Marvel's Agents of Shield

[Delightful]

10 hours ago, Sunbird said:

I finally got around to watching the season 3 finale.

It was amazing, but Lincoln's death broke my heart. I really liked him, and I was completely bawling during the last few minutes of the episode.

Brett Dalton is an amazing actor, and I'm sad that we won't be seeing him again. I thought he made a fantastic badchull villain as Hive with that long black trench-coat and his unflappable demeanor.

Hive is my favourite of Dalton's reincarnations on the show, he's a fantastic actor. 

And Lincoln! I know! I like him! And as well as his death, what it did to poor Daisy! I want to hug her and also devote AoS to her character exclusively forever.  

[Delightful]

GUYS. SOMEONE UP TO DATE TALK TO ME.

[Pagerunner]

Oh yes.

Spoiler

I actually yelled in excitement at my television during the buildup to the last scene before the hiatus. It wasn't the first time I've done so; I was hoping Ward would crawl back through the portal at the end of the Ghost Rider arc, too. But it's good to have finally him back. I think this is a perfect way to rewind the clock on the character, before he went astray with May-Face. His double-agent status fits perfectly; defecting to Shield to protect Skye. (I've still been calling her Skye the entire time, so that's also a plus in my book.) This is an excellent opportunity to bring some closure to the Ward/Skye interactions that I've felt was skipped over when they made Ward the head of Hydra. (Or his branch of Hydra, at least.) Ward wasn't an idealist; he was on the side of his 'family,' John Garret. I think, with the situation so well reversed, between Hydra and Shield, Skye will be able to understand who Grant Ward really was, why he took the sides that he did.

May and Fitz being actual bad guys caught my brother by surprise, conceptually. (Although, he hadn't watched the LMD arc, so he was a little behind on the setup for the Framework.) At first, he thought the Framework was designed to brainwash them into being evil; when I said that it wasn't intentional to form Hydra, it was a natural outgrowth of the changes made to remove May's regrets, he wondered why there was such a drastic change in their characters. Nature vs Nurture sort of a thing; in a different world, May and Fitz are nasty people, while Coulson and Mack are basically unchanged. Which ties back to the influence of other characters, Coulson and Jemma respectively, which is of course a satisfying explanation for why a character's path can be so drastically altered. 'It's a Wonderful Life,' and all that. Which, in my mind, goes back again to Ward. He was evil in the real world, but not because he is an inherently evil person. He was just in the wrong circumstances, didn't have the right people.

Arcs like this, with alternate realities or 'Matrix' setups, can very easily be shallow. 'Oh, look, your good guys are bad guys, and your bad guys are good guys, and as soon as the novelty wears off we'll jump back to the status quo with no changes and no goatees.' There are two instances, though, that I've really enjoyed: the Eureka time travel arc, and the Stargate SG:1 Season 8 finale. In Eureka, some characters travel back in time and cause a major timeline change. And they live with it. It fundamentally changed the dynamics of the cast, and they never went back to how things used to be. In Stargate, there was an episode where the timeline changed, and the main characters were all different, and they still had to go and time-travel and fix everything. And they did put it all back the way it used to be (well, with one or two minor exceptions), but the episode was much more of a character piece, exploring sides of the heroes that hadn't been opened up that much. They weren't like different characters played by the same actors, they were the same characters who had had different experiences. And it was originally supposed to be the series finale (until the show got un-cancelled), coming off the big mytharc conclusion episode that wrapped up eight years of story and buildup, to close up with spending looking into the hidden depths of our favorite characters. (The actual series finale was a lot of that, too, but it involved less time travel.)

Either would be satisfying for Shield, I think. To take Fitz and May out of the Framework, but they go and rebuild Hydra, the game-changing option. Or just for the team to realize that any one of them could have been Grant Ward, that he wasn't truly a monster. The potential's there for both, and I would enjoy either of them more than the suspense of "who's a robot this week?"

 

[Delightful]

2 episodes after the midseason break spoilers - ep 17?

