Agents of SHIELD: Season 6

[Mr. Adventure]

I normally roll my eyes at them but that "Previously on..." was useful to me as I couldn't remember where we left off last season.

As far as Endgame goes, it seems for the most part AOS gets the crap end of the stick being in the MCU by having to work around what's happening in the MCU but not getting much back in return.

I guess the one thing that hasn't changed about the show since it began is Daisy's inhumanly manageable hair. Reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes and "the most common superpower."

Maybe she has Inhumanly manageable hair and has a limited version of Medusa's power only her power is restricted to allowing her to be impeccably styled.

 

[Christopher]

For now I'm taking the "squint real hard and try not to think about it" approach, since theorising would be a waste of time. I mean sure this could be the timeline where Thor went for the head, but what difference does it really make since they're never going to address it one way or the other?

I've been reading Star Trek tie-in fiction for most of my life and writing it for the past 15 years, so I'm an old hand at trying to rationalize and fit in stories that are ignored by the primary work they're based on. I recognize that it's often an imperfect fit at best, but it's all just pretend anyway, so it doesn't have to be held to a perfect standard as long as you feel it's close enough to handwave. Eventually enough inconsistencies may accumulate that you can no longer pretend it fits, and we may very well reach that point here, but we're not there yet.

Wow, flashback! I remember a vocal contingent who thought AoS was terrible schlock back when it started because Skye had such expensive-looking hair while she was a computer hacker living in an old van, utterly destroying the verisimilitude we'd come to expect from the MCU. I guess the one thing that hasn't changed about the show since it began is Daisy's inhumanly manageable hair.

Funny, that never seemed like an issue to me then. I mean, she looked good back then, sure, but no more so than any other attractive young lead on any other show. But I've gotten used to seeing her with a relatively short, straight, practical-looking haircut that seemed reasonable for a SHIELD operative, yet now she's adopted a far more glamorous, cover-model look than ever before (and she is pretty stunning this way, which surprises me, since I usually like dark hair better than blond), and it seems a bit incongruous in the context of the situation.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Maybe she has Inhumanly manageable hair and has a limited version of Medusa's power only her power is restricted to allowing her to be impeccably styled.

Beat me to it.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I always notice how the women usually have heels even on their combat boots and when it seems like it would be detrimental. My mom has an expression that you just have to "squint your eyes" at those things and ignore it which I try to do for the most part.

 

[JD]

Same as the Arrowverse. Arrow started out as a grounded, street-level show about vigilantes, but then we got a superpower serum, then the Flash and metahumans, time travel and parallel Earths, magic, aliens, etc. And before that, Smallville started out trying very hard to strip away all the comic-book elements and rework the Superman origin story to appeal to non-comics fans who'd just see it as a teen drama with a supernatural/SF element, but by the last few seasons it had a bunch of costumed heroes and a Justice League and Doomsday and Darkseid and so forth.

Oh yeah, it's even more extreme with Arrow.
Entertainment Weekly has posted an interview with Clark Gregg and Ming-Na Wen, and one with showrunners Jed Whedon, Marissa Tancharoen, and Jeff Bell.

 

[Reverend]

Oh yeah, it's even more extreme with Arrow.
Entertainment Weekly has posted an interview with Clark Gregg and Ming-Na Wen, and one with showrunners Jed Whedon, Marissa Tancharoen, and Jeff Bell.

OK, I know I said theorising is pointless, but the very idea that this "one year later" thing is still pre-snap (as per the above interview) seems a little hard to reconcile and I need to get this out of my brain.

So for a moment let's take the above criteria at face value. To me the only way to make it work without explicitly removing the show from the MCU altogether is if last season is retconned as taking place over a year prior to what we'd initially thought (which doubtless screws with the entire show's timeline prior to this point, but let's just put a pin in that.)

Leaving aside the metanarrative for a moment, exactly what objective evidence do we have that last season's finale took place concurrently with IW? if memory serves it basically boils down to the syndicate saying essentially "Thanos is coming" and an oblique, somewhat vague mention of *something* crazy going on in New York.
So....what if the latter "crazy stuff" isn't actually the "space man stealing a necklace from a wizard" fight one might naturally assume, but instead the climactic events from say, 'Spider-Man: Homecoming', 'The Defenders' or even 'Daredevil' Season 3?

