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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Season 5) – ‘Fun and Games’

by hutchm
written by hutchm

This week’s episode gets off to an unexpected start, but we’ve grown to expect that in this space-set season, haven’t we? This time the digression is in service of introducing a new character, Flint (Coy Stewart). We meet Flint as a lowly scavenger trying to survive in the space station housing the remnants of humanity, but he’s about to become something much more.

He’s not the only one going through changes. Upon arrival at the space station, Fitz is informed by Enoch that he’s now “Boshtok,” a space marauder of unlimited wealth and unapproachable ferocity. Those Han Solo references last week weren’t a joke; Fitz is now fully in hero mode. He swaggers enough to impress even Kasius, but Fitz really only has eyes for one person in the room. Enoch offers to introduce him to Simmons, but Fitz has no time for that. Sneaking up to Simmons from behind, he whispers a heartfelt speech that should make any FitzSimmons shipper faint. I mean, just look — even though the universe separated them once again, across space and time this time, he still managed to find his way back to her. “The universe can’t stop us,” he says. And then, to top it all off, in a moment shippers have likely been waiting for years, Fitz even proposes to her…

…but, unfortunately, he didn’t know about Kasius’ implants that prevent his servants from hearing anything other than the voice of his master. So let’s hold off on the wedding bells for now.

In the meantime, it’s time for Flint to face his destiny. Along with a gaggle of other humans, Flint is assembled for exposure to the crystals. The mist comes up from vents beneath them, but when the mist clears, Flint is gone. One good thing about this season is that the villains are not dumb. The Kree knows Flint’s newfound Inhuman powers aren’t at work here, but isn’t sure what the actual answer is.

It is, of course, Yo-Yo…

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Agents of Shield

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Season 5) – ‘Rewind’

by hutchm
written by hutchm

True to its name, “Rewind” tracks back the story a good 74 years to pick up last season’s cliffhanger in the moments after everyone vanishes from the diner. Except for Fitz. Just a few moments after the team is grabbed, a military unit shows up and arrests S.H.I.E.L.D.’s lone remaining agent. He spends six months trying to figure out what’s happened, while also processing his PTSD in the wake of his Framework experience. Thankfully the action ramps up when Lance Hunter comes out of the cold to help bust him out (of course, the two send coded messages through letters to the editor while complaining about soccer teams).

It’s an interesting direction to take the story, covering such an extended amount of time so quickly as Fitz stews in a 10×10 jail cell with nothing but books and soccer to keep him (at least a little) sane. Sending the team through time presented an interesting opportunity to approach Fitz’s mission to save them, and they absolutely go big with the ideas. Fitz uses a cryochamber to travel through time the “long way” to reach them while waiting on Enoch’s ship safely hidden away from Earth. He also hides a box of supplies within the Lighthouse (the site that will eventually be the last remaining human base on the broken planet), complete with a hand upgrade for Coulson.

For the nerdiest among us, it also begs the question of time paradoxes and alternate universes, since Fitz doesn’t technically disappear through time. He jumps in a cryochamber and spends more than 70 years floating on his own, with no real escape plan to return to the present. It’s bold, to say the least. So did life go on without the team all that time? Did an alternate future Fitz eventually return to present-day Earth while the “younger” version of himself is still frozen waiting to fix the future? Or are we simply going to create a completely different reality by whatever the team does (or doesn’t do) to possibly prevent this cataclysm? So many questions.

As for the personal stakes: Despite the time, it’s clear Fitz is still grappling with the darkness inside him. We see him put a gun to Enoch’s head with no hesitation while pushing him for information, to the point it even takes Hunter by surprise. He might’ve spent 72 years on ice, but the version of Fitz that wakes up in 2091 (thanks to Enoch we finally have a year for that future date) is still damaged and reeling. He talks about his relationship with Simmons as if they’re cursed to be torn apart by fate, and at this point, it’s hard to argue. It’s become a trope unto itself in this show, so when that reunion does happen, it better be worth the wait.

