Agents of SHIELD - Season 2 Discussion Threads. (Spoilers Likely)

[Reverend]

Fine episode. For some reason it felt like a filler in the end even though they covered quite a bit. It just felt lacking.

I can't possibly think how any episode that ends in a cliffhanger that sets up the midseason finale could possibly be considered filler. What happened to Mac alone moves it out of filler category, but it moves several pieces along (Skye meeting her dad, Coulson finding the temple, the team learning about the Diviner and its purpose, etc.). None of those things are filler just because the episode didn't resolve them.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of people label something "filler" in place of "episode where not everything is completely resolved" where what it really means is "episode where nothing of value happens and nothing changes". You'd think it would be an easy distinction to make in a serialized show where do nothing stand-alones would stick out like a sore thumb.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

SHIELD being SHIELD, I expect a bit of globe-trotting. In fact, I expect a lot of globe-trotting. The Stockholm expedition was a necessary thing.

I'm not saying the characters in the show shouldn't travel, but it's really easy to simulate places. In that same episode, they go to some Eastern European country and use Sweden to simulate that. They also have plenty of episodes where Los Angeles is a substitute for wherever it is they're going. LOST managed to film a scene in snowy Germany in Hawaii. Why was it necessary to film that particular scene in the actual location?

 

[kitik]

Great episode.

Just about everyone got a chance to shine. Interesting conversation between Fitzsimmons, but there's obviously more to come. Glad they both finally accepted that they needed to talk to each other about how things have changed.

I love how both Tripp and Ward asked the Koenigs for some more details behind their numbers or existence, but neither got any answers. Dammit Patton Oswalt, quit fillibustering.

That little side conversation between Bobbi and Mack really seemed to drop a bit of a bombshell. I wonder if they're setting something up for the second half of the season. For that reason alone, you might assume Mack is okay. His superstrength body was capable of surviving icers and other blows in the fight, so he should survive the fall too.

No clue what Bobbi and Mack may have been referring to, but I'll point out that we haven't heard much of anything from Ian Quinn this season. He's certainly capable to buying operatives. That said, I'm just grasping at straws. The conversation between Bobbi and Mack sounded more specific than "hey, we're both double agents, wink wink". Though Hartley may have been the type to be bought too.

Maybe they're both secretly working for Fury, keeping an eye on Coulson. Maybe they're part of a group trying to form S.W.O.R.D. Or maybe they're all Skrull agents.

 

[bbjeg]

Fine episode. For some reason it felt like a filler in the end even though they covered quite a bit. It just felt lacking.

I can't possibly think how any episode that ends in a cliffhanger that sets up the midseason finale could possibly be considered filler. What happened to Mac alone moves it out of filler category, but it moves several pieces along (Skye meeting her dad, Coulson finding the temple, the team learning about the Diviner and its purpose, etc.). None of those things are filler just because the episode didn't resolve them.

I wasn't saying it was a filler, I was saying it felt like a filler. They hit a few new bases but if I missed this episode and watched the next, I knew they found the city in the prior episode, Raina could have been captured already in her down time, starting the next episode with Skye already captured would make it more interesting (like that episode where Coulson was already captured at the start (I think "The Hub")), and having the B team rushing to seal up the entrance to the hidden city with Bobbi frantically saying "What about Mac" would explain the rest. It wasn't a filler obviously because it did hit a few new bases (like I said before) but I could have missed it and still would have been caught up.

 

[Marsden]

It did have the feeling of a "part 1" to it more than most episodes.

 

[LaxScrutiny]

Hydra has the Obelisk, but doesn't have the location. So May decides to hand over the location, Skye, and Raina without a fight, giving Hydra the means to unlock every secret weapon in the whole shebang, and putting Coulson's small team completely at risk without being able to warn him. If there was ever a situation worth going down fighting, this would be it. She'd better have a plan.

I would have also asked Ward, since Hydra has a 100% success rate of brainwashing Shield agents, is he sure he can prevent that happening to Skye?

 

[Starscream2112]

I think everybody is missing the most important part of this week’s episode. Lost in Space is part of MCU!

 

[Gaith]

I'm sure Reinhardt got a trial. I mean, are we supposed to believe that the Allies in the MCU gave Hermann Göring a trial, but not a commander in Hydra?

Well, to be cynical for a moment, a big difference between Göring and Reinhardt is that Göring was a known, public figure. Putting him on trial was a win-win for the Allies, both to show the world how guilty he was and how awesomely civilized we were.

Reinhardt, OTOH, was a member of a quasi-secret techno-cult sect. A lot easier to dump in a cell indefinitely with no one ever noticing, always on-call should interrogation ever prove desirable, and the flashback scene gave the pretty clear impression that that's exactly what was going on.

