Warning: major spoilers lie ahead for the 100th episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. If you haven't seen the episode yet, you may want to check out some of our spoiler-free articles until you get the chance to watch.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has officially aired its milestone 100th episode, and it didn't hold back on delivering nods to the past for fans who have stuck around. We got old characters coming back, we got the answer to the question of what deal Coulson made with Ghost Rider, we got some Avengers Easter eggs, and we even got some nods to pieces of continuity that haven't been touched on for years. The biggest twist of all came at the end of the episode, when S.H.I.E.L.D. delivered one of its few happy scenes that wasn't immediately followed by something horrible. Fitzsimmons got married without anybody getting sucked through a monolith or transported to another planet or deafened with a Kree device, and the result was the confirmation of a major Season 5 fan theory. Yes, the wedding of Fitzsimmons confirmed that they are directly related to Deke. Huzzah!
To be specific, Fitz and Simmons are Deke's grandparents. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed to drop hints back in the first half of Season 5 that Deke was related to at least one of the agents who was sent into the future to deal with the Kree threat, and the pieces only really seemed to fit for Fitz and Simmons to be in his bloodline. He even looks like he could be related to the two of them! Thanks to the 100th episode, we know for sure that Fitz and Simmons will indeed live long enough to make a baby, and that baby will live long enough to make Deke.
The 100th episode was hinting from almost the very beginning that a wedding would happen before the final credits rolled, but there weren't blatant clues that Deke is related to Fitzsimmons until almost the very end. He did tell a nice -- if somewhat sad, given his childhood on the Lighthouse -- story about how his mother would always somehow find him an orange on his birthday, and he loves oranges to this day because of those memories. The first obvious sign that there was more to Deke's connection to Fitz and Simmons than we knew came when Deke explained to Deathlok -- who turned up to save the day and attend the wedding -- that he retrieved the supplies for the wedding, including the rings from a pawn shop. After cracking a joke about the size of Fitz's fingers, Deke revealed this about Simmons' ring:
For hers, I found this ring that looks just like this one that my mom used to wear sometimes. It was my grandma's, I think.
Plot twist! Now, if you're anything like me after this particular revelation, you immediately assumed that something horrible was going to happen at the wedding and/or that would be the last clue we'd have about Deke as Fitzsimmons' grandson, because misfortune is just the way S.H.I.E.L.D. rolls with poor Fitzsimmons. Luckily for everybody, the episode quickly proved me wrong in the very next scene.
The scene shifted from Fitz and Simmons' wedding to General Hale and an underling, who were trying to figure out Deke's identity after he was arrested in the previous episode, believing him to have a connection to the S.H.I.E.LD. fugitives. None of the army personnel were able to find any information on Deke what with him coming from the future and everything, but they did manage to discover that he's biologically linked to two people: Fitz and Simmons. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. used SCIENCE to confirm that Deke is Fitzsimmons' grandkid. What a happy day for fans of their romance!
Unfortunately, Fitz and Simmons do seem doomed -- or perhaps cursed -- for tragedy in their future, and not just because the world could still end. We learned that Deke is Fitz and Simmons' grandson because he recognized a ring and an army official genetically linked him to them, not because Deke recognized them. He has never looked at either Fitz or Simmons like he knew them but couldn't quite place them, which could point toward them never meeting their grandson until they ran into him in the future. Deke didn't even recognize their names.
It's also worth noting that Deke doesn't have an accent, nor did he comment on either of their accents, which could point toward him never hearing a Scottish accent like Fitz's or hearing an English accent like Simmons' before meeting them. If that is the case, it's possible that Fitzsimmons didn't get to raise their child. After all, wouldn't a kid raised by a Scotsman and an Englishwoman have some kind of accent? And how did Simmons' ring end up in a pawn shop?
The good news is that Simmons will be alive for the foreseeable future given Deke's existence. She'll have to live through an entire pregnancy before she can be killed off, which hopefully won't happen at all. Fitz technically only needs to live long enough for Simmons to conceive a child, although fingers crossed that S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't going to let him live long enough to become a father just before being killed.
The big question now is if S.H.I.E.L.D. will tackle a Fitzsimmons pregnancy during the run of the show. The writers are currently working on the Season 5 finale in a way that it could work as a series finale, and a series finale ending on the reveal that Simmons is pregnant would be the perfect way to give those two crazy kids the good news of a baby on the way without actually writing a season around a pregnancy. Simmons did say in her vows that she was looking forward to building a family with Fitz! Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is an ensemble show, and giving Fitzsimmons a pregnancy to deal with wouldn't make the show entirely about the pregnancy. We shouldn't rule out Simmons discovering that she's pregnant by the end of Season 5, cancellation or not.
The 100th episode didn't reveal whether Fitz and Simmons have a son or a daughter, but my money is on daughter. If they have a daughter and she decides to take her husband's name after marrying him, it would explain why Deke didn't react to the names "Fitz" or "Simmons." He's even heard them referred to as "Fitzsimmons." If his mom doesn't have either of her parents' names, it would make sense that he didn't make the connection between her and Fitzsimmons. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait and see.
New episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. air on Fridays at 9 p.m. ET on ABC. For more viewing options, be sure to swing by our midseason TV premiere guide and our 2018 Netflix premiere schedule.