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Agents of Shield

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Season 5) – ‘A Life Earned’

by hutchm
written by hutchm

Daisy seems rather indifferent to the fact that she’s been captured by Kasius — much less that he also seems to be drawing a significant amount of blood from her. Though he still talks plainly, Kasius is clearly somewhat threatened by Daisy’s presence. Not just because she’s the so-called “Destroyer of Worlds,” but also because the prophecy foretold that multiple S.H.I.E.L.D. agents would return from the past to overthrow his order. He’s already connected that Simmons and Daisy must have come together, since neither have Metrics, but now he needs to know if there are more out there he should be looking for. After paying Deke his literal piece of silver for betraying Daisy, Kasius instructs him to find other time-travelers.

In the meantime, Kasius loops Daisy into his main business of training and then selling powerful Inhumans. Here Daisy meets a telepath, capable of hearing other people’s thoughts whenever his earpiece implant is turned off. That makes him capable of predicting and countering his opponents’ moves, which Daisy doesn’t think is necessarily fair. But she and the other SHIELD agents are still getting used to the alien morality of the station. As the telepath explains, he doesn’t mind being sold off, because his family will be compensated, giving them a better chance at survival. And here, survival is everything.

I must say, I greatly enjoy the constant tension in this season’s future setting. A particularly thrilling sequence comes when Kasius decides to interrogate Daisy and Simmons about how they got here; if their stories don’t match, then he’ll know they’re lying about being the only ones from the past. Daisy says that after Fitz killed their teammate Jeffrey Mace, she took Simmons to a diner to talk about their feelings, whereupon they were seized, knocked out, and woke up here. At first it seems impossible that the stories will match, since Kasius’ implant prevents Simmons from hearing well. But it turns out the telepath doesn’t just “hear” thoughts, he can also transmit them, allowing Simmons and Daisy to sync up their details. For now they’ve evaded suspicion, but being so close to Kasius means the telepath has picked up on his thoughts as well … and they seem to indicate a plan to destroy the station at some point in the near future, rendering his selfless sacrifice moot. So Daisy decides it’s time to shake up the rules a bit around here. And the rest i think you need to watch and see for yourself…

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Agents of Shield

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Season 5) – ‘A Life Spent’

by hutchm
written by hutchm

So here we are, one week on from that game-changing season premiere. Shortly after finally escaping the Framework, the agents were kidnapped and sent into space, where they soon learned they were also in the future. This was, of course, a dark dystopian future (is there any other kind these days?) where Daisy had somehow destroyed the Earth, leaving the surviving humans to the mercy of alien Kree overlords, who ruled them within a hierarchical system on a space station in the destroyed planet’s orbit.

This episode continued to expand the mythology of this new setting. Simmons, for example, soon learned there are still Inhumans in this future setting. As one of Kasius’ “chosen” human courtiers, she watches Kasius meet with an off-world ambassador, and soon fly into a rage. The cause of his anger is a young Inhuman girl named Abby. Abby has similar powers to the Vision, in that she can manipulate her own molecular density — meaning she can turn either super-hard or so intangible she can phase through solid objects. However, Abby’s having trouble controlling these powers. Kasius’ hard authoritarian training regimen doesn’t seem to be working. Can’t imagine why!

But Simmons is here now, and she has experience with both people and Inhumans. She slowly coaches Abby toward controlling her powers but doesn’t get as much time as she’d like. When another royal guest arrives, Kasius takes Abby away and pits this young girl in a gladiatorial match against the alien woman’s chosen champion — a tall, muscular, dangerous-looking gladiator. For a few disturbing minutes, this muscle-bound warrior throws Abby all around the ring, but eventually, the girl catches Simmons’ eye. After that, Abby uses both aspects of her powers in quick succession. She gets super-dense, breaking her opponent’s arm when he tries to punch her again. Then she reaches out (as if to say “please”) and phases through his chest, killing him.

So on the plus side, Abby pleased Kasius and didn’t die a horrible violent death. On the other hand, she proved her powers so much that the alien woman bought her. All Simmons really accomplished was fetching Abby a higher price. Man, this setting is going to be depressing.