I don't for one second believe that Agent Carter would allow someone to be executed or imprisoned for life without a trial.

Perhaps her series will shed more light on this, but for now I find your abundance of faith... unwarranted.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I think that the implication is that the SSR/SHIELD treated people like Reinhardt, who had dangerous knowledge about people and objects of power, the same way they treated the people and objects of power themselves...something to be locked away if necessary and hidden from the world.

 

[Reverend]

Just looking over that dream sequence again because you just know they've put some clues into the imagery (I mean why not, there's already a built-in Twin Peaks reference, no?)

First off as others have noted Skye's wearing a floral dress. Best guess this is referencing the (probably Inhuman) connection between Skye & Raina.

What really got my attention though is the music box. Unless I'm very much mistaken, it was playing "Bicycle Built For Two", possibly better known as "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do..." Now this could be meaningless in and of itself, *OR* it could be the key to the whole thing. The most obvious meaning here is that it's a deep subconscious memory; something she heard as a baby. The connection here is that it's playing while her surrogate parents (Coulson & May) are there playing out Skye's abandonment issues. Note that Coulson is holding a Chinese paper, making the connection with her home village.

The lyrics of the song themselves may be speaking for Skye's dad: "I'm half crazy, all for the love of you." It could even be playing on several level at once, being *even more* literal and indicate that Skye's real name is "Daisy". On a whim I did a search on Marvel characters with that name and this one rather jumped out at me. An agent (and apparently one time Director) of SHIELD who grew up in foster care under a different name and who's father is a medical doctor with super-power fuelled anger management issues. Sound familiar?

Anyway, getting back to the dream; Dream-Dad Coulson calls the baby "angel eyes". Normally I wouldn't read anything into this, except this episode has a whole sub-plot going on about "blue angels from the sky". Could go either way. The rest of it seems pretty self explanatory, though I wouldn't be surprised if they snuck something in that could only possibly make sense in hindsight. Still, if nothing else we have another possible candidate for Skye's true identity. If at any point she causes an earthquake with her mind, we can pretty much call it confirmed.

P.S. Random thought regarding the city. Those shafts leading to the surface; a means of ingress or a means to pump the terrigen mists up to the surface and thus cause a world-wide exposure and presumably mass mutation of all those potential "not-mutants"?

P.P.S Who want's to bet that the cliffhanger twist will be that someone on the team other than Skye will turn out to have been a not-mutant all along. Fitz maybe? To obvious? Simmons doesn't feel right, but then neither does anyone else.

 

[Guy Gardener]

If Skye's real name is Daisy... Raina has been superbly ####ing with her by wearing all those flower dresses.

 

[The Old Mixer]

It's likely that Daddy Hyde influenced Raina to dress that way in memory of his long-lost daughter.

 

[Reverend]

It's likely that Daddy Hyde influenced Raina to dress that way in memory of his long-lost daughter.

I don't think any of her dresses ever featured any actual daisies, but I could be wrong. Regardless, Raina's fixation on floral dresses--that appears to border on mania, given that look on her face when Ward gave her one during the prison break--is clearly something deeply rooted in her psyche.

A mnemonic trigger maybe? Perhaps an expression of something the Kree implanted deep in the Inhuman genetic unconscious?

Small point of semantics, but to what extent are the Kree actually involved in the comics? I mean is this an officially sanctioned program of the Kree Empire, or some rogue operation by people who just happen to be Kree?
Was the modern Kree Empire the even around all those thousands of years ago? How dose that line up with the timeline of Asgard''s involvement?
Is it possible that modern Kree (officially or otherwise) have no idea what went on on Terra. If nothing else it appears from GotG that the galaxy at large (or at least Zandar) is at least peripherally aware that we exist at all.

Given what Quill's mother said about his father I can't help but wonder if he fits into this somehow. I mean just how many alien species could have visited this one world in the guise of "angels"...besides the Vorlons.

 

[Turtletrekker]

The Inhuman program was officially sanctioned by the Supreme Intelligence in an attempt to jump-start the Kree's DNA, which had reached the end of it's evolutionary progress.

They tampered with the DNA of a hundred species, only for the SI to determine that these advances human(oids) possessed the potential to rise up and take control from the Kree Empire away from him, and he ordered them all destroyed. Due to a glitch of some sort (the specifics of which escape me) five of the altered species, including the altered humans, were spared.

 

[Enterprise1701]

P.S. Random thought regarding the city. Those shafts leading to the surface; a means of ingress or a means to pump the terrigen mists up to the surface and thus cause a world-wide exposure and presumably mass mutation of all those potential "not-mutants"?

Hmm. Why hasn't that already been done?