The "Thanos is coming" is ironically the easiest date to push back since we are given to believe he's been on this course since AoU's post credit scene. We know he moved on Zandar first

Both of these solutions seem dishonest and at odds with the context in which the previous finale was originally presented...but technically I think it could work, unless I missed something that explicitly roots the events.

Someone feel free to fact check me here, since all of this is purely off the top of my head.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Given that time travel occurred in AoS S5 in which the timeline was altered, are we even certain that AoS season 6 is in the same timeline as IW and Endgame?

 

[JD]

That would still be the easiest way to get around it, but it sounds like they're still trying to say that it's still in the same universe as the movies, which really isn't possible at this point without some major retcons or something.
At this point I'm kind of approaching it like when shows like The Originals did time jumps, where it still appears to be this year, even though technically it should be years in the future.

 

[Reverend]

Given that time travel occurred in AoS S5 in which the timeline was altered, are we even certain that AoS season 6 is in the same timeline as IW and Endgame?

The problem with that is that the alterations to the timeline were purely earth-centric and the larger ripples would't fully play out until over half a century later. So the differences to the wider universe were minimal and nothing they did could have prevented or diverted what we saw in IW. Indeed, breaking out of that time loop could very well have enabled those events since if Graviton had quaked Earth apart before or during Thanos's assault then the snap may not have happened at all.

 

[Christopher]

Indeed, breaking out of that time loop could very well have enabled those events since if Graviton had quaked Earth apart before or during Thanos's assault then the snap may not have happened at all.

Well, if the Earth had started to come apart under Thanos's feet during the Wakanda battle, say, he could've used the five Stone he had to survive it or reverse its effects long enough to claim the Soul Stone. I mean, this is a guy who could pull a moon out of its orbit with just a few of the Stones. So the Snap would still probably have happened, but without Earth intact (or at least without Luis's van intact), there'd probably be no chance of reversing it.

 

[Reverend]

Well, if the Earth had started to come apart under Thanos's feet during the Wakanda battle, say, he could've used the five Stone he had to survive it or reverse its effects long enough to claim the Soul Stone. I mean, this is a guy who could pull a moon out of its orbit with just a few of the Stones. So the Snap would still probably have happened, but without Earth intact (or at least without Luis's van intact), there'd probably be no chance of reversing it.

Well the Earth wasn't pulled back together by Thanos in the alternate future, so obviously that wasn't the case. It seems more likely that the Earth would have been destroyed before he'd even gotten to Vormir, or Knowwhere, or as I suggest above, at least a year before any of the events of IW.

Indeed this actually make the most sense since the second he has his hands on the time stone, then it doesn't matter what happens to the Earth. If he gets there to find a shattered Earth and the mind stone lost or destroyed, all he has to do is hit the rewind button. He didn't, therefore he couldn't.

 

[Greg Cox]

At this point I'm kind of approaching it like when shows like The Originals did time jumps, where it still appears to be this year, even though technically it should be years in the future.

The old MUMMY movies of the 1940s take this approach to the extreme. Decades of story pass between the movies ("twenty years ago, your father discovered an Egyptian tomb," etc.), yet it always seems to be the 1940s.

 

[Christopher]

Well the Earth wasn't pulled back together by Thanos in the alternate future, so obviously that wasn't the case.

I never proposed that he would've permanently restored the Earth; why would he? He only had to postpone or reverse its destruction long enough to get the Soul Stone from Vision, and then he would've happily let it blow up and let Graviton solve his Avenger problem for him.

It seems more likely that the Earth would have been destroyed before he'd even gotten to Vormir, or Knowwhere, or as I suggest above, at least a year before any of the events of IW.

In which case the nigh-indestructible Soul Stone would just be floating among the rubble, perfectly intact but with no Avengers to protect it, so Thanos could've just popped in and picked it up at his leisure. Snap still happens. Ditto for the Time Stone in the "year earlier" scenario, unless the Sorcerors took it out of this dimension to protect it. But it would still have existed for him to track down.

 

[DEWLine]

As far as I know and care, we're one year into the "years of dust" as of this episode. The interviews we now have are all over the place on the subject, and I wish the office politics at Marvel's end were resolved.

 

[David cgc]

So for a moment let's take the above criteria at face value. To me the only way to make it work without explicitly removing the show from the MCU altogether is if last season is retconned as taking place over a year prior to what we'd initially thought (which doubtless screws with the entire show's timeline prior to this point, but let's just put a pin in that.)

