Agents of SHIELD season 5

[Reverend]

That's what I mean. It's a pretty crappy place. If it's strategic, this low-rent station full of slaves isn't going to do them much good. I'm wondering if Kasius is really some kind of rogue who came in and took over so he could have a petty kingdom to lord over.

The Kree Empire is huge, so even strategic importance is a relative concept. It's also an ancient Empire, so it may not be in any particular rush to consolidate it's hold. Perhaps they're avoiding doing so so as not to tip any other power off as to it's value. Perhaps they're in the middle of a large scale war and can't spare the resources?

 

[The Old Mixer]

If the main Kree baddie's fixation with pruning his Metaphor Tree is any indication, maybe the Kree feel an obligation to keep humanity from going extinct, but their interest is more on a species level than caring about individual humans...seeing the human survivors as a herd of animals that they're responsible for.

 

[RJDiogenes]

All reasonable possibilities-- hopefully they'll clarify the situation in the course of the story.

 

[Reverend]

If the main Kree baddie's fixation with pruning his Metaphor Tree is any indication, maybe the Kree feel an obligation to keep humanity from going extinct, but their interest is more on a species level than caring about individual humans...seeing the human survivors as a herd of animals that they're responsible for.

If it was just about the species you'd think they'd just move them somewhere else. I think there's something about the location that's keeping them there and maintaining this little rat hole of a colony.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Or just keeping them in their native habitat...even if it's all blown up.

 

[Reverend]

That's an awful lot of effort to sustain a cramped population in a primitive and crumbling infrastructure. If it's really about preserving the species then it'd be much easier to just dump them on some random world that's close enough to Earth's environment. There has to be something else at play. A 'Dosadi Experiment' type scenario perhaps? A high pressure survival environment would produce potentially stronger specimens if they're planning on an Inhumans Mk.2 program, though that seems a little crude for a race of their level of technology and even so, it's too short a time frame for that to have really any hope of baring fruit until many generations in.

 

[Christopher]

Okay, then -- the Lighthouse is actually inside the largest remaining fragment of Earth, carved out of the limestone. I thought it was in a separate asteroid or something, but I guess when they first saw it in the Trawler, it was after they went out some distance and turned around to look back.

And Inhumans are still a thing. At first, when the Inhuman girl was talking about the upcoming ceremony where she'd have to display her power, I was reminded of the post-Terrigenesis ritual we saw in Inhumans -- but it turned out to be a lot nastier. The girl made it sound like Inhumans got better, more privileged treatment, and I was thinking it was the inverse of the present-day situation. Which would have made sense, given that the Kree created Inhumans and would've valued them more than baseline humans. But it turned out to be just one more form of slavery, and a more dangerous one.

Excellent use of Elena's powers this week. Although Mack didn't look too happy that she set the enforcer guy up to be killed, after he'd given that noble speech about the SHIELD code.

 

[Forbin]

"I really thought this would work."
Daisy wins the week for cool action scenes - and a Superhero Landing!™!

 

[JD]

I was wondering about what happened with the Inhumans last week, so it was nice to get a whole story devoted to that this week.
From the comments his client or whatever you want to call her made, it sounds like this is Kasius's own personal thing, rather than something run by the Kree government.
I'm wondering if Deke's betrayal at the end is going to actually end up being part of a long game that will be helpful for the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents by the time everything is done. It probably wasn't a coincidence that he had given Daisy the speech about taking things slower right before it happened.

 

[Star Wolf]

I was wondering about what happened with the Inhumans last week, so it was nice to get a whole story devoted to that this week.
From the comments his client or whatever you want to call her made, it sounds like this is Kasius's own personal thing, rather than something run by the Kree government.
I'm wondering if Deke's betrayal at the end is going to actually end up being part of a long game that will be helpful for the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents by the time everything is done. It probably wasn't a coincidence that he had given Daisy the speech about taking things slower right before it happened.

I agree with the Kree organized crime theory. If anything Deke reminds me of Lando in The Empire Strikes Back. So far he cares about the humans who were team players on the station and survival rather then so blunt soldiers from the past trying to push their way through the Kree garrison.

