Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

If there's a fifth season, here's what I expect...

• The first half:
  • A.I.M. as the main antagonists
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. gradually selects three new agents in a reality TV-style elimination contest
  • Kim Possible appears midway through the A.I.M. storyline, later being revealed to be Coulson's long-lost daughter
  • A crossover with Once Upon a Time: non-canon for OUAT, canon for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
  • After A.I.M. gets defeated, S.H.I.E.L.D. salvages its resources
• The second half:
  • "Venom Rising": the team uncovers the mystery behind the Venom symbiote, with Spider-Man playing a major role
  • Shocker would appear as one of the villains, provided he survives in Spider-Man: Homecoming
  • The team awakens Pocahontas, who had been frozen in ice for 404 years
  • Pocahontas inadvertently destroys the symbiote, and Coulson ends up recruiting her to S.H.I.E.L.D.
  • Overall, the "Venom Rising" storyline would take elements from the "Alien Costume" three-parter from Spider-Man: The Animated Series and 2007's Spider-Man 3

Are you people taking notes of this? This is gold, grade-a material right here.

As long as during the AOS/OUAT crossover, we get a Melinda May/Mulan fight, where Melinda May wins and says, "I'll make a man out of you, my ass."

No interest in seeing AIM again...we already had that, and the AIM arc is still the weakest of the ones the show had.

In case someone is wondering, I sort the show roughly this way:

1. AIM arc (First episode until TRACKS)

2. The Clairvoyant arc (the rest of season 1...and in case you are wondering, yes, the Clairvoyant was mentioned beforehand, but this is the episode in which Garret turns up, and from this point onward AIM is pretty much out of the picture).

3. The Whitehall arc (Start of Season 2 up to the midseason finale in which Daisy turns)

4. The Inhumans arc (Rest of Season 2)

5. The ATCU arc (Season 3 up to the mid-season finale...I guess officially it is the secret Warrior arc, but there isn't really much done with the secret warriors in it...though I guess you could also call it the Lash arc, but ATCU makes more sense, because the turn up in the first episode but are mostly disposed off by the mid-season finale).

6. The Hive arc (Rest of season 3)

And now we have naturally the Ghost Rider arc, the LMD arc and what I suspect will be the Agents of Hydra arc.

In case someone is wondering, I rank the arcs we have seen so far this way:

8. The AIM arc...clearly the weakest of all the storylines we had so far, mostly because it was so unfoccussed.

7. The Ghostride arc....as nifty as all the CGI was, overall I actually didn't enjoy the story all that much. It really picked up towards the end, but it dragged on and on beforehand.

6. The Hive arc....this is the point at which it becomes difficult, because Ao S is all kinds of awesome. The finale of the Hive arc is all kinds of amazing, but I feel that the episodes leading up to it are a little bit uneven. Some of them are really, really good, but a number of them are, for Ao S standards, on the weak side.

5. The Clairvoyant arc....if I had just put the fall of Shield into the arc, it would be higher, but the episodes leading up to the moment when everything kicks into gear are so weak, I have to rank the other arcs higher.

4. The Whitehall arc...okay, this and the placemen after were a really difficult decision. The beginning of season 2 has some of my favourite episodes...but the pay-off is not quite as strong as what they delivered in the second half with...

3. The Inhumans arc...SOS part 1 and 2 is still an amazing season finale but above all, everything in it felt earned.

2. The ATCU arc...I am still not sure if season 2 or 3 is better overall, but one thing for sure, I liked the start season 3 better than the second half. So many amazing episodes, especially the one in which Fitz pulls Jemma back, Maveth (naturally), Ward kidnapping Fitzsimmons, Bobby and May working together

1. The LMD arc....I might change my mind about that. It is hard to categorize something which is so fresh on my mind fairly. But nearly every episode in the LMD arc felt at least like a mid-season finale. And this last episode....still reeling from this one.

But I have to clarify that arc 1 to 5 are so close together in quality, I might switch them around totally tomorrow.

edited 7th Mar '17 2:35:38 AM by Swanpride

I would rank the arcs, from best to worst, as:

1) The first half of Season 2. There was loads of great characterization, from Ward's not-redemption-arc, to Coulson asking May to kill him if he went off the rails with the alien-writing stuff, to Fitz's coming with brain damage, to the breach between Fitz and Simmons, to Skye learning about her dad...and on top of that, there were good plots with plenty of intrigue and surprises. It was pretty much the peak of AOS as a spy show.

