Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. VII: The Heart Beats On

[Palanan]

So, after a longer-than-usual wait, Season 6 premieres on May 10. A little sooner than the July date first reported last summer, but still after Endgame.

I’m not overly enthused, but I’ll watch and see. Mainly for Fitz and Gemma...best geek couple in the MCU.

(Probably the only such, but they deserve a superlative.)

[Kitten Champion]

I'm genuinely curious as to what they intended to do with another season. Conceptually, I mean.

I can easily see why AoS lasted as long as it did - as it's easy content to port to the Disney streaming service they've been working towards for a while now - but story-wise it found a decent place to end and I don't think there'd be a huge Firefly-esque outcry had ABC not renewed it. It's not like it's the CW where shows will keep marching forward like zombies even with steadily declining ratings, ABC's pretty swift to the chopping block if anything in my experience.

So, I'd like to see "why?" answered with something beyond "because".

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Kitten Champion
I'm genuinely curious as to what they intended to do with another season.

Or two, since it’s also been renewed for Season 7.

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And based on the cast list, it doesn't look like Coulson will be in Season 7, even though it looks like he'll be in Season 6...although maybe not for long.

[Kitten Champion]

Or two, since it’s also been renewed for Season 7.

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And based on the cast list, it doesn't look like Coulson will be in Season 7, even though it looks like he'll be in Season 6...although maybe not for long.

If Wikipedia is correct - and it's never steered me wrong before - it seems likely that they artificially divided season 6 in half for reasons relating to the actors' contract negotiations.

Which, well, AoS seasons usually divide near the middle. It was one of the issues with retaining their viewership since the first season where dropping off for months because of the winter holidays and then Olympics didn't do them any favours. They cut Peggy Carter into that time slot for a while to keep things fresh, which I appreciated at the time.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Yeah. I'd much rather have a new season of Agent Carter at this point than another of AoS. In part because I prefer Hayley Atwell to Clark Gregg.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Kitten Champion
...it seems likely that they artificially divided season 6 in half for reasons relating to the actors' contract negotiations.

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Sounds like a long goodbye for Coulson, then, ending at the mid-season break.

[Aotrs Commander]

And still no frickin' clue when it airs in the UK. Which probably means that, once again, those of us this side of the pond don't get to get involved in the discussion until long afterwards.

*sigh*

[Androgeus]

And still no frickin' clue when it airs in the UK. Which probably means that, once again, those of us this side of the pond don't get to get involved in the discussion until long afterwards.

*sigh*

Only if you stay legal

[Aotrs Commander]

Only if you stay legal

Can't watch it with Mum if it's not on the telly.

[Dilvish]

If Coulson is gone for the final episodes (last half-season?), then I would like a scene near the end of the last episode of Coulson standing over his own gravestone, something like that.

My other idea for a final scene comes from Endgame.

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Golden portals open up in front of the team; Dr. Strange's call to battle.

[Joran]

If Coulson is gone for the final episodes (last half-season?), then I would like a scene near the end of the last episode of Coulson standing over his own gravestone, something like that.

My other idea for a final scene comes from Endgame.

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Golden portals open up in front of the team; Dr. Strange's call to battle.

Judging by the Spider-Man: Far From Home Trailer, the events of Endgame ended in a place for the Agents of SHIELD to have work to do.

Spoiler: Endgame/Spider-Man stuff

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Mysterio is apparently from an alternate dimension and the snap tore a hole in the multiverse. So... that has to have repercussions.

Also, it'd be interesting to see who was snapped and who was not and what they did in that intervening 5 years.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Joran
...the events of Endgame ended in a place for the Agents of SHIELD to have work to do.

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Is Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. picking up after Endgame? Five years seems like a long time for Phil Coulson to be just hanging on.

[JadedDM]

I actually heard somewhere...

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That the new season will take place 1 year after the Snap.

But I haven't found anything to reliably back that up.

[Androgeus]

I actually heard somewhere...

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That the new season will take place 1 year after the Snap.

But I haven't found anything to reliably back that up.

Here’s a source.

[Hopeless]

I'm not sure whether I should be posting this as it could be complete bull, but...

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There's some theories Mysterio is actually an alternate future version of Peter Parker!

Now back to Agents of SHIELD!

[Palanan]

Well, that was…mixed.

Spoiler: Do We Do This Now?

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A lot has changed if S.H.I.E.L.D. is indulging in torture to get answers. Yes, Gemma is hardcore about finding Fitz, but this started things off on a bad note for me.

Also, I had been slightly missing Skye, but that’s cured.

