Agents of SHIELD: Season 6

Yep, really enjoyed the premiere. So glad that AoS has continued with the formula that has rewarded it with 7 seasons; character first, always. Jemma's single minded pursuit of Fitzy mirrors his when Jemma was lost on Malvo.

Yeah, the conflict among the crew was very realistic and understandable. Loved how they had the argument interrupted before it escalated, and having the argument settled by Jemma's power play. That move was SO Fitz.

I think I'm going to like Marcus. The guy playing the part is a character actor I've seen playing comedy as well as drama, for a number of years. Marcus' common sense tells him getting involved with SHIELD is crazy but the scientist in him compels him to ignore his common sense.

A pox on whichever of you brought up the issue of SHIELD's budget seasons ago. now I can't help but wonder about it during every episode.

So Yoyo and Mack are kaput, for now. Still think that they'll somehow end up together in the end.

Yeah, Sarge's entrance in the diesel truck reminded me of the introduction of the alternate universe in Fringe.

Boy was I wrong about Clark Gregg no longer being in the main cast. His name was the first one listed (as usual), during the cast credits. I'm sure there must have a been a new name or two, but it looked to me like the production staff hasn't changed much over the last seasons, which I think is a good thing. They're familiar with the characters and the show's tone.

Can't wait to see the reunion between Fitz Simmons. Wonder how he'll react to being told he died.

 

Oh, please no. I'm one of the few people who loved the Framework arc and I would hate such a scenario because it would leave them always questioning their reality.

 

The idea was that the destroyed-Earth future was the original timeline and they altered it by saving the Earth. Which would put Infinity War/Endgame in that altered timeline.

 

I'm of two minds about that. On the one hand, I don't really like the gimmick of returning characters from the dead (mostly), but on the other hand Coulson is the whole reason I started watching this show, so I really don't like him being gone.

 

Good episode. I liked the introduction of Sarge's crew, wherever they're from.

The split between earth and space seemed to work well too. I also noticed Daisy's great hair. That said, I'm going to be both very brave and very foolish and ask: did she also look a bit more Chinese in a few of those shots? I don't know if they did something with the make-up or the light or maybe even it was just plain camera close-ups, but there was a shot or two where Chloe Bennet's Chinese features really were a bit more apparent than I'm used to on this show. I don't know if make-up was used in previous seasons to make her look less Chinese, or if it was used here to accentuate her Chinese features, but I did feel like there was a difference. Or maybe Chloe Bennet herself just looks slightly different as she's a year or two older, as happens to every single human being not named Tom Cruise. (The Gemini Man trailer with Will Smith is kind of an interesting little look at that too.)

And let me just clarify, she looked absolutely fantastic and gorgeous. So i'm totally not complaining or anything.

Anyways, lots of great set-up for the season. Hope they don't kill off too many of the new characters too quickly (both good guys and bad guys), as this show has had a tendency to do in the past.

As for the whole MCU question, really, it's just best not to think about it at this point. If it magically all fits together later in the season or even next season, and Nick Fury pops in to give Mack a pat on the back, then great. But if they just have to ignore the rest of the MCU more and more, then that's fine too. This show stands on its own.

 

I honestly can't remember if they said for sure whether or not he will come back from the dead, just that Coulson really was dead, it wasn't a fake or and they didn't find a last minute save.

 

After something like that, I think you WOULD always question your reality. I mean, I've periodically called for the arch and other commands like "pause program" since high school, and I've never personally had occasion to know that I was in a simulated reality like the SHIELD team has. Except maybe having read about scientists saying that the universe is a hologram, but that's more of a universally shared thing, not a personal problem.

 

Reminds me a little about the kerfuffle over Dr. Beckett coming back from the dead on Atlantis. IIRC, fans were concerned that it'd be a fake Beckett of some sort, and the producers said that he wouldn't be an alternate universe version or anything, in those exact words, and people got it into their heads that they'd been far more absolute about Beckett's "realness" and felt lied to when it turned out that they got back a clone (which had never been ruled out). Personally, I would've just used the same backstory and said that the one that was killed was the clone and the real one had been in an alien prison, but nobody asked me how to placate a bunch of angry Stargate fans.