A few points. 

A lot of the character interactions I feel will keep after the Framework plotline is over. For a start, Fitz, yes Framework Brainwashed Fitz but Fitz all the same, just shot an innocent. and has tortured and killed hundreds of (potential) inhumans. That's not something that s going to go away when he gets back to reality. The guilt will still be there.

May. When she wakes up - her greatest regret gone and it made her a Hydra agent. That might actually be a catalyst for her to let go of a lot of the pain and bitterness she's been carrying around for years.

Holy moly Madame Hydra is perfect and awesome and terrifying. Madame Hydra and The Doctor. They're.....a couple! And Fitz in a suit is pretty sexy, I have to say. 

Ward being an actual decent agent is nice. I'm still shaking my head that they managed to get Brett Dalton back into the show for yet another Ward iteration. That moment of Radcliffe thinking he was Hive was great. 

I'm wondering why they had Mac trick Daisy into saying yes thats my name. Where did the info come from the begin with? Aida? if so, what does admission gain?

Mac and his daughter are adorable and perfect just - where did the mother go? In this reality it seems that its her that doesn't exist. 

I'm also kinda wondering if Daisy in-world will find terragen and go back to being Quake, but that would possibly cheapen this storyline a little. I am kind of expecting her to try use her inhuman powers and trip up because they're not there on command, know instinct in a fight. 

and basically I love all the characters and these changed dynamics are super interesting and feelsy.

[Pagerunner]

1 hour ago, Delightful said:

2 episodes after the midseason break spoilers - ep 17?

 

  Hide contents

I'm wondering why they had Mac trick Daisy into saying yes thats my name. Where did the info come from the begin with? Aida? if so, what does admission gain?

 

Spoiler

Good question, actually. Aida knows who on the team she didn't put in the Framework, so she knows that Skye is one of the infiltrators. She might need something to convince May and Fitz that Skye's not on their side any more, but I think they wouldn't need more than her command.

 

[Quiver]

I actually dropped off of the Agents train during season three; what I heard about the way it was going didn't particularly interest me. So...

Can anyone rate the seasons for me? How does season four compare to the stuff that's gone before; marked improvement, slight downgrade, what?

[Kaymyth]

On 4/12/2017 at 8:03 PM, Pagerunner said:

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Good question, actually. Aida knows who on the team she didn't put in the Framework, so she knows that Skye is one of the infiltrators. She might need something to convince May and Fitz that Skye's not on their side any more, but I think they wouldn't need more than her command.

 

Spoiler

I think Aida is extremely concerned about memories possibly resurfacing and undoing her brain reprogramming. I get the feeling she can suppress things, but not overwrite them completely, and there's a risk of the people she's plugged in reverting to their natural state. That's why she tried to hide Gemma's presence from Fitz; she wasn't sure how seeing her would affect his recall.

And she was right to. There are cracks starting to show on the edges of Fitz's overwrite. He's in denial and stuck in a state of sunk cost fallacy, doubling down on his adherence to his Framework persona because he's currently psychologically incapable of dealing with the things he's done in the potential context of them being wrong. But you could see it on his face when Gemma screamed his name; it hit him hard emotionally. He's rattled as hell.

 

[Pagerunner]

Well, that was a waste.

Spoiler

Aida's actions make no sense. If she wanted to kill Mace, why did she have to do it in a consistent in-universe method by bringing the building down on him? Could she not have just unplugged him and then killed him in the real world? She has enough control over the Framework that she could unplug him, rewrite the Framework, and plug him back in with a new life (since she told Skye she could bring Lincoln back to life). Killing the Real Characters undermines why she has them in the Framework in the first place (which doesn't make much sense, either, apart from maybe Fitz). Why did she no longer want to keep Mace alive? Not a great end for Mace, but thematically I like the way he went out. Sure, he might have wasted his life to save a person who didn't actually exist, but you can't convince Mace not to put his life on the line for others.

