WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the latest episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., "The Totally Excellent Adventures of Mack and the D," which aired Wednesday on ABC.
The Chronicoms have been the biggest threat in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 7 so far. The race of evil synthetic beings have used their leader, the artificial intelligence Sybil, to change the past and create an outcome where they emerge victorious. So far, the titular team has stopped the Chronicoms in all of their efforts, and by the end of last week's episode, Coulson's sacrifice appeared to take the aliens out for good.
But that wasn't exactly the case. While the Chronicoms' spaceship was successfully destroyed, the series' latest episode reveals Sybil was able to transfer her consciousness elsewhere. Now, the artificial intelligence finds itself inside a computer in 1982, and it uses a simple human to construct new, Short Circuit-inspired hunters. But even as the Chronicoms return to pose a threat once again, another villain has also returned: Nathaniel Malick. And he's more dangerous than ever.
Nathaniel Malick first returned in the Season 7 episode, "A Trout in the Milk." After the Chronicoms interfered with his father Wilfred's timeline, the established events of the Malick family were altered. While Nathaniel originally died as a teenager, he was now alive and fully grown. Worse still, he was not only as creepy as the rest of his family, but he was even more unsettling -- something that became clear when he showed how obsessed he was with Daisy and her Inhuman abilities.
In "Adapt or Die," Nathaniel kidnapped Daisy in 1976 and performed torturous experiments on her to give himself her Quake powers. Thanks to all the genetic material he collected from her, Nathaniel was successful. However, before he could do any real damage, his bones shattered under the weight of his own powers and he was knocked unconscious. At the time, it was unclear if Nathaniel had died, though that seemed unlikely. Given his connection to Daisy and his obsession with the Inhumans, it seemed all but certain Nathaniel would return. The closing minutes of "The Totally Excellent Adventures of Mack and the D" confirm Nathaniel is still, in fact, alive in 1982. However, the villain is seemingly now the one honoring his father's arrangement with the Chronicoms.
Throughout the episode, Sybil's plan is to locate her secret weapon, the Time Stream, a piece of Chronicom technology that allows her to access all the knowledge of the past to calculate outcomes for the future. After an attack on Deke and Mack at the Lighthouse, Sybil is successful in obtaining the Time Stream, and it travels a long way before finally delivering it to Nathaniel Malick.
Malick has been busy. He's built an interface that allows him to communicate directly with Sybil, and now, they have the Time Stream. Therefore, Nathaniel has essentially been confirmed as the series' newest big bad. He's in an alliance with the Chronicoms, he knows how to replicate Inhuman abilities. Plus, thanks to Sybil, he has knowledge of the timestream itself. Together, they make for a dangerous team -- and Nathaniel might prove even harder to stop than his new allies.
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.