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Agents of Shield

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Season 5) – Orientation (parts 1 & 2)

by hutchm
written by hutchm

After a successful fourth season, the heroes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. return once again for their fifth season, this time promising a stark departure from the antics of the hellfire cyclist Ghost Rider and the demented artificial intelligence Aida. In the last season, the team dealt with their own inner demons in the “Matrix-like” program that was the Framework. After returning to the real world, shaken yet triumphant, Coulson and the gang realized they may be in some deep trouble with the US Government, and spent their remaining minutes together before, presumably, being captured by enjoying a meal at an old-timey diner. When Season 4 ended, Coulson found himself waking up in a tiny room with a vantage point of outer space, promising the agents are living in some “extraterrestrial” times. With all that being said, do the first two episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fifth season manage to hit the heights of Season 4?

“Orientation” begins happily enough with one of the captors of the team going for a swim, taking a shower next to his human suit, and getting dressed.

Wait, what was that middle part again?

Oh right, the suited man is not all that he seems, as he and a tactical military team capture the agents and place them in front of a brand new obelisk. The original stone structure we saw in previous seasons had teleported Jemma Simmons to another world where she needed to fight for her life against alien threats. This obelisk is now more white than dark, sending the Agents to a location that is still in space, though this has an entirely different twist.

We get a fantastic shot of a puzzled Coulson walking through a time-frozen spaceship where most of its passengers are being sucked out of an airlock. When time rights itself, Coulson hangs on for dear life, saving himself from an icy intergalactic tomb but uh oh, xenomorph! That’s right, what would a good space odyssey be without a killer alien aboard the ship as well? Coulson looks for answers from a rambling tenant of the ship, Virgil, only for him to be clocked unconscious by an angry Mack.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. made a vast departure during its fourth season from the norm, as its earlier installments tended to mostly focus on Inhumans and Hydra. With Season 5, they have once again decided to take a bold step in a different direction, with the team not only being lost in space but the added caveat of being…wait for it….trapped in the future!

That’s right, as the team tries to figure out exactly what is going on, Kree aliens overrun the space station, and Daisy takes out the stampeding xenomorph, they begin to realize that this may be one of the hairiest situations they’ve ever found themselves in. The setting is certainly a fresh one, with Coulson and company being trapped so far from home, and it’s interesting to think of the possible implications of where they could go with this. Maybe we see descendants of the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy come into play? Being able to be outside of the continuity of the current MCU certainly sounds like a positive direction for the series to move in.

The newest and most notable character to the team is the fast-talking, witty Deke, who is clearly modeled on Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy, face mask and all. For now, he — along with the remaining members of humanity — try to create a life for themselves while under the boot of the Kree Empire on the ship.

The daily aspects of their lives, which the Agents now find themselves wrapped up in, are laid out quickly, though it is a tad dreary. The environments themselves, along with the characters and the story structure, lean more significantly on something closer to Star Trek than anything we’ve seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far. While this is all certainly interesting, it doesn’t have the same bite to it that seeing Ghost Rider in the Season 4 premiere did. That could be a matter of personal taste, but the Kree are a race that we’ve explored quite thoroughly in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. landscape, so I’m hoping that we see some more “out there” settings and characters as the season moves forward.

Aside from the setting, the characters we’ve grown to know and love over these past few years still don’t skip a beat. Mack continues to supply more than enough one-liners to give audiences a recurring chuckle, Agent May continues to kick ass even when she is teleported into a pipe on the spaceship (which looked exceptionally painful), and Daisy continues to be the Inhuman secret weapon of the team.

It’s also great to see that Yo-Yo has been bumped up to the status of series regular, as she’s certainly earned the title. Much like last season, the cast chemistry is firing on all cylinders, and while they may have a bump in the road when it comes to some of the new supporting characters, the core members of the team are still a delight to watch. Daisy also manages to give us a glimpse of tragedy as she realizes that Earth is destroyed in the future by none other than herself! It should make for a pretty fun time seeing how the rest of the characters react to that.

At the end of the day, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. manages to make a welcome and interesting return here, though not one that reaches the heights of its last season yet.

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Agents of Shield

Uprising – Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D (S4E3)

by hutchm
written by hutchm

On the night of its season premiere, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. scored 3.44 million viewers overall, up from it season three finale that raked in just 3.03 million. However, the second episode the season didn’t fare as well, with a score of just 2.95 million viewers. That said, this time last year ABC was struggling to make anything happen at 10 p.m. on Tuesday, with Wicked City dipping all the way to 1.69 million viewers in episode three before being cancelled.

