Frankly, ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s FitzSimmons Separation Is Getting Rude

For six seasons, Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) have been narrowly missing each other on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Fitz professes his love, only to almost die on the bottom of the ocean. Simmons gets lost on an alien planet and falls in love with someone else. They get trapped in different time periods. Fitz dies, but his cryogenically frozen body is also floating somewhere in space. They are star cross’d lovers, so destined to be blown apart as soon as they get together that they joked about it right before their quickie wedding.

And to be perfectly frank, it’s enough already.

Spoilers for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s latest episode “The Other Thing” past this point.

I don’t know why this week’s episode was a step too far for me, necessarily. Season 6 opened with Simmons searching space for her sweetie, who had been traveling to the future with his robot buddy Enoch (Joel Stoffer) before being waylaid by mysterious antagonists. After jumping through wormholes and various literal hoops, the two briefly got to see each other a few weeks back, but before Simmons could hug Fitz, he was captured by what this was revealed to be a Chronicom, another member of Enoch’s alien race.

That same dude shows up with Fitz this episode in order to convince Simmons to detail how she and the rest of the Agents traveled through time last season in order to save the Earth. He’s got a gun on him, but Simmons approaches anyway, running towards her true love… Only to find out he’s a hologram. By episode’s end, Simmons is on the same ship as Fitz, to be used as leverage in order to force the latter to invent time travel. That is until Enoch gasses Fitz, knocking him out.

It was the hologram moment that made me shout, “come on!” at my TV screen (full disclosure: it was my laptop, I don’t remember the last time I watched television on an actual TV). Mainly because the FitzSimmons separation has gone beyond the Romeo and Juliet point, and started to feel like the writers are playing phone tag with their hearts.

Again, I want to emphasize that missing each other narrowly is the default mode for the duo. But after over 100 episodes of television, let’s shake things up a bit, huh? Let’s see FitzSimmons together, dealing with something other than wondering what’s going on with the other character! Together! With each other! Particularly given the two have a time traveling adult grandson who is hanging out on Earth, there’s plenty of potentially fertile drama to be mined from their relationship that doesn’t involve, say, them being on opposite sides of the universe.

The issue is that part of the reason fans — and the writers, presumably — grew so affectionate towards FitzSimmons is that De Caestecker and Henstridge have fantastic chemistry. Characters grow, and change, and we don’t need to see them as the idealistic scientists finishing each other’s sentences we knew back in Season 1. But seeing who they are now as a couple might make for a refreshingly different story mode, after six seasons of breaking them apart.

Perhaps they will be back together next episode, and Enoch was just gassing Fitz for fun. Or, more likely he’s going to be caged in some lab trying to invent time travel, and when he does he’ll erase Simmons from existence. Or Simmons will free him from his lab, only to blast him back to the Paleozoic era. Which fine, both of those would be fun to play with. But — stay with me here — what if Fitz and Simmons had to survive in dinosaur times… Together? Seeing them invent things back in time could be the Flintstones origin story we’ve all be waiting for!

Look, whatever happens, I’m going to keep watching because they’ve got me invested in these two brilliant, love-struck dummies. But perhaps it’s time to do things differently, and let FitzSimmons be together more than just in their portmanteau.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. airs Fridays at 8/7c on ABC.

Where to stream Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.