P.P.S Who want's to bet that the cliffhanger twist will be that someone on the team other than Skye will turn out to have been a not-mutant all along. Fitz maybe? To obvious? Simmons doesn't feel right, but then neither does anyone else.

I was hoping that Mack would exposed to Diviner energy by the city's security system and then, as a surprise, develop some kind of Inhuman ability.

Small point of semantics, but to what extent are the Kree actually involved in the comics? I mean is this an officially sanctioned program of the Kree Empire, or some rogue operation by people who just happen to be Kree?
Was the modern Kree Empire the even around all those thousands of years ago? How dose that line up with the timeline of Asgard''s involvement?
Is it possible that modern Kree (officially or otherwise) have no idea what went on on Terra. If nothing else it appears from GotG that the galaxy at large (or at least Zandar) is at least peripherally aware that we exist at all.

Given the power of the Diviner, I lean towards what appears to be Attilan and the Inhumans as an Empire-sanctioned project that is currently low on the list of priorities given the level of human technological development.

Given how advanced the Kree and other races are, I say it's possible that the same Empire has been around since before the Pyramids of Giza (completed sometime between 3000 B.C.E. and 2000 B.C.E. according to real-life science). The only other solid data we have on MCU extraterrestrial civilizations' ages is that in Thor: The Dark World, the Dark Elves and Asgardians were warring until the Convergence of 2987 B.C.E. And that the Dark Elves apparently predate the Big Bang.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The intelligence ordered the destruction of the inhuman experiments after it was psychohistorically predicted that at least one of them would rise up and take over the Empire.

The Inhumans of Earth, and 4 other worlds survived due to book keeping errors.

The Kree forgot that they existed.

 

[Reverend]

P.S. Random thought regarding the city. Those shafts leading to the surface; a means of ingress or a means to pump the terrigen mists up to the surface and thus cause a world-wide exposure and presumably mass mutation of all those potential "not-mutants"?

Hmm. Why hasn't that already been done?

Budget cuts? Whatever the Kree were up to, clearly something went wrong. Maybe Odin or Bor told them to GTFO.

Small point of semantics, but to what extent are the Kree actually involved in the comics? I mean is this an officially sanctioned program of the Kree Empire, or some rogue operation by people who just happen to be Kree?
Was the modern Kree Empire the even around all those thousands of years ago? How dose that line up with the timeline of Asgard''s involvement?
Is it possible that modern Kree (officially or otherwise) have no idea what went on on Terra. If nothing else it appears from GotG that the galaxy at large (or at least Zandar) is at least peripherally aware that we exist at all.

Given the power of the Diviner, I lean towards what appears to be Attilan and the Inhumans as an Empire-sanctioned project that is currently low on the list of priorities given the level of human technological development.

If the point is to unlock genetic potential, then I don't think technological development is even a factor. Indeed it may even be a detriment as dependence on technology greatly slows down environmental adaptation and on the off chance they create something dangerous to them, they'd be a *lot* easier to deal with if they didn't have nukes, stealth technology and global communications.

Given how advanced the Kree and other races are, I say it's possible that the same Empire has been around since before the Pyramids of Giza (completed sometime between 3000 B.C.E. and 2000 B.C.E. according to real-life science). The only other solid data we have on MCU extraterrestrial civilizations' ages is that in Thor: The Dark World, the Dark Elves and Asgardians were warring until the Convergence of 2987 B.C.E. And that the Dark Elves apparently predate the Big Bang.

I'm just wondering if they've been stable all this time or if they've had Empires rise, fall and rise again in the interim.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Technology gets to a certain point in the MCU and then stops.

All aliens despite being around for varying numbers of epochs seem to only be equally as menacing.

Human beings like Reed Richards on the hand seem to be inventing new technology?

Or is he merely playing with technology that the governments of earth don't know yet that they should ban?

 

[Marsden]

Was I the only one that thought of the Navy stunt team when she mentioned the Blue Angels?

 

[Reverend]

Was I the only one that thought of the Navy stunt team when she mentioned the Blue Angels?

Well I'm British, so when I think military aerobatics I think "Red Arrows".
Mind you with that logic you'd think it'd come to mind any time Roy Harper is depicted, though till now I hadn't made the connection.

Technology gets to a certain point in the MCU and then stops.

All aliens despite being around for varying numbers of epochs seem to only be equally as menacing.

Human beings like Reed Richards on the hand seem to be inventing new technology?

Or is he merely playing with technology that the governments of earth don't know yet that they should ban?

That's pretty much why I asked if the Kree Empire has been a constant since pre-historic times, or have they had their ups and downs. Asgard appears pretty static, but that seems to be built into the mythos. "The Realm Eternal" and all that. Any indication how far back the rivalry between the Kree and Zandar goes back? How do the Skrull & Shi'ar figure into things? Any other major civilizations out there?