To clarify, my suggestion was that it might have been so long ago that he has no clear memory of his birth name -- it sounds vaguely familiar when he hears it, but he doesn't know why. And of course, there could be other reasons he doesn't remember his birth name, like amnesia or a memory wipe. Or maybe he's only pretending not to recognize it. There are many hypotheses that can work at this point, and insufficient information to rule any of them out. But at this point, I think the doppelganger hypothesis has a higher probability than the hypothesis that Sarge is somehow only a year old and a reincarnation of "our" Coulson or something like that.
I don't think they'd bother playing that vague recognition angle at all if it had such a mundane explanation. The story purpose of going there seems to be a tease to a larger mystery than just the obvious extradimensional counterpart angle. If I'm watching a detective series like Ironside, and they make a murder suspect that obvious so early in, I'm looking for there to be a twist, because that suspect is too obvious.
This is obviously going to be more than just a simple resurrection. If this was just a simple parallel universe doppelganger, they'd probably be playing it up as EVIL COULSON Mwhahhahahahahaha, and not the big mystery they're going with. I agree with your first point, but as for the second, yes AoS is an ensemble, but Coulson has still always been the main character on the show, with May and Daisy/Skye a level below him. The same way the Star Treks were ensembles, with the captains as the main characters and the others a level or so below them.
Or, he is an extradimensional counterpart, and that's just the first layer of the larger mystery. It's a short season, after all, so it makes sense that we'd start getting pieces of the answer right away. It doesn't make sense to mistake the first piece for the entire puzzle. I'm not sayng it's certain, of course, but it's less of a stretch than Snowflake/Butterfly/whoever's crazy talk about reincarnation being factual, or Sarge being a year old. Again, why assume it's simple? Why assume that what he is constitutes 100% of the story? There's a ton of who and how and why still to be revealed. Not to mention getting to know him as a character and exploring his relationships with the other characters, which is what fiction is actually about. The fact that he's from an alternate reality isn't the end of the mystery, it's just the first clue. Ensembles change composition all the time. Sometimes the members of an ensemble are shuffled in importance. In Legends of Tomorrow, season 1 centered on Rip Hunter and his quest. In season 2, he was reduced to a supporting character. And there have been a number of shows where initially supporting characters have overshadowed the nominal leads, like Happy Days or Family Matters. Besides, where's the value in saying that nothing should ever be done differently than it's been done in the past, whether in this show or others?
That's pretty much what I and some of the others have been saying. There's more to it than that he's just an extradimensional counterpart. I've never once suggested that. You seem to be the one who keeps bringing that up. But it could be a metaphorical/symbolic hint in the direction of whatever's really going on. I think there may be something to their prominently referencing his prior resurrection and having the new science guy questioning the ethics of it again. Maybe whatever's going on with this Coulson connects with that somehow...another layer to the big earlier mystery that we all assumed was already solved.
Then we agree. He's not just an extradimensional counterpart, in the same way that, say, Skye was not just a computer hacker and the Tesseract was not just a power source. Just because it's not the whole answer doesn't mean it isn't part of the answer. Not everything in writing is about mysteries and plot twists. Stories are about character, and characters should react to their circumstances in a way that they plausibly would. Benson is learning about SHIELD's history and trying to crack the mystery of a duplicate Coulson, so naturally he'd bring up the cases in the past that seemed similar to him; it wouldn't make in-universe sense for him not to. And his questioning them is establishing that he's a confrontational and opinionated character who's going to be a gadfly for the team.
Obviously, Sarge and crew have a mission. Sarge is seen shooting a beam into space. Spoiler: Why the beam? Galactus?
Strange. The little fuzzy guy is supposed to be a regular, but 20% of the season is over and there is no sign of him. It's also kind of depressing to think that 20% of the season is over already. I'm glad we already know there will be a season seven. I get a kick out of Slo-Mo Rock'n'Roll Coulson and his band of grizzled misfits. They've got some pretty wild technology available to them, and I wonder if SHIELD will be able to add it to their bag of tricks by season's end. That little video clip that the professor decoded was pretty intriguing. It looked like they were fleeing a plague of giant locusts or something, but I suspect that it's more than that-- a Nanotech Apocalypse, maybe? I liked the Fitz In Space sequences-- I'm sure he's wishing for a better sidekick than Enoch. But he really stood his moral ground there, with possibly just a bit of overcompensation from his experience in the matrix. But Enoch did come through in the end. They are really making a point of establishing that Coulson is deader than Marley, but I'm wondering if that's because Coulson is really dead or because they have some clever twist up their sleeve.
Personaly, I find Mac's almost constant naysayer, holier-than-thou, 'I told you so' attitude far more annoying than Deke's little shenanigans. That being said, in these first two episode I actually didn't mind that he was in the show. I'm interested to see where his character is headed, since I like the actor and the concept of Mac's character, but he rubs me wrong somehow most of the time.
I'm in the minority who likes Deke. Oh, good. For some reason I thought we were only getting ten this year.
I tend to think Deke added some much needed levity to the team dynamic. Something that had been missing ever since Hunter & Bobbie left the show. And yeah, it's interesting to see Mac in a leadership role given his history of backseat driving and second-guessing. I do wonder if they'll address the fact that those leadership motivational recordings he's watching of Fury's toolbox were almost certainly intended for Daisy.
Anyone notice where holo-Coulson's eyes were looking in that scene? Mack's a whole lot taller than Daisy, so that could be a way to tell. Unless the holo's programmed to adjust to its viewer.
I seriously doubt they went into that much detail when filming it. Mac does have to walk through the hologram for one shot, so odds are Gregg shot his element separately to be compted in post, so the eyelines probably won't track exactly regardless of intent. Besides, if for the sake of argument Coulson is recording these with a particular person in mind, it's not like he'd check to make sure his eyes are looking at the right height. That'd be silly and weird.
Maurissa Tancharoen will be making her on-screen debut in episode 4 of the season. https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/agents-of-shield-co-creator-cameo-marvel?amp
That's pretty cool, I didn't know she was also an actress. Her character looks pretty cozy with Deke there, I wonder if she's somebody he met on his little walkabout. Hmm, looking at her IMDB page I've actually seen her in Dollhouse, and possibly in at least a couple Mortal Kombat: Legacy episodes.