2) The second half of Season 2. The Real Shield stuff wasn't great, and it being resolved off-screen via Age of Ultron was worse, but some parts of it worked. It makes sense that Coulson wasn't the only one trying to continue Shield, and that other factions would mistrust each other after being infiltrated by Hydra. Skye's arc in learning about her powers and her parents, and the gutpunch of her mom being the antagonist was fantastic. I just bought Season 2 from itunes and reewatched it, and was very pleased. Though I'm on Team Jiaying - I find the Index immoral and incredibly dangerous and would fight to keep people from having to register on it. Someone wants to eliminate Inhumans, that's all the information they need. Giving that information to any organization is an extreme danger. Giving it to an organization that, until a year before, was comprehensively infiltrated by fascists is madness.

3) The LMD arc. Great intrigue, love Aida and Scottish guy as the villains, but the Superior's uninteresting and the emotional arcs of characters didn't feel as strong or meaningful as in Season 2.

Wasn't overly fond of Season 3 - Hydra as covert fascist organization seeking world domination fits all we've seen of them before, Hydra as crazy alien cult does not. Would put the season's second half slightly above its first. Also not fond of the Ghost Rider arc - it didn't fit well with Shield and I dislike the concept. Law enforcement should not be teaming up with a vigilante murderer.

Season 1 goes at the bottom of the list - so bad that I stopped watching.

edited 7th Mar '17 4:54:15 AM by Galadriel

I like ranking my opinions in a neat fashion. If I had to judge how I felt about each Agents of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. arc I'd put it like this:

Vengeance of the Ghost Rider > Secret Invasion of Life Model Decoys > Secret Warriors vs. Hive > Inhumanity > "Real" S.H.I.E.L.D./Inhumans conflict > HYDRA Strikes Back > Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to Agents of Nothing.

Isn't '"Real" S.H.I.E.L.D./Inhumans conflict' generally referred to as the S.H.I.E.L.D. civil war, or was that the HYDRA uprising?

Hydra's bloody coup seems like more of a war than Real SHIELD's neat'n'tidy regime change.

It's everything that happens after Whitehall dies and Daisy becomes Inhuman. Maybe I could have worded it better, but that's the best way I could describe it.

You worded it fine—obviously I understood what you were talking about—it's just that the rest of the arc titles could have been the official titles, but that one just seemed a bit more informal. So it kinda got me thinking what that arc is actually called.

If you're looking for a pithy title— Terrigenesis, maybe? It bookends the half-season.

Looking it over my post I'm starting to see what you mean. I did try to go for a "title" feel to my arc listings, but I guess that one didn't match the others. It's kinda funny because coming up with one is indeed a challenge.

That's good enough

All I need are more Ghost Rider stories and that OUAT crossover.

I don't know why those two things go together but they totally do.

Ghost Rider in full flaming skull mode singing When You Wish Upon a Star.

Uh, I like Terrigenisis....

So...we have...(Always think of an "Agents of Shield" beforehand):

AIM (or, if you want to be cute "A new Aim")

Clairvoyant or The Rise of Hydra

Terrigenisis

Inhumans...or, on a second thought, I would call this part of the show "Quake" because it is mostly about Daisy's backstory.

ATCU or Are you (in)human (which was the tagline for season 3)

Hive

Ghost Rider

LMD

edited 7th Mar '17 9:28:08 AM by Swanpride

@Wheadon Instagram Dude, did Joss get ten years older in the last three years?

So after browsing wikizilla I discovered that when marvel was writing a Godzilla series they gave shield a mech.... that marvel still has the rights to..... hmmmmmmm.

Marvel also has rights to American Kaiju.

UUUU... SSSS... AAA

Goddammit. Doing In the Wizard on the Darkhold confirmed as of this interview with showrunner Jed Whedon.

God damn it, you guys had one job.

So the ghosts aren't ghosts, the Rider isn't a demon, and the Darkhold really is just a complex tech manual. Yep. Shittiest thematic tie-in to Doctor Strange conceivable.

The Ghost Rider arc teetered on the edge of "Padding" already, but now it doesn't add anything magical to the show?

Whelp! Time to cancel this shit.

Until they actually say it in-universe, I'm just ignoring these interviews as Death of the Author. Not to mention that before, they promised that it was definitely magic. It still feels like magic, even if they occasionally manage to explain it semi-coherently using science. There was a strong sense throughout the entire Ghost Rider arc that Fitz was talking out of his ass, just papering over science terms to try to understand things. "Okay, I've figured it out, Robbie isn't an Inhuman, he's just some weird tech thing that I haven't nailed down yet." [Spirit of Vengeance jumps out of Robbie in order to escape going back to Hell] "Well, shit. Give me a minute here."

I mean, yeah, Fitz described the Hell they were getting dragged down to as just another dimension... but that's basically what Hell is. Coulson seems more comfortable with calling a prison dimension Hell, and calling incorporeal creatures with a fondness for punishment demons.

How is the Ghost Rider arc any more padding than any other arc? It was entertaining, involved character development for everyone, and led directly into the LMD arc.