Agents of SHIELD. Season 1 Discussion Thread

What bothers me more about the Wall of Valor scene is, why did Skye consider Bucky Barnes's name worth mentioning aloud? The real-world reason is obvious -- as foreshadowing for The Winter Soldier -- but in the story, why would that name be significant to her? Is Bucky famous? Did she pick up the name from reading about Captain America in SHIELD records? Did she just think it was a funny name? Without a clear character motivation, it felt like a forced Easter egg.

 

Sure, we can interpret it, but the episode itself should've provided more context rather than just having her recite the name in a vacuum. I'm not saying I can't think of a reason, I'm saying it was awkwardly handled from a writing/directing perspective.

 

What's also interesting from that wall is that the same number of SHIELD agents have died every 24 years. You gotta love consistency, I guess....

 

The Avengers are famous public figures after the Battle of New York. They even have action figures. Even before that, Coulson had trading cards of Cap. The sidekick of Cap would be almost as famous.

 

If that were the case then why all the different seals presumably denoting the division's three branches?

Maybe it's because he was the first name on the list...and she thought it was a funny looking name? I know if I saw something like that wall the first two names I'd read out of curiosity would be the first and the last.

As for the numbers, I think people are overestimating the mortality rate of a *highly* trained and effective covert organization. These guys aren't read shirts.

 

I guess so, although movieverse Bucky didn't really seem to be his "sidekick" so much as one member of his team. Although he was the first one to "die," so I guess that would count for something in the history books.

I had the impression she was looking in the middle of the wall, though.

 

My impression was the wall was duplicated at each of the different academies.

 

We're not talking about different branches with those logos. We're talking different eras of the organization, probably.

 

A not insignificant number, I would image. Right off the bat, you have Abraham Erskine. More recently, Loki wiped out the entire team studying the Tesseract with the exception of Selvig. In fact, Widow mentions that Loki killed 80 people in two days and I would have to think that most of them were SHIELD agents.

Nope. Erskine was before Bucky.

 

And I have a few theories about the Sif appearance. I have read that Sif comes to Midgard with a very "specific mission", and the producers and promotions have been promising that it's "all connected". Therefore, it will have to do with Peter MacNicol's Elliot Randolph.

Either Elliot Randoph was actually an Asgard-class liar and was really a sociopathic criminal on Asgard who came to Earth to escape prosecution and Sif has come down to bring him back, or Centipede decides to incorporate a little Asgardian DNA into their soldiers and kidnap Randolph and Sif comes to stop it. In either instance, Heimdall could've noticed what was happening and alerted Sif or whoever he would report such a thing to.

 

Or Sif finds out that Fury used Asgardian tech to resurrect Coulson

 

So Bucky survived WWII?

Isn't that the point of the Winter Soldier plot, that we thought that he didn't survive, until we found out that he did?