I didn't believe the showrunners at first when they said they had no plans for Bill Paxton to return as Agent Garret. But now, I buy it. The parallels between Framework Fitz and Real-Life Ward are too strong to be an accident; Ward was turned into a monster by John Garret, Fitz was turned into a monster by his father. Take away that father figure, and you get a completely different person. So, Framework Ward is not a monster, because he wasn't influenced by Garret.

Side note, I think we now know all the regrets now:

• Coulson: joining Shield
• May: killing the girl in Bahrain
• Mace: not being an inhuman (and not being able to actually protect people)
• Mack: Losing his daughter
• Fitz: Losing his father

 

[Delightful]

4 hours ago, Pagerunner said:

Well, that was a waste.

  Hide contents

Aida's actions make no sense. If she wanted to kill Mace, why did she have to do it in a consistent in-universe method by bringing the building down on him? Could she not have just unplugged him and then killed him in the real world? She has enough control over the Framework that she could unplug him, rewrite the Framework, and plug him back in with a new life (since she told Skye she could bring Lincoln back to life). Killing the Real Characters undermines why she has them in the Framework in the first place (which doesn't make much sense, either, apart from maybe Fitz). Why did she no longer want to keep Mace alive? Not a great end for Mace, but thematically I like the way he went out. Sure, he might have wasted his life to save a person who didn't actually exist, but you can't convince Mace not to put his life on the line for others.

I didn't believe the showrunners at first when they said they had no plans for Bill Paxton to return as Agent Garret. But now, I buy it. The parallels between Framework Fitz and Real-Life Ward are too strong to be an accident; Ward was turned into a monster by John Garret, Fitz was turned into a monster by his father. Take away that father figure, and you get a completely different person. So, Framework Ward is not a monster, because he wasn't influenced by Garret.

Side note, I think we now know all the regrets now:

• Coulson: joining Shield
• May: killing the girl in Bahrain
• Mace: not being an inhuman (and not being able to actually protect people)
• Mack: Losing his daughter
• Fitz: Losing his father

 

 

reaction to that last moment first: YAAASSSSSSS

Okay now that I have that out my system.

I don't think Aida specifically wanted to kill Mace, it was simply a logical in-world objective. It was something Hydra wanted. The same way she could reprogram everything into anything she wants, but she limits herself to removing one regret per person and letting everything else play out as it does.

Fitz and Ward......just omg wow. I'm curious as to why Trip specifically was reintroduced. Oh and Coulsons seems a little fanfic-y - totally in character in crazy different circumstances.

Other positives - Nevertheless, She Persisted - wasn't that a pretty big political thing recently in the US?

-"Miss Simmons -"
"Actually it's Dr."

So much girl power. So much girl power (woman power?).  

 

Just.....just.....returning to reality means Mack losing hope and just noooooooo

Edited April 19, 2017 by Delightfully Smoak
WANT. MOAR. SHIELD.

[Delightful]

On 14 April 2017 at 5:38 PM, Quiver said:

I actually dropped off of the Agents train during season three; what I heard about the way it was going didn't particularly interest me. So...

Can anyone rate the seasons for me? How does season four compare to the stuff that's gone before; marked improvement, slight downgrade, what?

Double post because quoting is being stupid.

Season 4 - this part of it specifically - is my favourite so far just because of how they're playing with characters and emotions so well. 

Season 3 is very space-y, alien-y which doesn't continue after that season. Then we get ghost rider which is ......alright. Secret Warriors was pretty cool. What they're doing now might be my favourite part of the show so far - definitely my favourite since Daisy's original power arc. 

[Claincy]

On 4/15/2017 at 0:38 AM, Quiver said:

I actually dropped off of the Agents train during season three; what I heard about the way it was going didn't particularly interest me. So...

Can anyone rate the seasons for me? How does season four compare to the stuff that's gone before; marked improvement, slight downgrade, what?

