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Agents of SHIELD: Season 3 - Discussion (SPOILERS LIKELY)

And then we have rogue Daisy. She's obviously trying to help people, so why is she also committing acts of seismic terrorism? Maybe it's not really her and she's just getting blamed for it.

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"Several people were taken to a local hospital for minor injuries following the incident, including three unidentified subjects who were attempting to flee the city from law enforcement after allegedly murdering a local..."

That should answer your question about why she is "committing acts of seismic terrorism".
 
And I'm sure that local was an Inhuman. But she has enough control over her powers to take somebody down without causing massive damage like that.
 
Awesome finale. This show is just so damn well-constructed and expertly plotted. Those Daredevil writers should take their heads out of their asses, watch, and learn! (Oh, and: Laurel and Lincoln makes me two for two. Now if I can just get Barry and Caitlyn together... :p)

Tell 'em, woman! Though, it's hard to be too mad when the show is this good more or less by itself. Still, with Cap and Co. on the run, S4 would be a great time for Chris Evans to cameo at last. The show has proved it can stand on its own, and that's the best time to do crossovers, really.

Of course there could be some misdirection going on here and "director" might not mean what we think it does.
As much as I trust the show at this point, my gut reaction is Coulson no longer being director would be a major bummer; it's been awesome seeing just how much steel and grit is behind his genial, mild-mannered demeanor. So I was hoping he was referring to the FBI Director or something, though the fact that he was on stakeout duty certainly implies a change of position.

ETA: Welp, looks like those who pointed to the fallout of all this leading to Phil's ouster were right. Ya had a good run, Director-Sir.

And yeah, I wish we'd gotten a somber fade-out on the jet. That flash-forward tease was totally unnecessary.

.
 
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Who did you feel didn't contribute?

Oh, most of them had token contributions, but they felt like afterthoughts. Especially Mac - the professional who suddenly has to be saved by his inexperienced partner because he won't shut up and do his job. And tying Coulson into the 'paying for our mistakes' theme that Daisy was going through was a good idea, but the story still focused so much more on her that he felt like an afterthought.

Deus ex machina
refers to something that hasn't been previously set up for the audience to know it exists and could play a role. The "memory machine" was introduced and explained way back in season one when it was used to bring Coulson's suppressed memories of his resurrection to the surface, and has been mentioned and/or seen multiple times since, including earlier this season when they used it on Strucker's son.

Yes, it previously existed. Nothing we'd ever been told before gave any indication that it could be used as a weapon like that, nor that Hive could be in any weakened by messinng with his memories, so, still a deus ex machina.

And Hive cannot melt Inhumans

I don't recall this ever being established. Inhuman flesh is no different than human flesh, so it makes no sense to say that he can't devour them. He just chooses not to, because they're his people (but that clearly didn't really apply to Daisy anymore).

nor sway humans.

Lucky for the humans he fought that he conveniently forgot that he could melt them.
 
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Well, it's encouraging that they don't seem inclined to bring tragedy to Fitz and Simmons.

I'm assuming they were in a car, hence taking a bridge down.
I'm sure it will turn out to be "not as bad a sit seems."
 
Yes, it previously existed. Nothing we'd ever been told before gave any indication that it could be used as a weapon like that, nor that Hive could be in any weakened by messinng with his memories, so, still a deus ex machina.
It nearly fried the brains of those who used it before, which was what they explicitly sought to do to Hive with it. They didn't know for sure how effective it would be against him, but they hoped and it panned out. Still not a deus ex machina.

I don't recall this ever being established. Inhuman flesh is no different than human flesh, so it makes no sense to say that he can't devour them. He just chooses not to, because they're his people (but that clearly didn't really apply to Daisy anymore).
OK, can't or won't, what's the difference? That he doesn't is an established element of his character. And I don't remember it being established that "Inhuman flesh is no different to human flesh" either.

Lucky for the humans he fought that he conveniently forgot that he could melt them.
Which humans did he fight? I only recall him coming into hand to hand combat with Daisy. Forgive me if I'm having a brain fart here. He came face to face with the Coulson hologram, which he didn't realize was a hologram, but said he wanted to possess and use his body, a good reason why he didn't try to melt him.
 
OK, can't or won't, what's the difference? That he doesn't is an established element of his character. And I don't remember it being established that "Inhuman flesh is no different to human flesh" either.

There's an obvious difference between won't and chooses not to. He never did it to Inhumans before because he always had a better option (why kill someone when you can control them?). In the case of Daisy, he now no longer has that option (thanks to Lash), yet he wastes his time trading punches with her instead of just getting her out of the way so he can create his Inhuman paradise for all the non-Lash-infected people.

And Inhumans are literally Humans with only the tiniest of genetic changes (they still look exactly like people). Hive's melting power was specifically stated to be the Hive parasites eating the flesh, which is a purely mechanical process, and there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe it wouldn't work just as well on an inhuman as it does on a human (except perhaps for some specific Inhumans, like someone whose ability is being physically invulnerable). Unless you're postulating that he can't digest them or they could be poisonous to him, which would be pretty weird, considering he is an Inhuman himself.


