is essentially dead, as they travel to a destination they can only hope they will reach in time. In the ship, they try to preserve oxygen as much as possible, so they limit their talking and grow weaker.
The trio's situation is similar to what Tony Stark went through at the start of Avengers: Endgame. The Armored Avenger was left stranded on Titan at the end of Infinity War and following the Snap. When Endgame began, Stark was now aboard the Guardians of the Galaxy's spaceship with Nebula. However, the ship's life support systems were rapidly failing, and Stark had very little time left until it would be dead in the water (or in space).
Thankfully, Stark was eventually rescued by Captain Marvel, who brought him back to Earth. However, Mack, Daisy, and Sousa aren't out of the woods just yet. As the episode comes to a close, they are still in the lifeless quinjet and, to make matters worse, the Chronicoms have arrived with an entire fleet to attack the Earth -- and the three S.H.I.E.L.D. agents have yet to find the Zephyr. There might not be a space-faring hero to help them -- so how will they make it out of this alive?
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s final season airs Wednesdays at 10 pm ET/PT on ABC. The series stars Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Henry Simmons, Iain De Caestecker, Natalia Cordova-Buckley, Elizabeth Henstridge and Clark Gregg.