Spoiler: Zephyrson Starship

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So apparently the Zephyr is now a jump-capable starship that’s just bouncing around the galaxy. For me that’s kind of a stretch. It’s one thing to jury-rig the ship to fly around the remnants of the quaked-apart future Earth; quite another to be Star Trekkin’ all over as if the ship was purpose-built for an extended interstellar mission.

That really shreds the suspension of disbelief for me, especially when Pilot Guy is pulling atmospheric flight moves in planetary orbit.

(And alien missiles can’t fly faster than that? Seriously?)

Spoiler: Quest for Fitz

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Well, at least they’re not making it too easy to find Fitz.

Are the bloodstains on the capsule window something that we’ve seen before? They made a point of showing us the bloodstains, twice, but Gemma didn’t seem to pay any attention to them. I would’ve thought she’d at least check for Fitz’s DNA.

Spoiler: No, No, No, No, No.

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NOT THE EVIL TWIN!!!! NOT EVIL TWIN COULSON!!!!

Gah. Evil Twin Mad Max Coulson. I thought it couldn’t get worse than last season, but here they are, threatening to go lower.

Sooner or later most shows fall into the Evil Twin trap. For me it’s the tritest possible cliche. From Knight Rider to ST:TNG, it’s fun for the actors but a sign that the writers are running on fumes for ideas.

And beyond the tacky, utterly cliche aspect of it…dammit, this isn’t what I wanted. I wanted a few last moments with Coulson, meaning the real Coulson, to really feel the impact of his passing. Maybe we’ll get a flashback or something, but for now it’s a disappointment.

I know the episode is supposed to be setup, but most of it was a jumbled plate of meh. Other than a vague, distant interest in what Mad Maxson is up to, I haven't been drawn in.

.

[russdm]

Well, that was…mixed.

Yeah, probably is

Spoiler: Do We Do This Now?

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A lot has changed if S.H.I.E.L.D. is indulging in torture to get answers. Yes, Gemma is hardcore about finding Fitz, but this started things off on a bad note for me.

Also, I had been slightly missing Skye, but that’s cured.

Didn't Shield do that already? I mean it was totally Hydra's MO and we know that Hydra had infiltrated Shield so long, why wouldn't it just have a standard method to use? I mean, maybe not by Coulson, but it did have Shield=Students scouted at school + Hydra's moles scouting the students + (Shield not properly monitoring of its captured Hydra personal).

Spoiler: Zephyrson Starship

Show

So apparently the Zephyr is now a jump-capable starship that’s just bouncing around the galaxy. For me that’s kind of a stretch. It’s one thing to jury-rig the ship to fly around the remnants of the quaked-apart future Earth; quite another to be Star Trekkin’ all over as if the ship was purpose-built for an extended interstellar mission.

That really shreds the suspension of disbelief for me, especially when Pilot Guy is pulling atmospheric flight moves in planetary orbit.

(And alien missiles can’t fly faster than that? Seriously?)

I thought Fitz had been brought by Enoch to the ends of the Solar System, like out by Pluto or the Oort Cloud, then came back to Earth to help in the rescue. Maybe something happened with the Ship that Tony Stark was in at the end of Infinity War, start of Endgame?

Spoiler: Quest for Fitz

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Well, at least they’re not making it too easy to find Fitz.

Are the bloodstains on the capsule window something that we’ve seen before? They made a point of showing us the bloodstains, twice, but Gemma didn’t seem to pay any attention to them. I would’ve thought she’d at least check for Fitz’s DNA.

I don't know, but maybe they will explain that later?

Spoiler: No, No, No, No, No.

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NOT THE EVIL TWIN!!!! NOT EVIL TWIN COULSON!!!!

Gah. Evil Twin Mad Max Coulson. I thought it couldn’t get worse than last season, but here they are, threatening to go lower.

Sooner or later most shows fall into the Evil Twin trap. For me it’s the tritest possible cliche. From Knight Rider to ST:TNG, it’s fun for the actors but a sign that the writers are running on fumes for ideas.

And beyond the tacky, utterly cliche aspect of it…dammit, this isn’t what I wanted. I wanted a few last moments with Coulson, meaning the real Coulson, to really feel the impact of his passing. Maybe we’ll get a flashback or something, but for now it’s a disappointment.

I know the episode is supposed to be setup, but most of it was a jumbled plate of meh. Other than a vague, distant interest in what Mad Maxson is up to, I haven't been drawn in.

Maybe they can do a good job of explaining it? Like later? Didn't they still have Coulson, like alive, but somewhere at the end of the last season? I thought Coulson had quit Shield.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by russdm
Didn't they still have Coulson, like alive, but somewhere at the end of the last season? I thought Coulson had quit Shield.

