Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Thread for those who have seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Cafe Society
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So, it seems we should have a separate Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Thread for those of us who have seen the new Captain America movie.

Scrollover space . . .

The last episode ended with Coulson’s speculation that The Clairvoyant was actually an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Now, from the Capatin America movie, we know that Hydra has been working within S.H.I.E.L.D. for decades.

I am inclined now to think that we are not going to meet any one single character called The Clairvoyant. The various Hydra operatives in S.H.I.E.L.D. no doubt have a hieracrchy- and there’s someone at the top of that hieracrchy- but I think “The Clairvoyant” was made up to throw everybody off, get the good guys out searching for a single bad guy, and to keep the lower level bad guys in the dark about for whom they are actually working.

Alternately, the Armin Zola AI could maybe be The Clairvoyant but Cap 2 had me under the impression that actual warm blooded Hydra operatives were more using the Zola algorithm as a resource rather than following AI Zola as a leader.

We know that Sitwell is/was a bad guy now. I want to rewatch the last episode for a reminder of the explanation that was given for pulling him off the hunt for The Clairvoyant. I was a little upset to see him as a Hydra operative, I’ve liked his character since he was introduced in the MCU and I think this reveal is a little out of place with his previous characterization- example, in the Marvel One Shot Item 47, I don’t think a Hydra operative would have made the call that Sitwell made at the end. I have thought he’s been a little less likeable in his appearances on the T.V. show- and now his getting shot by Simmons is even funnier. I did think his death in Cap 2 is one of the best deaths ever!

I still don’t think Agent Hand is a Hydra operative, though I do believe she has been unwittingly reporting to and manipulated by Hyrda operatives. As I understand it, her character in the comic books is among the more complex Marvel characters (this, just from reading her Wiki page, I’m not a reader of the comics). Given that she’s been a long running complex character, I just don’t think she’s going to be revealed as the Big Bad.

I think it’s clear that Fury’s suspicions about evil lurking within S.H.I.E.L.D. go back a ways. I think his suspicions go back as least as far as the events of The Avengers, maybe farther back than that. I think it will be revealed that this was his motivation for resurrecting Coulson. He resurrected Coulson completely off the grid at a non-S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, then gave him the resources to operate completely independently. I think Fury deliberately lied to Coulson so as to plant a seed of doubt that would grow and put Coulson on a path of seeking answers. Fury suspected evil operating within S.H.I.E.L.D. so he put the one man he trusted above all others on the job of investigating.

I think May is reporting to Fury. I don’t think she’s one of the bad guys. I think she has always had information that Coulson didn’t know about and that her mission has been to watch after Coulson and report back to Fury. Yes, Coulson chose her for the team but I think Fury set Coulson up to choose her- an agent of her skill set having retired to a desk job? Sitting there conveniently ready to be recruited as Coulson was putting his team together? I think it was set up by Fury.

In terms of timeline: I’m inclined to think that the coming episodes will lead up to the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I don’t think the very next episode with be after the events of the movie. I think all remaining episodes of this season will take place immediately prior to the events of the movie.

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Thanks for starting this thread - I was concerned I had already been polluting the CA2 thread.

There are 6 more episodes this season, so I don’t think they’ll be able to pull off that they’re all taking place before CA2 - by the time we get to the finale, everyone will have seen the movie 2 months in the past. I think the next episode is set right before the movie, the next one or two after that will be concurrent with CA2, and the final 3 or 4 will show the aftermath of CA2.

CA2 was filmed before the first episode of AoS even broadcast, so the writers have known since the beginning that they’d have to take it into account. They’ve been planning this since the beginning. Heck, that’s probably why Fury created the team to begin with - he wanted Coulson, who is one of two people he could trust, to run his own team to keep an eye on what’s going on in the rest of SHIELD. That’s why he kept Coulson’s resurrection secret from him - to make him dig for SHIELD secrets, and find out everything he could.