I feel season 3 dropped the ball a bit, particularly in the latter half. The writing just got really obvious and dull for a bit but they did pull it together again for a good last 2 episodes. Season 4 is much better than that and probably overall on par with seasons 1 & 2 imo.

[Pagerunner]

Spoiler

Uh, I'm not quite sure how this gets Aida into the real world without her programming. I don't quite grasp how Darkhold-ing herself a body to jump into through the Framework is any different than just using the Darkhold to make herself a new body in the real world and drop her mind into it her mind is composed of the code. The Framework seems unnecessary, except as a way to get Fitz to work on it (which, does she really need him to finish it?) and because she's obligated to maintain it.

But, hey, they can hand-wave that all day, since the Framework architecture itself isn't the focus of this arc, it's a story mechanism to create an alternate universe. And, boy, did I enjoy that universe again. They were a little on-the-nose with what I said last week, about how Ward wasn't trained by Garret and Fitz was influenced by his father, and those being the reasons for the characters vastly divergent stories.

The Ward/Skye scene was good. I've had very high expectations for that conversation, which it fell a little short of. I didn't like the line about 'there was good in him,' since that's just entirely too vague and meaningless. I'd have preferred she'd said something like 'he just found himself in the wrong family,' which would be more specific and tie back to that major Season 1 theme. But I really did like the line where she said she had never understood Ward until she met FrameWard. (I don't know if anyone else is calling him that, but I might.) I feel like so many people who watch the show are in the same boat, that Ward has been this unredeemably evil guy, when the whole time I've seen him as being set on his dark course by Hydra and never finding an opportunity to get out. Now, we get to see a different Ward, the same character who had a different history, but still fundamentally the same character. They don't have a ton of time left in the season, but I hope they spend some more of it on the Ward/Skye dynamic, and don't just give Ward a heroic sacrifice in the next episode.

So, they've obviously opened the door with Project Looking Glass for bringing all of these characters into the real world. New Fitz (is there a good name to work faux into there?), FrameWard, Little Mack, Trip. I don't want to see any of them cross over, except maybe New Fitz to get two Fitzs running around until they kill one in the season finale. Or maybe a bunch come over temporarily, but the only way to kill Aida is to kill all of them. But especially for Ward, I don't want to see him return to the cast full time. This arc is special, giving a true send-off to the character, which would largely be wasted if he pops out of the Looking Glass and becomes a Real Boy.

The Framework is not real. Simmons might be cold when she says nothing in there matters, but she's ultimately right. The people are advanced simulations, artificial inhabitants (much like Aida), but it is not Mack's daughter, it is not Grant Ward. I want to see the Agents shut down that false world without letting it into the real one. Living with your regrets is part of life; going and changing them in the Framework has not helped anyone, and there's no promise that even something good like saving a kid (or bringing back a dead one) will make anything better. I want to see our characters, especially Mack and Skye, struggle with shutting down the Framework without trying to 'compromise' by bringing dead people across for good.

 

[Delightful]

CAN WE JUST AHHHHHHHHH

[Erandeni]

On 17/5/2017 at 11:45 PM, Delightfully Smoak said:

CAN WE JUST AHHHHHHHHH

Yes, we can

[Spoolofwhool]

Sooo.... Spoilers for 4x22

Spoiler

That ending with the Ghost Rider was quite... Strange.

The actual ending was very strange.

Overall, a good ending to a very strong season. LMD arc was very well done. I quite enjoyed it. 
My only disappointment was that it felt too rushed. They pushed the "Aida's plan to discredit SHIELD and inhumans" too fast. We never got to feel much of the impacts of the Daisy LMD shooting Talbut, or see the follow through to the initial. While the old switcheroo to put Ghost Rider in Coulson was good, the final fight was so anticlimatic. It went by too quickly. Once again, the introduction of Ghost Rider being after Aida because of her body and the knowledge it can permanently hurt her was made and used to conclude it too quickly.

I look forward to see where it goes from there.