As I recall, at the end of last season Coulson stepped out of the Zephyr onto the sands of Tahiti, where he was expected to have only a few days or weeks remaining. That's where they left it last year.

Spoiler: And Then...

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I was expecting the Coulson in Mac's office to be a holo, so I'd resigned myself to having holo-Coulson moments for the next few episodes. Mad Max Coulson, aka Maxson, was unexpected, but not a good kind of surprise.

Spoiler: Doing Lines

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And now we're dropping ley lines into the mix.

Thing is, there are at least three different concepts of ley lines circulating in today's culture. The most common one is the idea that certain monuments are constructed on "lines of power," which are really artifacts of selective reasoning. There's a study showing you can replicate this kind of ley line with the distribution of phone booths in London. This kind of ley line was mentioned briefly in Thor: Dark World, although it didn't really help anything.

Then there are all the different kinds of ley lines in fantasy and science fiction, which tend to involve hidden conduits of energy or magical power, and which generally follow their own logic rather than being tied to human sites and structures. This seems to be the kind of ley line referenced in last night's episode, especially since the jumpers (for want of a better name) seemed to be really annoyed that there were structures on their crossing points.

The third ley-line concept mainly follows the standard fantasy approach, except in the context of RPGs and with game mechanics attached. These were referenced in 3.5 Forgotten Realms material, and developed more in Pathfinder and some third-party material, notably Deep Magic by Kobold Press.

So we have the fantasy ley-line concept stirred into our galaxy-spanning, time-looping, alien-fighting, LMD-busting secret spy agency. I'm...not sure how this season is gonna go.

.

[The New Bruceski]

Agents of Shield: Fury Road

[JadedDM]

Spoiler: Zephyrson Starship

Show

So apparently the Zephyr is now a jump-capable starship that’s just bouncing around the galaxy. For me that’s kind of a stretch. It’s one thing to jury-rig the ship to fly around the remnants of the quaked-apart future Earth; quite another to be Star Trekkin’ all over as if the ship was purpose-built for an extended interstellar mission.

That really shreds the suspension of disbelief for me, especially when Pilot Guy is pulling atmospheric flight moves in planetary orbit.

(And alien missiles can’t fly faster than that? Seriously?)

Spoiler

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Apparently they rigged that instant teleport device that General Hale got from the Confederacy to the ship, which is what lets it jump like that. You can see Piper load something into it just before Simmons activates the jump.

[Joran]

In case people are wondering, there's no Avengers Endgame spoilers. In fact, no mentions about the Snap at all.

[The Glyphstone]

They apparently did some serious time-travel future-modification muckery in S5, maybe that butterflied the Snap somehow?

[Palanan]

Yeah, I'm wondering if they didn't time-loop themselves into a separate branch where the Snap never happened at all.

[Dilvish]

This article says that the current season of AoS is set before the Snap at the end of Infinity War. So maybe season 7 could be post-Snap? It is confusing.

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/05...-endgame-after

[Kitten Champion]

Which is a shame. You have a five-year time period in this universe that's full of chaos and potential drama - one that's unlikely to be explored overmuch in the subsequent movies - it seems like a gift wrapped with a shiny bow for a quasi-fan fiction-type program like Agents of SHIELD to have something to work with without worrying about continuity much.

Still, I do understand that synchronizing the show with the movies would be a headache in terms of scheduling and production - outside of the fact that AoS is pretty irrelevant to Marvel Studios - and have largely come to accept that AoS should probably just focus on writing its own story that loosely slots into a similar reality as the movies than trying to fit together into something vaguely coherent like the comics mostly try to do.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Kitten Champion
…synchronizing the show with the movies would be a headache in terms of scheduling and production….

True enough, but they managed to align Season 2 precisely with the release of Winter Soldier, to the point that if you didn’t see the movie on opening weekend you were hit with major spoilers the following Tuesday night.

But given that it wasn’t at all certain that AoS would be renewed for this current season, it was probably much easier for them to follow their own direction in terms of storyline, especially in the rather cheesy version of the MCU galaxy that they developed last season.

Originally Posted by Kitten Champion
You have a five-year time period in this universe that's full of chaos and potential drama - one that's unlikely to be explored overmuch in the subsequent movies - it seems like a gift wrapped with a shiny bow for a quasi-fan fiction-type program like Agents of SHIELD.

True, but diving into this period—the Time Between Snaps, if you will—would mean that AoS would be creatively constricted in a host of ways. Everything would be about dealing with Snap 1 and its aftermath, and that would completely redefine AoS as “that show after the Snap.”