In summary, it still feels weird that he's not doing the "Previously on" and "Don't forget, we have a bonus scene at the end too even though we're a TV show!" narration.

 

And that's a hologram in the mathematical sense of 3D data being encoded within a 2D substrate (such as the event horizon of a universe-enclosing black hole), not in the fictional sense of a computer simulation.

 

Bashir. I don't think I need to say more. There's a lot of overlap in the fandoms, so the fans STILL would have been crying foul, I think.

 

I'm amused that this episode supposedly took place here in Cincinnati. They even had a flying pig mug in the convenience store. (Long story.) At first I didn't think we had a shipping container yard like that in these parts; I tend to assume that's the sort of thing you'd see at an ocean port, and we're pretty far inland. But I searched Google Maps, and it turns out we do have one just north of the I-275 circle freeway, maybe not quite as big as the one here but close enough.

So Sarge is an exact gene match for Phil Coulson, and he's from a parallel universe. In Arrowverse terms, he's a doppelganger. Now, the producers have been saying this season was "pre-Snap" and avoiding Infinity War/Endgame, but it's a suspicious coincidence that they introduce a multiverse-based storyline just a week after the Spider-Man: Far from Home trailer established the existence of the multiverse. Maybe they were more in the loop than they've let on, and just wanted to avoid spoilers.

I liked the tricks with the dimensional portal in the piece of wall plating. Portable holes are always fun.

The stuff with Fitz and Enoch on the alien ship was a bit more iffy. Why in the world does the ship have an airlock on one side of the bay but just a single door that opens directly to space on the other side? Also, they perpetuated the cliche that venting atmosphere would be an ongoing strong wind instead of a single eruptive burst that almost instantly reduces the interior to vacuum (which is why it's called explosive decompression).

 

He also had a reaction to May calling him Coulson, and froze for a second.
These people also seem to believe in reincarnation and spiritual energy.

One of them mentioning previous lives and having memories of them. Could this Coulson be a reincarnation of our Coulson, but just missing memories?

Or he could just be a Coulson from another reality who hasn't gone by that name in a long time, which would explain the reaction.

 

I don't think it's "these people," just Snowflake. The others seemed to roll their eyes at her eccentricity. And their dialogue and business early on indicated that they come from various different worlds -- for instance, the big guy needs to breathe his "native atmosphere" from a tank and the smell of it is unpleasant to the bearded guy, so they're clearly not from the same reality. It sounds like they've been moving through parallel Earths ahead of their destruction (the new science guy thinks they're causing it but I figure they're trying to stay ahead of it and fleeing whatever's causing it), losing team members and recruiting new ones from the worlds they pass through (Sarge had a line about looking for new members to replenish their numbers). So they're sort of like Sliders, but more ragtag and villainous.

I don't remember the "previous life" line, but people often use that as a metaphor for major changes in their lives. Someone who's been roving across the multiverse for a long time might see their earlier, settled existence on their native world as a previous life.

 

Funny how Sarge and company weren't looking for diamonds and such, but something a bit more basic. But if that was the case, why did they have to go to bank to get them? Lack of knowledge of how our world works and thus don't know what we value? Seems likely considering Sarge's disgust that they value diamonds and combustion weapons.

Curious how Sarge reacted to hearing "Coulson" but doesn't know why. He's clearly from an alternate universe but it appears to be not quite that simple.

The Fitz and Enoch storyline wasn't much this time around, but it's good to see that Enoch will be sticking around for the time being. Of course, Jemma and company just missed them.

I'm curious to know the nature of Fitz and Enoch's divergent adventure. Was this something that always happened every time loop or is it new? I expect it's the latter but why were they broken their side of the time loop? It better not be a simple case of the Confederacy (that was the name of the organization that attacked them last episode, right?) just happened upon this time around and destroyed their ship.

 

Preventing the destruction of Earth probably caused a few butterflies.

 

Sure but they were far off from Earth. I hope we get a more direct and concrete explanation than that.

 

They didn't go to a bank. They were at a (high end) jewelry shop.

 

I thought they did a nice job with May's fight scenes and the portal stuff was entertaining. Sarge got me thinking, has there ever been an alternate reality version of a character that wasn't more grizzled and/or badass?

BTW, any Siren viewers think the big guy on Sarge's crew looks like he could be Xander's big brother?