 

[Pagerunner]

Spoiler

I didn't like this ending. It felt like just ending things to get on with something else. Ghost Rider just literally showed up out of thin air to defeat Aida. The Framework shut down, but everyone left who matters gets out fine. The Russian is still out there, but we don't really care about him anymore, we beat up all his LMDs. Let's put our agents on the run again by having an LMD shoot Talbot, so nobody in-universe wonders where they go for the next season. But we'll just have Talbot survive getting shot in the head, because why not. And the Framework, they had built a revolution against Hydra in there, but it just shuts down and we get some dramatic scenes from the cast. What about Ward's last scene, where the citizens were there to support him in holding the TV station? That went nowhere. Everything in this episode seemed designed as an off-ramp for their various plotlines. It was just, "Let's stop using Aida and the Framework so we can do what we have planned for next season." It was an ending, not a climax. Probably the worst episode of the season, although I wasn't super thrilled with the Ghost Rider arc either. My favorite character on this show is still Grant Ward, so I'm bummed they didn't utilize him more when they were getting Mack and Yoyo out. I never cared about Radcliffe; but if they had done that scene with Ward, talking to a picture of Skye...

So, what's going on with next season? As a non-comic-reader, my impression was that this was connected to the Inhumans (Royal Family is on the moon, right?). And everyone's saying they're in the Friday Night Death Slot when they come back... am I the only one who remembers SciFi Fridays? Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, and Battlestar Galactica, all three on Friday nights on SciFi (before they changed their name to SyFy and decided to put wrestling in the coveted Friday block, pushing Stargate Universe to... Tuesday, I think it was)? I might catch up on Once Upon A Time, if it's blocked together; I used to watch both shows, but lost interest in Once a season or two ago. But if it showed before Agents, I'd definitely watch it.

 

[Mestiv]

Question for those that are up to date with agents. I stopped watching after the Hive series. Hive got killed, don't really remember what else happened. Should I catch up with the show? Is the quality more or less the same? 

[Claincy]

8 minutes ago, Mestiv said:

Question for those that are up to date with agents. I stopped watching after the Hive series. Hive got killed, don't really remember what else happened. Should I catch up with the show? Is the quality more or less the same? 

I'm a couple of episodes behind because of the delay in airing in Aus, but season 4 is miles ahead of season 3 in quality imo.

[Claincy]

Up to date now as the final ep aired this week in Aus. Gotta say I very much enjoyed this season.

...

And the stinger for season 5. I did not expect that, but I'm definitely on board for it!

[ParadoxicalZen]

Cannot wait...Inhumans Hyyyyyype!

[Kurkistan]

Just caught up on Netflix.

So... I got the impression that the show wanted us to dislike Mace for the first while there. But I didn't? Besides beaurocratic silliness I don't recall him doing much of anything to dislike him for. Was I reading the show's subtext wrong?

Edited June 30, 2017 by Kurkistan

[Kaymyth]

On 6/28/2017 at 10:46 PM, Kurkistan said:

Just caught up on Netflix.

So... I got the impression that the show wanted us to dislike Mace for the first while there. But I didn't? Besides beaurocratic silliness I don't recall him doing much of anything to dislike him for. Was I reading the show's subtex wrong?

I kind of feel like they were really just trying to keep us on the fence about it. Make us as unsure about him as the team was in order to increase tension.

The result was...well, a bit clumsy, really.

[ParadoxicalZen]

I just thought Mace was just a clumsy character to begin with, a fact I actually like about him. He's a stand up guy that is just in a little over his head due to happenstance and is trying to keep up and actually be an addition to the team.

[Delightful]

Is Inhumans gonna have crossover though?

[ParadoxicalZen]

14 hours ago, Delightful said:

Is Inhumans gonna have crossover though?

I'm thinking it'll be either a lead in/set up hybrid thing as they're different broadcasting channels methinks, unless I remember that wrongly. It would be interesting if they instead go with a generic space-theme I.e S.W.O.R.D but I'm hoping for Inhumans more