I think it’s going to turn out that Hand was not Hydra, but refuses to believe that Hydra actually infiltrated SHIELD to that extent. She’s going to try to run a successor to SHIELD that has, among it’s goals, tracking down the “traitors” to SHIELD like Fury and Romanov. Coulson’s team will go renegade, still being run by Fury, and be fighting both the SHIELD successor and Hydra.

One interesting point from other articles - Romanov released every SHIELD file to the internet - “Oh look, it’s trending.” Which means all of Coulson and Skye’s pasts are now open for anyone to read, including them.

But at this point, it looks like they’re not even trying to keep the casual viewers - if you haven’t seen CA2, the plot of the show will quickly become incomprehensible, with tons of unseen events completely changing the direction of the show.

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Well, I know that our heroes are an independent unit as of 3 episodes from now, and we get the name of a HYDRA agent who was probably The Clairvoyant. How I know? I read ahead on my Tivo schedule. :wink:

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I imagine the rest of the season will be the SHIELD Civil War. Not sure if they will resolve this in the show and reference it in the movies or have to tread water until it is solved in a movie (that seems unrealistic as the next Marvel movie is Guardians of the Galaxy which won’t involve SHIELD at all). In fact I think the next Terrestrial Marvel movie is actually The Avengers 2 (or does Ant Man come out first?). So this almost has to be resolved in the show.

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Which gives them a great hook for the next season or so. Feige must have a very interesting wall in his office.

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Pit, pit, pit and fuck, fuck, fuck, and pit-fuck while we’re at it, nearly all episode blurb writers. Hottest pitza hell.

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I’d like to see Coulson’s team remain intact and it would be cool, imo, if SHIELD was rebuilt as a smaller, leaner organization. This thing seemed so bloated and unwieldy with suits walking all around Triskileon, Helicarriers, a bunch of extra helicarriers (OK three, but you know what I mean), secret sandbox lock away places, advanced tech and super labs, and everything else they’ve shown us.

With SHIELD shutting down, where does this leave Graviton and all that stuff locked away?

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That is the $64,000 question.

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Don’t forget Blonski, who was previously referenced.

My gut feeling is that Zola is The Clairvoyant, not Strucker or other Hydra. And I think May is on Coulson’s side reporting to Fury.

I think Batroc and Crossbones both fit better in the SHIELD universe than in the superhero universe. I’d like to see them recur on the series. However, this series hasn’t been picked up for a 2nd yet - Disney may keep it to help sell movies and keep interest between releases, but if this were a stand-alone, they’d just be burning off the rest of the episodes at this point. Ratings were down for the heavily promoted lead-in to the Captain America movie.

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The article in USA Today about the tie in between the TV show and the movie said it was expected to be renewed.

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It’s kind of like when the Soviet Union collapsed and left nuclear weapons all over in places that were no longer stable. Recovering that stuff could be a show in itself (a sci fi Friday the Thirteenth: The Series).

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Does anyone else think it’s inconsistent with the previously established Marvel Cinematic Universe that the Triskelion is located right in the middle of Washington, D.C.?

It seems to me that in MCU continuity until the events of The Avengers S.H.I.E.L.D. was pretty much a secret from anyone not need-to-know. Pepper Potts had no idea about S.H.I.E.L.D. in the first Iron Man movie- and she worked for a major military contractor, you’d think they’d know about any major untapped markets / competitors. Hell, Tony Stark didn’t seem to know about S.H.I.E.L.D. and his father was one of the founders! Indeed he was completely surprised to find out his father was a founder when it was revealed in the second Iron Man movie.

Jane Foster had never heard of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the first Thor movie- Erik Selvig had heard of it but he knew it as a shady secret organization and he only knew about it because he knew someone unfortunate enough to have had a run in with them.

And in the very first episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Skye talks about how the Battle of New York was a major reveal to the world about the existence of not only superheros and aliens but about the existence of S.H.I.E.L.D. itself.