That would fundamentally conflict with everything they’ve built up over the prior seasons, and all their individual character arcs would be overshadowed by living in the aftermath of the Snap. Plus they’d have to explain why every one of their members survived the Snap, when we’ve seen the Avengers et al. decimated by the event.

It would require a completely different show to properly explore the Time Between Snaps—something much darker than AoS, with a different set of expectations for characters and audience alike. Plus, we know that the original Snap has been, well, ameliorated, so that tends to auto-spoil any long-term suspense a Snap show might try to develop.

[Kitten Champion]

True enough, but they managed to align Season 2 precisely with the release of Winter Soldier, to the point that if you didn’t see the movie on opening weekend you were hit with major spoilers the following Tuesday night.

But given that it wasn’t at all certain that AoS would be renewed for this current season, it was probably much easier for them to follow their own direction in terms of storyline, especially in the rather cheesy version of the MCU galaxy that they developed last season.

According to Jed Whedon in the above article, when they were making it they really didn't know when either the movie or their show was going to be released, if it came out in January (which was a possibility) it would be rather awkward.

True, but diving into this period—the Time Between Snaps, if you will—would mean that AoS would be creatively constricted in a host of ways. Everything would be about dealing with Snap 1 and its aftermath, and that would completely redefine AoS as “that show after the Snap.”

That would fundamentally conflict with everything they’ve built up over the prior seasons, and all their individual character arcs would be overshadowed by living in the aftermath of the Snap. Plus they’d have to explain why every one of their members survived the Snap, when we’ve seen the Avengers et al. decimated by the event.

It would require a completely different show to properly explore the Time Between Snaps—something much darker than AoS, with a different set of expectations for characters and audience alike. Plus, we know that the original Snap has been, well, ameliorated, so that tends to auto-spoil any long-term suspense a Snap show might try to develop.

Eh... I kind of see your point, but most of SHIELD's meta-plot and major character arcs were more or less concluded in the last season and AoS has as a series already reinvented itself several times with new cast members and entirely different situations to focus upon. "We're dealing with this now for 13-25 episodes" would be pretty much expected by the viewers who've lasted this long.

As for it being dark, the last season was primarily set in a dystopian future where Earth was literally destroyed and a fraction of humanity survived in slavery aboard a bomb shelter floating in space to be bred as super-powered tools of war for alien warlords, it's a relative lite affair merely killing half of everyone compared to that.

As to cast members, ya could let some of them go. Sure, it would feel like the last season of Once Upon a Time where less than half the cast was around, but still, they have a better in-continuity reason to do so than OUaT did and clearly budget is a thing that they worried about enough to artificially split the seasons. Besides that, it's not like the Snap wasn't dusting characters based off of dramatic necessity and meta-reasons in the movies rather than some RNG mechanic. At least we'd know that anyone dusted is basically going to be fine, and they could show up in an epilogue maybe.

...and finally, as to rectifying the Snap, that's actually a non-issue in my opinion. Sure, the dusted ones came back, but it didn't reverse time or rewrite continuity, every event in those 5 years happened and everyone who died unrelated to the Snap are still dead so everything happening within that time-frame is still of consequence. The only things AoS can't do logically within the movie continuity is resolve the Snap themselves - which is fine since even the Avengers didn't think they could - and literally destroy the world - which is fine since that wouldn't happen regardless - so long as the world is as it appears to be in Endgame it's all cool. Which gives them a hell of a lot of leeway to explore the enormous ramifications to the Snap with any kind of stakes lower than global destruction.

[Rogar Demonblud]

True enough, but they managed to align Season 2 precisely with the release of Winter Soldier, to the point that if you didn’t see the movie on opening weekend you were hit with major spoilers the following Tuesday night.

Minor quibble: that was Season 1. Season 2 was the lead up to Age of Ultron and the reveal that the big mysterious project Coulson had been spending resources on was rehabilitating a helicarrier.

And yes, that sucked mightily.

[Palanan]

Looks like no one's posted yet. Did anyone even watch this?

I almost forgot it was on tonight, but I'm glad I remembered. Much better than last week, with pacing like an actual action show, rather than the clunky soap-opera-with-spaceships we got in the first episode.

That said, this show still has the worst starship design ever. And there were some goofy moments. But Mad Maxxson kicked into gear this week, making for a decidedly fun ride. Nuanced drama it ain't, but there's something to be said for slightly dizzy fun.

[Kitten Champion]

Looks like no one's posted yet. Did anyone even watch this?

I PVR all weekend shows for Monday/Tuesday viewing. So AoS is pretty much in the same territory Grimm was in a while ago, sadly. Though no one cared enough to make an active Grimm thread around here, for which I don't blame them.

Although, I believe AoS is most used to being seen this way based on all reports I've heard.