Which humans did he fight? I only recall him coming into hand to hand combat with Daisy. Forgive me if I'm having a brain fart here. He came face to face with the Coulson hologram, which he didn't realize was a hologram, but said he wanted to possess and use his body, a good reason why he didn't try to melt him.

He came face to face with Mac and YoYo and had more than enough time to use either his sway or his melty ability before they fired the machine. Plus - I didn't have a lot of time to process the episode after I watched it, so I'm not 100% sure about the exact sequence of events anymore - but I believe Hive was specifically led to that spot by one of the other characters, who he, again, just casually followed instead of using his abilities.
 
Grendelsbayne, you put your response inside the quote tags, so if I tried to quote your post I'd get nothing, so I'll just say: Inhumans were genetically engineered by the Kree, so natural evolutionary considerations don't apply. Hive was engineered to be the leader of the Inhuman army, the overseer who controlled the slave soldiers and kept them in line. Making its parasites unable to consume Inhuman flesh might've been the only way to control their rapacious nature and keep it from turning on the very beings it was meant to lead.
 
@grendelsbayne

Hive suddenly being revealed to have the ability to dissolve other Inhumans (or for mere convenience's sake wavering in his fanaticism about not doing it) would have been far more akin to a dramatic deus ex machina than the theta wave play was. (Plus, if Lash made Daisy immune to his sway, then why not to this other aspect of his power as well?) Some Inhumans may still look like humans after being exposed to terrigen, which reduces regular humans to ash, but many such as Lash and Raina and Hive clearly don't. How would saying "Hive can devour other Inhumans, except for the ones he can't, but won't, except for the ones he will" be any dramatically neater or less arbitrary a model than what you're complaining about in the first place?

Lincoln was acting as bait and deliberately kept his distance from Hive. That Hive could have swayed the Inhuman team members was a real concern that was discussed, hence the kill vests. Talbot even directly admonished Coulson for the "stupidity" of sending them in, but ultimately had to admit that they knew what they were doing. You see, Hive's weakness was that he underestimated the threat S.H.I.E.L.D. working as a team posed to him and his plans, as villains who see themselves as invincible often do. Hive didn't see himself as needing to hurry under some time constraint or waste energy melting people left and right when his goal was to turn them all into Primitives. He saw his victory as inevitable, and himself as superior. People always say things like you're saying ("why didn't he just kill them immediately instead of giving them time to...") about this sort of scenario, but it remains a staple because it is dramatically satisfying whereas that wouldn't be. (EDITED TO ADD: Or at least, not moreso to more viewers, I should say, since it's clear you personally didn't find this as satisfying as you'd have liked.)
 
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(Plus, if Lash made Daisy immune to his sway then why not to this other aspect of his power as well?)

Oh, good point. This is absolutely right. Hive's "sway" resulted from infecting Inhumans with the parasites that were part of his hive mind, so that his consciousness was literally inside them. And we saw that when Hive attempted to take Daisy back over, whatever Lash had done to her somehow prevented the parasites from entering her body. They were repelled before they reached her. So he couldn't have consumed her flesh even if he'd wanted to.


You see, Hive's weakness was that he underestimated the threat S.H.I.E.L.D. working as a team posed to him and his plans, as villains who see themselves as invincible often do.

Which is an odd mental block for a collective consciousness to have.
 
Which is an odd mental block for a collective consciousness to have.
Oh, I don't know...isn't it a bit like a force in number thinking it should be readily able to easily overwhelm a small band of insurgents?

(EDITED TO ADD: Especially as in this case he'd view the fact that his opponents didn't have a collective consciousness as putting them at a hopeless disadvantage when it comes to working in concert towards a desired end.)
 
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agents_of_S.H.I.E.L.D._(season_3)

As much as I would love TV characters to appear in the movies, it's just not realistic. SHIELD gets watched by three million people. 100 million people watch the movies.* (*random guess)
I don't think that's accurate. I agree the movies can't rely on TV continuity, but that doesn't mean they can't include the characters in some role. Just assume the audience has never seen them and you'd be fine.

You think if Fitz or Simmons was on Fury's carrier in Age of Ultron people would have been confused by random SHIELD agents among the other SHIELD agents?
 
Yeah that would have been cool, I was thinking more along the lines of "Agent Coulson appears back from the dead with no explanation" or "Quake appears and uses her powers but we have no idea who she is".
 
Well, that's enough SHIELD for me. The writing, acting (for the most part) and directing are all terrible imo. Every week is the same thing... previous weeks ending lazily wrapped up neatly in the opening minute... emo Daisy whining about something... Coulson giving a grand speech to the troops how the chips are down, yadda yadda... followed by a slow-mo ending with a bunch of crying emo-ness. Outside of Fitz and the new science guy, I really can't stand any of the characters.

I'll stick with the well written, directed and acted Netflix shows. Good riddance SHIELD.
 
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