Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s final season teaser is all about time-traveling face thieves, of course

Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s upcoming seventh season is set to be its last, bringing to a close the most successful—and relentlessly strange—of Marvel’s efforts to export its MCU properties to the smaller screen. (Even if both the show, and the movies, gave up on trying to pretend they were in any way coordinated with each other quite a few years back.) Disney showed off the first trailer for the show’s final run at D23 last night, and, true to pretty much everything anyone who has ever tried to catch up with this show over the last six years or so has inevitably found themselves running smack into—unless they’re willing to invest a night in one hell of a wiki binge, at least—it’s goddamn incomprehensible, but also kind of neat.

Essentially, it’s all about time travel—which Agents was screwing around with way before Endgame made it all trendy and cool—with a crew of Phantom Zone-reject-looking baddies interrupting some dirty cops to eat their faces in 1931. Said Zod-a-likes are (apparently) evil members of the Chronicoms, a recurring element from the show who are a lot like the Watchers from the comics, except they do more time travel shit and their planet got eaten by evil birds.

(Also, can we just take a second to admire the way Agents doesn’t just grab old, made-up nonsense words from the Marvel comics universe for stuff like this, but actually goes to the effort to make some new made-up nonsense words of its own?)

Anyway, Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. is doing old-timey past stuff (just as it hinted a few weeks ago with its sixth season finale), complete with a suitably cheesy “It’s only a matter of time” tagline. (Also, Hydra’s apparently back.) The show will be back for what’s looking like an entertainingly ludicrous final season next summer.