So, now we see the not at all inconspicuous Triskelion right in the middle of Washington, D.C.? Are we meant to believe that it has only recently been constructed in the time since the Battle of New York?

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Eh, I figured it was a sort of building shuffle: ‘everyone’ thinks it’s a CIA building, the CIA thinks it’s a NSA building, and the few people in the NSA that knew better knew how to keep their trap shut.

Then the Battle of New York happened, SHIELD was made semi-public, so they just hung their shingle out officially at that point.

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The construction contracts on those helicarrier hangers must have been billions. Hard to hide in the middle of DC.

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New theory on timing—Cap 2 is happening simultaneously with the last episode of Agents. The deal with the heliocarriers was the incident referred to with the “something big is happening” (paraphrased) at SHIELD…which would explain why Coulson doesn’t appear in Cap 2…I guess the scene/ad with Fury could be a mini-flashback of sorts…

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My gut feelings: there is no “Clairvoyant” (he’s just an invention to cover up the mole), Agent Hand is one of the Hydra insiders (others seem to think she’s a good guy who just mistakenly thinks Coulson’s team is bad), Agent May is working for Fury.

As I said in the other thead, I still think it’s going to be damn awkward even if Agents of SHIELD goes with the Hydra angle. Two different infiltrations of SHIELD would definitely be really difficult to swallow, but it seems strange for Hydra to have been going to such lengths to create the Clairvoyant when they didn’t need to given that they had already infiltrated so much of SHIELD - just seems like a good way to actually create attention in the first place, instead of deflecting it. While I like Oakminster’s theory on the timing, it still seems weird for Hand (assuming my Hand-as-Hydra theory is correct) to purposely single out Coulson’s team to be brought in.

I’m also a bit disappointed they made Sitwell a bad guy, just seems a bit out of character given what else we’ve seen about him. Ah well.

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My guess is some form of SHIELD will remain. Probably with Victoria Hand in charge. We’ve seen that Nick Fury and Maria Hill have left SHIELD. Hand has been established as a high ranking SHIELD officer and she wasn’t mentioned in the movie which leaves her available as a character. Plus she’s been the head of SHIELD at times in the comic book series.

Plus her loyalties are ambiguous enough to keep her interesting. She can portray herself as a SHIELD loyalist who feels that an organization like SHIELD is still needed even after the HYDRA debacle. But some people are going to agree with Steve Rodgers that SHIELD should have been shut down entirely. And others are going to wonder if Hand might be a HYDRA sleeper who escaped detection. This means Coulson and his team will have to decide if they should oppose Hand or work with her to rebuild SHIELD.

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I think it’s possible that Coulson was the entire reason The Clairvoyant was created.
Fury went outside S.H.I.E.L.D. resources to resurrect Coulson. Coulson’s back walking around and breathing and the higher-ups in HYDRA are thinking “How the hell did that happen!? We want to be able to bring people back from the dead too!” So, The Clairvoyant was created to draw Coulson into discovering/revealing the means of his resurrection.

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There are at least 3 different events from the movie that could be Simmons’ “something big is happening, everyone’s rushing to the situation room”, and I think most likely it’s Fury’s assassination. That’s what really starts everything off in the movie, and would be the first thing likely to bleed over into the TV show, and lead to Hand’s takeover bid of SHIELD. I can’t believe Coulson’s team is so far out of the loop that the first thing they hear of the troubles at SHIELD is the helicarrier launch/destruction.

Oh, and I’m assuming that Sitwell was pulled off the Clairvoyant mission to go to the Lemurian Star to reprogram the satellites for Hydra (or whatever he was doing there). There’s no indication from the movie that he had time to return from that mission, head out to the Bus, then go back to Washington.

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It’s going to be fun to watch “Our Heroes” without all the support apparatus. The Bus is gone, all that real-time intelligence is gone, but HYDRA is still there.