It doesn't really. IIRC, season 3 ends shortly after Civil War, then there's a six-month time-jump for season 4, which runs continuously (give or take a time-travel adventure) until the end of season 5, and then there's a one-year jump that brings us to today. So that's 2016, plus six months, plus a year, plus however long the Ghost Rider, LMD, Framework, and future arcs took (maybe six months? More? Less?) puts us around early 2018, so IW is, once again, imminent-ish?

 

[RJDiogenes]

And SHIELD is back. A year has passed and things have changed quite a bit. SHIELD has expanded, and continues to expand, and seems to have quite an impressive, and public, presence in the world. Not only that, but they've got a team that's been searching deep space for Fitz for the better part of a year. I wonder if their expansion plans include building up more of a space force. One thing it does include is a new SHIELD Academy, and a new character, May's old teacher, has been recruited to set that up.

Mack has taken over the directorship of SHIELD from Coulson-- there's no indication that Fury has had any involvement along the way-- and has become a bit isolated as a result. From all appearances, he is doing a great job, but his personal life has suffered, despite his quiet times with his favorite bar, his church, and his Emergency Coulson Hologram. His relationship with YoYo is long over, sadly, and she has taken up with another SHIELD operative, who looked very familiar. It drove me crazy for about half the episode before I finally realized that he's the guy who was on Haven. Hopefully he'll be a regular and not die for having a relationship with a main character.

So, while Daisy and Simmons and Piper and the other guy are out in space looking for FItz, Earthbound SHIELD is dealing with what looks like incursions from another dimension. Like all hostile beings from other dimensions, these have poor grooming habits, bad taste in clothes, and big weapons. Oh, and their boss is a guy named Sarge who is a dead ringer for the late great Phil Coulson-- a Mirror Universe version of a guy who is apparently really and truly dead in our world (unless May is hiding something, and I wouldn't put it past her).

And we do get a little glimpse of Fitz right at the end, who is out in uncharted regions of space and apparently has become either a cyborg or a space-drug addict or both. So the questions we're left with after the first episode of this too short a season are: Who are these interdimensional interlopers and what do they want with our world, and why can't poor Fitz catch a break for once in his life?

 

[JD]

Oh, and their boss is a guy named Sarge who is a dead ringer for the late great Phil Coulson-- a Mirror Universe version of a guy who is apparently really and truly dead in our world (unless May is hiding something, and I wouldn't put it past her).

I really hope she isn't, they have been saying over, and over, and over since the end of last season that Coulson, is really, truly dead. If it turns out they've been lying this whole time, I'm gonna be pissed.
Entertainment Weekly has a new picture of Sarge and his team. The article with it also explained why Snowflake, the girl on the team, seemed familiar, the actress who plays her, Brooke Williams, was Hannah on 12 Monkeys.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Except -- the Avengers timeline has to be alternate from the destroyed-Earth timeline too, since Earth isn't destroyed in Infinity War/Endgame. So that requires two non-Earth-destruction timelines, but the SHIELD team only made one time travel that succeeded in preventing the Earth's destruction. Therefore, it doesn't logically add up that the SHIELD team's time travel split them from the Avengers timeline. There would've had to be another time travel event that achieved that.

Given the existence of monoliths with time travel capabilities, it's highly likely that such an event occurred. At any rate, I'm satisfied to believe that our team split off from Earth-616 at the end of season 4 (not S5 as I originally hypothesized) when the team first went into the future.

As for why the snap didn't occur on that Earth, who knows? Perhaps on the Earth The SHIELD agents now inhabit, Vision sacrificed himself and the stone before Thanos even arrived on Earth. Perhaps Loki never took the Tesseract from Odin's vault and the stone was legitimately destroyed with the destruction of Asgard. Something that wasn't an option for Strange in the 616 timeline. Who knows? Or to put it another way, wibbly wobbly timey wimey.

 

[Christopher]

At any rate, I'm satisfied to believe that our team split off from Earth-616 at the end of season 4 (not S5 as I originally hypothesized) when the team first went into the future.

I don't know if travel into the future would create an alternate timeline. If someone from the future had come back to take them there, that could've done it, but it was Robin's visions that led Enoch to send them forward, and I'm not sure that would count.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I don't know if travel into the future would create an alternate timeline. If someone from the future had come back to take them there, that could've done it, but it was Robin's visions that led Enoch to send them forward, and I'm not sure that would count.

Well, they obviously travelled to an alternate timeline. One where the Earth has been destroyed. Perhaps they branched out from The 616 timeline when they returned from the future, mid season