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| Is "Agents of SHIELD" on the verge of a breakthrough? |
Ever since The
Avengers hit theatres two years ago, I have believed that the Marvel
Cinematic Universe has a SHIELD
problem. Namely, while Marvel would like
to put out several standalone films (and a television series as it turns out)
in between each Avengers movie, it can’t meld universes too much because doing
so would require having multiple characters cross-over from film to film, thus
accelerating the intentionally extended contracts of Marvel’s principle
cast. The question then is, how do you bring together
all of these disparate characters once every three years and then expect them to
support their own movies in between without acknowledging the presence of other
superheroes? While Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark
World successfully managed to skirt the issue, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD has been significantly less
successful. But this past weekend’s release
of Captain America: The Winter Soldier
may have fixed all of those problems while also fundamentally changing Agents of SHIELD.
…
Massive, massive SPOILERS
for basically the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe and Agents of SHIELD coming up.
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Seriously, if you haven’t seen the second Captain America
movie, just turn away now.
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So Captain America:
The Winter Soldier saw the complete and utter destruction of SHIELD, the
result of its infiltration by Hydra over the past sixty years. The week before and after the film’s release,
Coulson and the other Agents of SHIELD
discovered that The Clairvoyant, the big bad whom they had been chasing for the
last half season was not some supernatural power, but instead John Garrett, a
fellow agent who has presumably been corrupted by the same Hydra forces.* It brought to a thrilling conclusion (at
least temporarily) the saga of SHIELD, which had a been a central force in the
Marvel Universe ever since Samuel L Jackson’s surprise appearance as Nick Fury
at the end of Iron Man.
* It's possible that Garrett is not The Clairvoyant, but simply his SHIELD emissary. Some have even suggested that Arnim Zola, the Nazi scientist turned supercomputer AI from Winter Soldier is the real Clairvoyant. For our purposes here, the distinction is irrelevant.
Even more important than the mere plot development, I
believe, is that the destruction (or at least extreme diminishing) of SHIELD
helps to solve a problem that has lingered in the Marvel universe since The Avengers and which has had an extremely
negative impact on Agents of SHIELD: SHIELD is far too present and powerful to ignore in a standalone
series or film. Introducing SHIELD in The Avengers made a lot of sense. It was an enormous “get-the-gang-together”
spectacle that required all hands on deck in fighting an extraterrestrial
invasion. The film needed to be huge (it
was after all the culmination of four years worth of films) and SHIELD needed
to be big enough to effectively serve as the coordinator of a worldwide
defensive mission while also giving orders to a disparate group of superheroes.
So we got Big SHIELD.
We got the helicarrier, the army, and the massive facility in the Potomac. Unfortunately, with SHIELD came the
expectation that they would always be there to fight the next threat. So how do you tell an Iron Man story or a
Thor story or an Agents of SHIELD story without bringing in Big SHIELD and all the
characters and big budget accoutrements with them? Iron
Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World
both succeeded by avoiding the question.
In Iron Man 3, Tony Stark
spends much of the movie stranded in rural Tennessee without any means of
communication and wanting to intentionally stay below the radar before he heads
out on a madcap rescue effort that all happens fast enough and changes
locations often enough that it’s reasonable to believe that SHIELD simply
wasn’t fast enough to keep up with Stark or the villain.
Thor: The Dark World,
likewise, took its title character outside of SHIELD’s purview and set the vast
majority of the film in Asgard and other extraterrestrial worlds. Only in the film’s closing fight does the
action return to Earth, this time London, where the battle is pretty much over
before we would ever hope to see Nick Fury and company.
While Captain America:
The Winter Soldier had the luxury of steering into the SHIELD skid by
giving Fury and Black Widow featured roles, Agents
of SHIELD has had the toughest job of the entire Marvel Universe. How do you tell a story about SHIELD agents
without giving the audience any of the big-name characters or big-budget
action? Unfortunately, prior to last
week, the show hadn’t quite figured that out.
As I saw it, SHIELD
had two main problems. The first is that
the characters were all dull. The
writers tried so hard to keep every character enigmatic that nobody but Fitz
and Simmons were really allowed to develop interesting personalities. In retrospect, this was probably an
intentional decision by Jed Whedon and Marissa Tancharoen (SHIELD’s
showrunners) to lead us exactly where we ended up in last night’s episode
“Turn, Turn, Turn.” The hour was a tense
thriller built on the belief that nobody could be trusted and that anybody
could turn out to be a villain at any time.
Every time a new character entered a room, he was immediately the target
of suspicion. That we knew so little
about Coulson’s team helped to boost the tension for the audience. Because we know so little about Melinda May’s
past, she is a plausible double-agent.
Because we don’t know everything that happened to Coulson in Tahiti,
it’s plausible that he could be a double-agent or a Manchurian-style sleeper. The same can be said about Skye, Trip, Hand,
and, obviously, Garrett and Ward.
That this episode – and this betrayal – has been coming
since before the series even started doesn’t excuse the lack of character
development even if it does explain it.
I can’t say for certain that this was the plan all along. Maybe Brett Dalton is just a wooden
actor. Maybe the writers just couldn’t
figure out how to make compelling characters without shrouding their
personalities in mystery. But now that
we’ve moved past the Big Thing that’s been in the works for the show's entire run, I hope this will free
Tancharoen and Whedon to develop their characters more deeply.
The second problem that SHIELD
had was that Coulson was clearly the leader of a B-team. While that was the intent of the series – to
show the behind the scenes work of SHIELD when they’re not saving the world – it served mostly to sap all of the stakes out of the show. There was never any sense of real danger
because if anything ever got too harried, we knew that the A-team would show up
to save the day. It’s no coincidence
that the best episode of the season was the one that most effectively created
stakes, “F.Z.Z.T.,” in which Simmons’s life seems to be in genuine danger and
the group is completely isolated from any potential backup. Without the real possibility of abject failure, SHIELD has been bereft of drama and
tension. Instead, every episode has
revolved around finding the Tchotchke of the Week and mostly trying not to
screw things up too badly.
With Captain America laying waste to the SHIELD organization
that safety net is gone now. Even more
enticingly, “Turn, Turn, Turn” leaves open the prospect of a weakened but open and operational
Hydra force, who is desperate to destroy the last remnants of SHIELD. We know that Hydra still has control of a
handful of international bases and the turncoat agents Garrett and Ward will
certainly be focused on finding Coulson and company in particular. For the first time in the young history of Agents of SHIELD there is a sense of
urgency. The good guys will be on the
run without any support while their conflict with the villains has an emotional foundation.
There’s no guarantee that the writers will be able to turn
it around. Even if the secrecy
surrounding pretty much all of SHIELD’s
characters was meant to preserve this twist, that’s no excuse for them of them
simply being so boring. And just because
the rise of Hydra and the destruction of SHIELD could raise the stakes for the series, doesn’t mean they will.
A lot still depends on the ability of Whedon and Tancharoen to turn
things around, but for the first time since the pilot, I’m actually excited
about the prospects for where Agents of
SHIELD might go in the future.
Tyler Williams is a
professional librarian and amateur television critic. You can find him at tytalkstv AT gmail DOT
com or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.
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