 

[Christopher]

I'm wondering if Deke's betrayal at the end is going to actually end up being part of a long game that will be helpful for the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents by the time everything is done. It probably wasn't a coincidence that he had given Daisy the speech about taking things slower right before it happened.

Yes, I think so. His callback to his earlier line about playing the long game was presumably meant to tip Daisy off that he was still on her side and not really betraying her. Although whether she realizes that -- or believes it -- remains to be seen.

 

[JD]

I haven't noticed, are any of the new characters regulars, or are they all just recurring? I was wondering if we do get back to the present if there is any chance of any characters like Deke or Tess coming back with them.
Was Deke's mention of the multiverse theory the first we've seen alternate universes brought up in the MCU?

 

[Christopher]

I haven't noticed, are any of the new characters regulars, or are they all just recurring? I was wondering if we do get back to the present if there is any chance of any characters like Deke or Tess coming back with them.

I checked... Everyone except the SHIELD team is under "Guest Starring."

Was Deke's mention of the multiverse theory the first we've seen alternate universes brought up in the MCU?

He didn't mean it that way, I think. "Multiverse theory" is another term for the physics idea of branching timelines, that time travel doesn't change the future but creates a parallel alongside it. It was his response to Daisy's question of how she could've destroyed the Earth in the past if she was taken out of the past. This is one possible future leading forward from her own time. It doesn't mean it was always a separate universe.

 

[Reverend]

How much does anyone want to bet that transmission is something to do with Fitz?
Also; points for subverting that old "ninja hiding on the ceiling" trope. I mean seriously, even if she didn't slip they would have heard her breathing!

I was wondering about what happened with the Inhumans last week, so it was nice to get a whole story devoted to that this week.
From the comments his client or whatever you want to call her made, it sounds like this is Kasius's own personal thing, rather than something run by the Kree government.

That would certainly explain a few things about their setup. As previously discussed the whole thing seems odd for a government set-up. If they were out to preserve the species, why not transplant them? If they want to enslave they, why keep them tied to that dead rock?
Now a group of gangster types quietly running a little Inhuman farming operation answers all of those questions and why the buyer was a non-Kree.

I'm wondering if Deke's betrayal at the end is going to actually end up being part of a long game that will be helpful for the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents by the time everything is done. It probably wasn't a coincidence that he had given Daisy the speech about taking things slower right before it happened.

Yeah, I think it's a safe bet he's up to something more than just straight-up betrayal.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Another Alien reference from Mack. Is he going to keep it up this whole season (or at least while they're in space)?

 

[Starscream2112]

I am impressed at how well done the special effects are. So will the second half of the season be bottle shows!

 

[Christopher]

I am impressed at how well done the special effects are. So will the second half of the season be bottle shows!

Heck, the first half of the season is bottle shows. The whole storyline is confined to a limited number of claustrophobic, spartan sets -- it's the kind of story arc that's consciously designed for a reduced budget. They're not shooting outdoors on location, they aren't jetting to a different country or city every week, and they're dealing with largely the same ongoing cast of guest stars in the same place week after week. The only way these guys could be more in a bottle is if Brainiac had abducted them.

 

[Turtletrekker]

The show has always been CGI effects heavy ever since the very first season The Bus didn't really exist, you know.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

^ Keep in mind for things like the bus, they can reuse a lot of the footage later. That being said, the space shots are beautiful but probably nowhere near as intense as the Ghost Rider effects last year.

I checked... Everyone except the SHIELD team is under "Guest Starring."

I suspect they're done with the end of this arc (even assuming they don't get erased from history, depending on whether the branching timeline theory is correct). That being said, it's worth adding that YoYo was a guest star until this season so, even if you're guest starring, that's subject to change.

 

[Christopher]

^ Keep in mind for things like the bus, they can reuse a lot of the footage later.

Or reuse the model/animation but rendered from a different camera angle. I'm no expert on CGI, but I gather it's easier to compose shots of an existing digital model just by moving the camera and lighting around within it than it is to create the modelin the first place. In this case, creating the whole model of the ruined Earth and the asteroid field was probably a pretty big initial expense, but since they're using it regularly throughout much of the season, that amortizes the cost of its creation in much the same way as with the building of a physical set.