I have so many thoughts on last night’s Agents of SHIELD that, as much as I wanted to keep to the regular scheme of this review series, I couldn’t. Not even a little bit.
So here’s the catch: I’m going to do a long-form thought that is spoiler-free, and then I’ll break things down into spoiler territory to get a bit more deeper into what happened in the finale. Is that fair?
Ok. Lets begin.
The One Big Thought: I Was Wrong. (Kind Of.)
You may be acutely aware, if you’re an avid reader of this site and column, that as time has gone on I’ve been very harsh on both this show and the general effort of Marvel’s massive media crossover plan. In fact, I a wrote 4000 word essay on it when Marvel simply announced that SHIELD would tie into the Winter Soldier, essentially degrading the entire endeavor due to the potential flaws of it.
But, man. I never thought I’d have to admit it here, but Hail Winter Soldier, because that move saved this show.
It was a move I was incredibly skeptical of, but by integrating Agents of SHIELD so firmly back into the Marvel Cinematic U thanks to the massive shake-ups brought on by Winter Soldier, the stalled car that was Season 1 was given a massive jumpstart. Suddenly things began to click and there was no room to meander; some of the less great plot lines were still there, but the story was put in overdrive, going forward at great speed and really allowing for those who had invested their time and energy into the show to be rewarded for doing so. This show, as it stands, would be nothing without the idea of integrating it into Winter Soldier.
But now that we’re given the finale, you can finally see the scope of things. Part of the episode certainly revolved around the idea of diagrams that we’re unable to see or comprehend, and that’s what a lot of Season 1 was. Now that we can understand a part of that diagram, it’s easier to look at the entire effort and justify some of its flaws — or, at the very least, get excited at what is to come. The MCU is certainly a large puzzle, and this show has proven why it is an integral part of that.
I’ve said it on Twitter, I’ve said it to the Multiversity gang, I’ve said it to friends I know, but I’ll say it here again: Agents oF SHIELD Season 1, in every way possible, reminded me of Arrow Season 1. I doubt I’m the only person that will say that, but I think it’s very true. Both of these shows began as comic adaptations to audiences that highly anticipated their arrival, and both almost immediately disappointed for different reasons. However, as noted by many, Arrow Season 1 very clearly learned from its initial mistakes, and even though it got a bit better by the end, it didn’t really hit its stride until Season 2, where it now kicks all of the ass on TV with comic characters and abs galore.
So with that in mind, I think it stands to reason that as “meh” as the first season of SHIELD was until Winter Soldier forced it to get its damn act together, Season 2 will be a lot better.
Now: despite that, I do stand by original assertions that I’ve been throwing out all season long. SHIELD taking 22 episodes to get good is a massive flaw that, for many fans, will always be the biggest fly in the ointment. I think that’s fair, as well; if the show turned you off, you don’t inherently have to listen to jokers like me who tell you that it gets better. I’ve given up on plenty of shows that I hear turn out quite well.
So as much as the showrunners promised that it would hit this high note, that it would be worth the wait, that platitude doesn’t make this overall disappointment of a first season inherently good. I think overall, Agents of SHIELD Season 1 is just that: disappointing. But I’m looking forward to rewatching it, to picking up on things I may have missed or didn’t really appreciate the first time around. I think the show needs to take into account all of the much-deserved criticism it received this season and make the next season that much better.
Continued belowI think Season 2 can be a nice, clean start for SHIELD to be the show both we and it wanted it to be in the first place. I have my fingers crossed for the future.
Ok. That’s it for the non-spoiler territory. Lets start breaking this down and go full-spoiler. You’ve been warned.
1. The Big Pay-Offs
Man. Man. There was so much in that episode that made waiting until the end of the season worthwhile, wasn’t there? I mean, so much: pretty much every scene with Raina, Fitz admitting his feelings for Simmons, Nick Fury – Rescue Ranger, May kicking the ever loving crap out of Ward, Coulson getting his flippin’ Avengers gun (“I know what this does.”) back!
This was Pay-Off City, Population: Us, with the welcome sign reading “You’re welcome,” and “FINALLY!” spray painted underneath.
It was a slog uphill, but as I said in my bigger thought up above, a lot of this was very worth the wait. SHIELD seeded a lot in its first season and it managed to turn things around in the eleventh hour for the betterment of the show. This is very much what I think everyone expected to see when the show was announced, and I for one am glad I stuck around. (Granted, I kind of had this weekly self-imposed obligation, but… well, shut up.)
Oh! And Patton Oswalt is back! In an episode full of surprises, getting Patton Oswalt back and as a prospective recurring character for Season 2 is easily the biggest surprise, and the best.
2. Inside Cybertek
One of the biggest Whedon tropes ever reared its head on last night’s episode at the top of the hour, and I’ll admit I laughed at the fact it got included at all.
