Agents of SHIELD: How Flint Can Help Save the Earth

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5 has seen Coulson and his team stranded in a dystopian future, one in which the Earth has been destroyed. Their mission is to save humanity in the future, then return to the past and avert global disaster.

The latest episode, 'The Last Day,' finally gave an answer to one important question: Just how can the Earth be saved? It seems the solution is a new character, the Inhuman known as Flint.

Page 1 (this page): Who is Flint?

Who is Flint?

Flint was created by Charles Soule and Joe Madureira back in 2013. He was part of a community who, although they were descended from Inhumans, had shunned their ancient heritage. They had dedicated themselves to living normal lives, and had avoided Terrigenesis. That came to an end when Black Bolt, king of the Inhumans, released Terrigen into the Earth's atmosphere. The Terrigen cloud traveled across Minnesota, and Flint was one of the people who was transformed.

Tragically, Flint was the only member of his family to survive exposure to the Terrigen cloud. He was recruited by Lash, and initially manipulated into fighting the Inhuman Royal Family. Against all the odds, Flint formed an uneasy alliance with Gorgon, and soon found himself joining the Inhumans in their latest settlement in the Hudson River.

Flint has been a recurring character in Soule's comics and played a major role in the Royals comic. There, Soule has expanded Flint's powerset dramatically, revealing just what this particular young Inhuman is capable of.

What are Flint's Powers?

In the comics, Flint is a so-called "geokinetic." That allows him to manipulate the rocks around him, and Soule first gave readers a hint of his power-levels in All-New Inhumans #10. Under the influence of a powerful mind-controller, he was actually able to tear down half a mountain. Great exertions tend to leave Inhumans drained, but Flint was back in action within moments. That suggested that his power-levels are off the charts.

All that was confirmed in the more recent Royals #2. An Inhuman spacecraft was in serious trouble, under attack from a Chitauri horde. Flint was literally able to shift the orbit of the planet Pluto, drawing the Chitauri army into its gravitational pull.

Exploring Flint's Role in The Future

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has reinvented Flint as an inhabitant of the Lighthouse, and so far it's only hinted at his true power. He's only recently undergone Terrigenesis, and as a result is new to his Inhuman abilities. The most he's done is lift a couple of rocks, and toss them at his enemies. Clearly he has the potential to be so much more.

Flint lives in a time where the Earth has been fractured, shattered like an egg. That makes him one of the most powerful, dangerous Inhumans of all. After all, the Lighthouse is surrounded by a range of asteroids, the shattered fragments of the planet Earth. Flint could control any of these, regardless of their size, and use them as a weapon against the Kree. He is humanity's last, greatest defense.

But Flint's powers have even more potential. If Coulson and his team take S.H.I.E.L.D. back to the past, he could actually save the planet.

Flint's Powers Could Save the World

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. hasn't fully explained the Earth's destruction. But it has dropped a good number of hints, most notably that Quake's power is key. She has the ability to generate vibrational energy that can cause devastating tremors. Some undetermined incident will cause her powers to increase, to the scale that she causes an earthquake able to tear the Earth apart. Daisy may be the most powerful Inhuman we've seen on the small screen to date, but even she isn't able to pull off something like that without help.

It's likely Daisy's powers will be amplified by interaction with another force, probably gravitonium. Gravitonium generates gravitational fluctuations and would weaken the gravitational bonds that hold a planet together. Combine that force with Quake's vibrational powers, and you have the potential to shatter the Earth.

But Flint's own abilities add another dimension to this. If Daisy has the power to break a planet apart, he has the ability to hold it together. There's one simple way to save the world; Coulson and his team need to take Flint back in time with them.

Flint Could Break the Time Loop

'The Last Day' revealed that the twenty-first century and this dystopian future are locked in a time loop. Robin has been using her precognitive powers to navigate this loop, attempting to rewrite history and save the Earth. The episode gave us a number of key flashback scenes from this timeline, and in one of them Fitz suggested he believes the time loop has run thousands of times before. Each time, S.H.I.E.L.D. has failed to save the planet. Coulson and his team need to introduce a new element, and that's Flint. He has the power to break the time loop, by using his powers to counter Daisy's. That way, the planet won't break apart.

At first glance, it seems all too convenient, but there's a good reason for that. In 1998, Paul Jenkins wrote one of the most popular Inhumans runs of all time. In it, he suggested that Terrigenesis doesn't create random mutations. Karnak suggested a chilling truth: "We have somehow learned to mutate in advance of upheaval. In short, we adapt to the future."

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has already hinted at this idea. In Season 3, for example, Terrigenesis created an Inhuman antidote for Hive's control before the monstrous being returned to Earth. The season featured Lincoln dropping philosophical hints that every Inhuman power has a purpose; he came close to quoting Jenkins's scripts.

Terrigenesis, then, has created two Inhumans to save the world. The first was Robin, the Seer who was able to create the time loop. The second, ultimately, is Flint. He is the solution to the coming crisis, and as such Daisy probably isn't the most powerful Inhuman anymore.

Of course, the mystery underpinning Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5 has yet to be resolved. How and why will Daisy become "Quake, Destroyer of Worlds?" What terrible threat will force a city to be evacuated, and lead to Daisy using her powers in such a terrible way?

Whatever the answers to those questions may be, it's now clear that S.H.I.E.L.D. can indeed save the world. They can change the past - by taking a part of the future back home with them. Flint is the one who can save the world.

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. continues January 26th with œBest Laid Plans on ABC.