Sarge and his crew begin tracking and killing people who aren't supposed to be on this Earth, which brings them to a very much alive Deke, who is using his knowledge of the future to run a gaming company.
Tropes:
- Alien Blood: The bats have blood which act as an accelerant. When they take over a host, they can turn them into living bombs.
- Bait-and-Switch: In the intro scene, Deke is seemingly in a life-and-death situation. It's all part of the Framework game simulation.
- Benevolent Boss: Deke seems like quite an easy-going boss and he is very concerned for the safety of his workers, telling his security guard to run and being distraught about his death.
- Big Damn Heroes: Turns out SHIELD has been looking out for Deke, infiltrating his company to make sure he's kept safe.
- Bluff the Impostor: Deke figures out that something is off about "Coulson" when Sarge says that Deke's grandparents are "slowing down" (not realizing that they're in their thirties due to time travel), so he asks about Agent Doug. None the wiser, Sarge keeps it circumspect: "Doug's Doug". Unfortunately for Deke, Sarge also recognizes that Deke just played him and drops the pretense.
- Body Horror: The death and autopsy of the first host was squicky enough, but seeing what the bats did to Keller when it seemingly activated is straight up Human Architecture Horror.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: When Deke is asked where he gets his ideas for "new" inventions (new to everyone else), he looks straight at the camera as if to say to the audience, "You know where, don't you?"
- Buffy Speak: Sequoia, big time.
- Chekhov's Gag: The Remorath Rumble VR game comes back in the climax, when Deke uses it to distract and incapacitate Jaco.
- Continuity Nod:
- Deke mentions that a lot of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s cool tech comes from aliens, which we've seen in Captain Marvel and, of course, this very series.
- He also doesn't want anything on his wrist, alluding to the controlling device from the Kree. He reluctantly accepts it anyway, since it's benign.
- Creator Cameo: Series co-creator and co-showrunner Maurissa Tancharoen plays Sequoia.
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Although he was never a villain, Deke makes a fortune out of averting this trope in a way that Aida never did: why use an incredibly advanced VR technology to make an evil brainwashing mind-prison machine when you could just sell it as a blockbuster VR video game?
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Jesus, what did Keller do to deserve that?
- Danger Room Cold Open: What "Remorath Rumble" turns out to be.
- Death Glare: Mack gives one to Deke in the manner of a Papa Wolf.
- Death of the Hypotenuse: Dang, Keller, never should've gone after Mack's girl.
- Designated Girl Fight: May specifically goes after Snowflake.
- Did You Actually Believe...?: Invoked by Trevor when he asks if Deke really thought S.H.I.E.L.D. was going to be perfectly okay with him "ripping off all their tech."
- Doesn't Like Guns: What May and Snowflake have in common.
- Dramatic Ammo Depletion: Deke tries to be a badass by shooting Jaco... after he emptied the clip on an unconscious Pax.
- Evil Is Burning Hot: The bats drive up the temperature of their hosts well above what a human should be capable of surviving. When Benson tries to make an incision in Keller's chest, he burns himself and can't go any further.
- Fanservice: Daisy, in Deke's simulation, has a very big neckline.
- Forgot About Her Powers: If Elena had thought to use her Super-Speed, she could have caught the bat moments after it woke up and started flying around the room. She could have done the same when it was trying to crawl down Keller's throat. Instead, she only uses her powers to quickly restrain Keller after the bat has infected him, and to grab Sarge's knife so she can kill both the bat and Keller when he starts horribly mutating.
- Funny Background Event: At one point during Sequoia's blog, Mack and Deke can be seen arguing in the background, presumably over the many security violations he's committed.
- Get It Over With: May doesn't even flinch when Sarge has her at his mercy, telling him that if he wants to kill her, he should do it already. Sarge refuses, instead kidnapping her and planning to show her his purpose for coming to Earth.
- Headphones Equal Isolation: One of Deke's employees is still hard at work during the crisis, obliviously coding with his headphones on. Pax finds him and ignores him since he's not a threat.
- Healing Factor: The bat that Sarge stabbed recovers almost instantly once the knife is removed.
- Impaled Palm: Deke does this to Sarge with a pointed trophy. Seeing that it's a real hand and not a prosthetic serves as the final confirmation to Deke that Sarge is definitely not Coulson.
