Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D . returns for
its sophomore season
on ABC after its season 1 finale left viewers with
a lot of unanswered questions and some notable
cliffhangers. The S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic
Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics
Division) organization is down after the events of
Captain America: The Winter Soldier but not out,
and Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) is tasked with
the responsibility of reviving it with what little
resources and trust he has left – even if The
Avengers still somehow don’t know he’s alive.
Out of Coulson’s original team, his best field
agent (Brett Dalton’s Grant Ward) turned out to
be a traitor and one of his brightest (Iain De
Caestecker’s Leo Fitz) is in critical condition. But
the team has picked up a few new allies along
the way who will ideally help fans learn the true
meaning behind what’s happening with Coulson,
the origins of Agent Skye (Chloe Bennet), and
what this all means for the future of the Marvel
Cinematic Universe – if it means anything at all.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. started off slow, held back
by what it could and could not do in terms of
story in relation to the movies and limited access
to the characters from Marvel Comics. Towards
the end of the season however, the team of
original characters became a family of sorts and
their relationships and emotions
became something worthy of our attention. The
season also planted plenty of seeds
could potentially grow into big plot payoffs down
the road – if of course, the show is allowed to do
such a thing. The show’s executive producer, Jeff
Bell, promises that the season 2 premiere will
address a few key questions but we’re thinking
even bigger - Below are five questions and/or
topics we want to be revealed and explored
in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 2.
-
S.H.I.E.L.D. Become More Than
Coulson’s Team
Agent Coulson has a mobile base of operations, a
car that can fly, and a very small team of young
operatives but that doesn’t add up to something
worthy of being labeled S.H.I.E.L.D., conducting
missions all over the globe. He needs resources,
secret bases, equipment, weapons and a much
larger staff if the mysterious security force is to
be rebuilt into anything close to what it was pre-
Hydra.
Even though Coulson, an original character in the
movies, has been added to Marvel Comics, we
want to see S.H.I.E.L.D. grow to be what it was,
flying helicarriers and, so Nick Fury or Maria Hill
(Cobie Smulders) can lead - or at least pass the
torch to one of The Avengers like Tony Stark
(Robert Downey Jr.) like we see in the comics.
The Avengers are being bankrolled by Stark
when Agent of Ultron begins to fill the void left by
S.H.I.E.L.D. so we need to see the connection
there in season 2. Perhaps Stark can bring back
S.H.I.E.L.D. to it’s glory days?
-
Coulson’s Weirdness Solved
Agent Coulson is alive but he may not be well. As
we learned in Agents of SHIELD season
1, Coulson was forcefully subjected to borderline
torture by order of Director Nick Fury. Brain-
tampering robots aside, Coulson lived thanks to a
healthy(?) dose of blue alien Kool-Aid (blood) and
there are some serious side effects to the miracle
cure. That is, if you’re human by nature.
John Garrett drank the Kool-Aid and it enhanced
his intellect while also making him crazier than he
already was. He was seen drawing inexplicable
markings, the same markings revealed in the final
scene of the season one finale that Coulson is
now writing as well. Coulson is not fully Coulson
and there will be consequences of this. We hope
it’s not kept from viewers for the entire season,
but we need to learn what those markings mean,
and how the alien blood will affect Coulson in the
long-run. Is this a plot point that will fix itself, or
will it permanently change Coulson?
Could it transform Coulson into another character
from the comics and give him a different role to
play down the road, potentially back in the
movies?
-
Blue Alien History Explained
Used so far as a throwaway plot point to explain
the revival of Agent Coulson, the revelation that a
dead blue alien – conveniently and quickly
destroyed – was housed in a secret base on Earth
for sometime must have a larger payoff down the
road. Its blood served as the miracle juice
in saving the lives of Coulson and Skye (Chloe
Bennet) and it seemingly had different effects on
each of them.
Is that the same blue alien race known as the
Kree as depicted in Guardians of the Galaxy as
Bennet let slip in an interview? How did
S.H.I.E.L.D. acquire the body and if they did, why
has that not been a talking point of the movies to
date involving Nick Fury trying to protect Earth
from otherworldly threats? How long has
S.H.I.E.L.D. known about aliens and what
different species from Marvel Comics do they
know about? We need answers.
-
Skye’s Heritage Truly Revealed
Since the beginning of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D when
Coulson recruited the hacker Skye into his unit, it
was clear she was destined for something bigger.
Throughout the first season we learned little bits
of her mysterious upbringing, that she was
classified as a 0-8-4 by S.H.I.E.L.D., a
designation for a “object of unknown origin .” We
also know that many agents died trying to
protect her as a baby and that her real parents
were monsters. Add in the fact that she’s
seemingly immune to the negative effects of
having blue alien blood in her body, and it’s
becoming increasingly clear that she’s not a
normal human…
All of this must be building towards some
important connection to the MCU – and Marvel
Comics lore. The common theory is that since
this is a Whedon show, it could tie-in to The
Inhumans, a film in early development at Marvel
Studios, and it could even tie into next
summer’s The Avengers: Age of Ultron where a
pair of new super-powered characters are
introduced. Either way, this must be fully revealed
in season 2. It’s one of our biggest Agents of
S.H.I.E.L.D. questions .
-
Full Integration Into MCU ( Marvel Comics Universe)
As it stands, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is still a
series without real stakes. It features characters
not from the comics in stories not from the
comics and at a surface level, that means it
doesn’t necessarily have to mean anything in the
greater shared Marvel Cinematic Universe. And if
that’s truly the case and how it’s seen, then
what’s the point? The back half of season 1 –
partly in response to criticisms and largely thanks
to Captain America: The Winter Soldier started to
feel “more Marvel” – words by the series’
producer and season 2 aims to continue that
trend.
The show began to utilize few characters from
the comics (Bill Paxton’s John Garrett and
Saffron Burrows’ Victoria Hand), and we started
to see another transform into a Marvel Comics
character (J. August Richards’ Deathlok), but we
need to see these payoff in the bigger picture
plans of the movies since it is meant to be a part
of that long-form storytelling. With The Avengers:
Age of Ultron coming next summer near the end
of season 2 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – and
remember, this is the followup to where Couson
“died” – we’d like to see these characters prove
that they matter when it comes to these large-
scale events.