Moving S.H.I.E.L.D. to 10 p.m. may have been a form of getting it out of the way, but it can’t be denied that, so far, it’s giving ABC a boost in what has been a very troubled time slot recently.On Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4 Episode 3, titled “Uprising,” a series of blackouts caused by EMPs made cities around the world vulnerable to vigilantes trying to hunt down Inhumans.  The downside to this was that all of the awesome fight sequences in this episode took place in the dark.  However, the upside was that one of the blackouts took place in Miami, where Elena “Yo-Yo” Rodriguez was attending a bachelorette party. And I am always in favor of more scenes with Yo-Yo.

But not many people want anything to do with Inhumans, especially with the blackout. One of the most powerful moments of this new episode involves Yo Yo. She’s at a bachelorette party when the blackout hits and all of a sudden, a group of Watchdogs arrive to weed out any Inhuman presence. Soon, Yo Yo must use her powers to save an amateur magician believed to be an Inhuman and her friends turn on her faster than the GOP turned on Trump.

The first two episodes of the season were Ghost Rider-heavy, but they kind of had to be. With the third episode, Ghost Rider, or more accurately Robbie Reyes, became a part of the show rather than being the show. In fact, this week, Reyes doesn’t even transform into his demonic alter ego, instead, we get to know the man behind the leather and chains (that didn’t sound like I wanted it to sound).

The whole episode focuses on an EMP-caused blackout in Los Angeles. It seems that the blackout is caused by a group of rogue Inhumans fighting the Sokovia accords. So it looks like we have a sort of Brotherhood of Evil Inhumans up in here… but not so fast. When the blackout hits, Reyes’ brother is in a wheelchair and on a subway in a bad part of town, so Daisy and Reyes race to his rescue.

My initial feelings of wariness about Jeffrey are already starting to wear off. He might be a shiny stuffed suit, but I don’t think he’s an evil one. (Though, as someone who works in public relations – Jeffrey’s favorite buzzword – I may be more sympathetic to his cause than I should be!)  Jeffrey has different priorities than Coulson and the rest of the team. This is guaranteed to keep causing friction throughout the season, but I don’t see him as a full-out villain – at least, not yet.

Instead, in this episode we got a good look at another villain – Senator Rota Nadeer, the anti-Inhuman talking head featured in numerous television broadcasts surrounding the blackouts. Played by Parminder Nagra, a thin layer of ice coats every hateful word that comes out of her mouth.  It’s worth noting (though in an ideal world, it wouldn’t be) that the addition of Nagra adds another actress of color to one of the most diverse casts on television. It’s also a bit of a twist to see a person of color playing a character persecuting others for being different.  Senator Nadeer is clearly covering up some secrets of her own, as we saw in the last scene of this episode, and I can’t wait to discover more about what drives her actions.

I did enjoy the moment when Radcliffe addressed the myth of humans only using ten percent of their brains as just that: a myth. It is used as a crutch in so much science-fiction, from Lucy to Limitless and beyond, so it was refreshing to see a show like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. debunk it. 

For too long, S.H.I.E.L.D. and the rest of Marvel Television has been forced to be the reactor to the events seen in Iron Man, Captain America, The Avengers and more. Never do the films deal with the repercussions of what’s happening on the shows, even when S.H.I.E.L.D.unleashed the Inhumans onto the world at the end of season two. However, there’s hope the end of this week’s episode is going to change that.  It’s funny, Agents Of SHIELD always felt like an addition to the MCU, not an essential cog, but somewhere, perhaps this week, the agents we have been thrilling to these past three seasons have become truly likable heroes.

For the first time since Captain America: The Winter Soldier, S.H.I.E.L.D. is being recognized as an official organization. There’s no way for this not to have major implications within the MCU (though it’s clear Coulson wasn’t left in charge so that when the announcement was made, the secret of him being alive would still be just that to The Avengers). Even if it’s just Tony Stark acknowledging its existence in the next Spider-Man movie, the world at large can’t let this change in mythology sit unacknowledged.  Yet something tells me the Ghost Rider/Momentum Labs storyline won’t gain any…well, momentum, until after Doctor Strange is released. It’s one of those things that makes you curse the interconnectedness (what little of it there is) of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

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