- Improvised Weapon: May bludgeons and chokes Snowflake with an office phone during their brawl.
- Internal Reveal:
- Benson learns about Elena's powers.
- Deke learns about Sarge.
- Ironic Echo: Deke gets slapped by a woman who asks, "What took you so long?" The first time it's his sexy fantasy version of Daisy in the Framework; the second time it's an angry Sequoia and it's not so sexy.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When someone asks Deke where he gets all his amazing ideas, he just turns and stares at the camera.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: After they've successfully trapped Jaco in the Framework VR, Deke offers a disturbed Mack a two percent share in his company if he keeps quiet about the simulation's take on Daisy.
- Locked Out of the Loop:
- Deke has been kept out of recent events, such as one version of Fitz being dead and Coulson having died from his injuries. Mack doesn't want to tell him about the former because Jemma might bring the younger version of Fitz back.
- In the previous episode, Benson complained about being "kept in the dark" about things. Here, it's shown that no one bothered to inform him about Elena's powers, though it's not clear if this was intentional or if they're so used to it by this point that it simply never occurred to them to fill him in, given how casually Elena reveals it.
- Major Injury Underreaction: Sarge barely even reacts to his Impaled Palm.
- Mauve Shirt: Keller graduates to this status, unfortunately for him.
- Mercy Kill: When Keller begins mutating, Elena stabs the bat to kill it and spare him from mutating any further.
- Ms. Fanservice: Deke programmed a... sultry Daisy into his VR game, with a deep neckline, fluffy porn hair, a gentle slap as reprimand for "being late" and the the Standard Hero Reward.
- No Kill like Overkill: Deke empties the ICER gun on Pax when he is already out cold.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Deke has now turned his future technology into a profiting tech start-up business in the vein of young Silicon Valley entrepreneur/inventor types like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk.
- No Name Given: Deke's startup is never actually named, just referred to using some variation of "the company".
- Orifice Invasion: The bat crawls down Keller's throat and digs down to his chest.
- P.O.V. Cam: The Stinger shows events from the perspective of Sequoia's blog, complete with silly graphics and hashtags.
- Puppeteer Parasite: The bats can invade a host and then mutate them into a highly volatile crystalline mass. Sarge's crew has knives that neutralize the bats.
- The Reveal: Deke is confirmed to have not been erased by Team Coulson averting his timeline. While he anticipated as such, Avengers: Endgame establishes that time travel can't change your own history and instead creates alternate timelines, so Deke merely moved to a reality where the events of his timeline never played out.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Sarge's crew thinks Deke is another victim of the bats, because both he and they come from another reality. Sarge's crew notices that his signature isn't quite the same, but that doesn't stop them.
- Sadist: Sarge assumes that Deke is a talker, under the impression that he is a victim of the bats, and thus deserves an especially painful death.
- Ship Tease: By the end of the episode, Sequoia seems to be enarmoured with Trevor more than Deke.
- Skewed Priorities: Sequoia still wants to take the Boba with her even though she is in a life-threatening situation. Deke calmly has her put it down because they have bigger concerns. Not only that, during the vlogging stinger, Sequoia is still concerned with how her hair looks rather than concentrating on all the violence around her.
- Slap-Slap-Kiss: Deke's version of Daisy in the Framework VR slaps him before kissing him.
- Spot the Thread: Deke realizes that Sarge isn't Coulson when Sarge assumes that Deke's "grandparents" must be elderly.
- Stranded with Edison: Deke spent the past year working on recreating technology known to him from 2091 in the present, from the Framework and the anti-gravity generators to the specific type of food that he misses. He's already built a copy of the Framework, as he made one of those himself in the future. The others are proving more difficult, though Deke has enough experience to have made at least some progress. Mack is quite annoyed when he realizes what Deke's been up to.
- Undercover Cop Reveal: Deke's friend and apparent right-hand man Trevor is revealed to be an undercover S.H.I.E.L.D. agent tasked with keeping an eye on Deke. Deke is understandably distressed by this.
- Wacky Startup Workplace: Deke's unnamed company gives off these vibes.
- Was It All a Lie?: Played up quite humorously when Deke finds out about Trevor being a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. His biggest concern is that Trevor has been letting him win in the combat simulations.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Everyone is quite pissed at Deke for ripping off their tech.