Which trope is that? The one where we get an inside look at an evil organization, which ends up seeming rather innocuous and almost even harmlessly humorous in its day-to-day operations. You’ve seen it in Angel. You’ve seen it in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog. You’ve seen it in Cabin in the Woods. To lesser extents you’ve seen it in Dollhouse, Buffy and even Firefly. And now, surprise surprise, Cybertek gets its time to shine in that sun as well.
Certainly there are many Whedon tropes, and there are things that people will make reference to much more than this one. For better or for worse, Whedon shows actually tend to follow a certain formula. But I thought it cute that it got in before the hammer dropped on all this nefarious organization stuff.
3. “The Beginning of the End,” or: On The Future Benefits of Synergy
So, this episode was titled “The Beginning of the End,” even going so far as to include the following dialogue in the episode:
“This is… the beginning.”
“The beginning of what, John?”
“The end!”
Words literally can not express how much I hate when that line shows up, so I’ll stop talking about it now.
What I do want to note instead, however, is that SHIELD has a proposed 2-season plan. Given that the episode title teases that this is actually the beginning of a downfall despite the optimism inherent in the ending (we beat the bad guy! SHIELD is back!), it does seem worthwhile to note that a 2-season plan would take this show pretty much to the the premiere of Avengers 2: Age of Ultron. Season 2 begins in the fall, will presumably end around this time next year, and hey, that’s just in time for Age of Ultron in May of 2015.
Of course, in between the two we’ll have Guardians of the Galaxy on August 1st and the proper introduction of the Kree. If all the theorizing I’ve done about the Kree and their relation to the TAHITI project is accurate, then I imagine we’ll certainly see the ramifications of that quite soon after that film when SHIELD Season 2 premieres a month later in September.
If the synergy works half as good as the Winter Soldier synergy did, then fuck it: bring on ALL the synergy, Marvel. Let’s do it.
So, in a nutshell: Avengers -> SHIELD S1 P1 -> Winter Soldier -> SHIELD S1 P2 -> GOTG -> SHIELD S2 -> Age of Ultron. Talk about a road map. I’m sure Agent Carter will work its way in there somewhere as well.
Continued below4. Grade-A Bullshit Science
Before I get too lost in appreciation of the show, I do have to admit: Ward and Simmons’ plan to escape from their underwater prison was easily the least believable thing in the show — and that includes a man who is part computer and all killing machine getting set loose to do whatever he wants scot-free. I love the dynamic of Fitz and Simmons and was obviously not looking forward to the idea of losing either of them, but it sure did feel like the writers backed themselves into a corner and then just fibbed their best way out.
Which I can’t be too hard on, I suppose. That’s sci-fi TV in a nutshell.
That criticism aside, I did love Fitz’s admission to Simmons in the end. Fitz has become one of the most endearing characters of the show, and while their relationship was ostensibly born out of a place of Quirky For Quirkiness Sake, it was nice to see an actual selfless character bloom out of that situation. If nothing else, Ward clearly did teach Fitz how to be a selfless hero, and as much as that relationship is destroyed it’s actually quite great to see Fitz take the best out of that in the end.
5. Garrett in Carcosa
So, uh, is it just me or is Bill Paxton a True Detective fan? The show writers clearly are, because all of Garrett’s rhetorical mumbo jumbo mutterings this season would’ve made just as much sense coming out of the mouth of Matthew McConaughey.
Seeing Garrett so clearly effected in a way that Coulson and Skye weren’t (for now, obviously) was a bit puzzling. I suppose part of this is based on the fact that the formula he took was a derivative that Raina gave him, which could actually even be interpreted to mean that Raina set him up for whomever she left to go see at the end. But Garrett being so crazy did offer an interesting dynamic for him to essentially unlock his Big Bad Final Form for Season 1.
I will be very curious to see what people get out of the diagram that Garrett drew on the glass, though, and the one that Coulson began to create in the stinger. It’s clear that the intent of that scene was showing the effect that this formula is having on Coulson, but I’d be curious to know if there is any solvable purpose to it. It was very clearly an electronic diagram of some kind, and it is presumably alien due to the Kree body that this stuff was siphoned out of… but what is it a diagram for?
Perhaps we’ll see next season. Or perhaps we’ll see in Guardians of the Galaxy or Age of Ultron. I expect we will see it again soon, though.
6. The End of the Beginning
So, after all is said and done, I’d say that the finale of the season was pretty satisfying, right? However, I think it all comes down to the final moments with Garrett. The clearly set-up “boss fight” scenario (“A tag team wrestling match with four dead guys!”) certainly had its moments, although there were some definite budgetary restraints there that kept it from turning into a proper film-sized punchfest. We did get a brief Deathlok vs. Deathlok moment, though, and I think giving Mike Peterson redemption was a smart move in tying this all back to the pilot episode and his story in that.
That he was able to run away at the end is a bit hit or miss, but, well, let him try to be a hero for a while.
Oh! And the creation of Garrett’s Deathlok 2.0 (“This is why you cut off the head!”, which was literally this close to him saying “That wasn’t even my final form!”) immediately being snuffed out by Coulson (“Hey guys! I knew we left this behind!”) was amazingly well done. Easily the most pure Whedon-style moment of misdirection on the show in terms of quickly pulling the rug out, and I’ll admit that I laughed for a good while after that.
It’s still pretty funny, even.
7. Who Do You Trust?
Continued belowWe’ve gone this far and I still haven’t really talked about Nick Fury’s prominent role in this episode. That’s because Nick Fury appearing on the show essentially acted as the final redeeming element of the first season: it made the biggest flaw of the first half work as a thematic aspect to the whole season.
Winter Soldier drilled this in a lot, but Fury has obvious trust issues. It comes from being a spy and playing the world’s most dangerous game, but Fury is not a man who will easily friend you on Facebook, if you catch my drift. However, Fury’s final dialogue with Coulson before leaving made the underlying thematic element of SHIELD abundant: trust is what the whole show was about in the first place.
One of the earliest criticisms of SHIELD is that it lacked trust in every aspect. It dealt with a spy agency, so there was no trust there; it starred a team that barely worked together and constantly lied to one another, again removing trust from the equation. The only trust that the show seemed to have was that its viewing audience would stay around this long, but that trust isn’t something that was necessarily reciprocated.
Where they finally got it right in a justifiable way was when Coulson forced Fury into admitting that he actively sacrificed Coulson in order to form the Avengers, which in turn makes Coulson an Avenger. That was kind of a heartbreaking moment, but one that was very quickly rationalized in a way that you could tell fits towards who Coulson is and what he believes in. Coulson was the star of this show, someone who everything very firmly centered around, and Fury finally admitting some truth to him was very important — both towards addressing a major issue about the season, but also about essentially setting the stage for the next.
So all your theories about Coulson’s “staged” death in Avengers were correct, and we’re lucky that they were apparently. Whether this was actually planned or just saving face when they realized the criticism is up for debate I suppose.
This, to me, is where everything clicked. For pure entertainment value I think this episode had a lot to enjoy, and it fit well into Marvel’s Cinematic Universe in a way that I’m sure they’ll wink and nudge us with now, snidely remarking, “Told ya.” But it wasn’t until Fury and Coulson talked about what happened that this really felt like it mattered, and that it really felt like SHIELD mattered.
Welcome back to our collective good graces, SHIELD. It was a rough road, but you earned us back.
NOW PLEASE DO NOT BLOW IT IN SEASON 2.
8. Phil Coulson, Director of SHIELD
Answering one of the biggest questions left by Winter Soldier (there’s that synergy again!), it looks like SHIELD is going to continue on with Phil Coulson as the director. Whether he is capable for the job is up for debate, certainly. I’d actually kind of lean towards the idea that he isn’t, because if his leadership of this team is anything to go by then I don’t think he’s a good fit for the world’s biggest spy agency.
Also, everyone still thinks he’s dead.
But, I relent. Fury made it clear that if anyone is the right man to form SHIELD in a pure format, it would be Coulson. There’s value in that. Coulson was referred to as the heart of the Marvel Universe before this show, and he was very unsubtly referred to as the heart again in this episode. SHIELD is something I imagine will always be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so it makes sense to make sure that it has a foundation to be reformed.
I guess this is also the one element you “need” to know for future installments of the films, right? Hmm. That might be annoying somewhere down the road if you didn’t watch the show. Maybe I’m being too friendly to the whole synergy/continuity thing…
9. Next Season, on Agents of SHIELD
Despite the stinger of this episode starring Coulson and the diagram, I think it’s clear what the next season of SHIELD is going to revolve around, at least partially: Skye.
Continued belowLast week Raina told Ward a story about Skye that involved monsters destroying a town in search of a baby that was ostensibly Skye. This week, not only did she bring back the mention of monsters, but we briefly saw Skye’s father — or, well, the back of him anyway. That was a him, right?
It was a weird little moment, but obviously a major tease. The bloody hand, the acknowledgement of a hidden player, Raina revealing how much more involved with everything she is. If anything, this really should’ve been the stinger, as it is pure Season 2 Tease-Central.
So. Who is Skye? Why hasn’t the GH had an effect on her? And who is in that chair?
10. The Remainder
In addition to that question about Skye, there are quite a few leftover questions left over on SHIELD. What will Raina become? What does TAHITI stand for? What happened to the disembodied Graviton? And what about the rest of the supervillains from the massive breakout, and Blizzard? What is the diagram? How is Fitz doing? And how will Ward inevitably be called upon to help the heroes next season, despite being a villain?
I have very high hopes for Season 2. Hopefully when it (and this review column) returns, we’ll have a lot more exciting things to talk about.
Let us know your thoughts of the finale in the comments below.
