Agents of SHIELD: Season 6

[Reverend]

They specifically referred to Thanos attacking the Earth, and all the damage from his attack in New York, that is a lot more direct than what we've gotten the last few seasons.
I was pretty amazed they actually name dropped Thanos the way they did, I never expected to hear his name in AoS.

That wasn't a direct reference to events within AIW, it was a reference to foreshadowing that's been going on since the first Avengers movie. The specifics were never directly referenced; no mention of the ship descending on Manhattan, The Black Order, Tony being missing, or the confrontations in Scotland or Wakanda. IIRC I don't think they even mention what Thanos is after on Earth.

 

[Turtletrekker]

There's no mention of what Thanos after on Earth because it's not relevant to the story being told on Agents of SHIELD. However the mention of the weirdness in New York, combined with the alien saying that Thanos's forces are currently attacking Earth and Talbot saying that he should be fighting Thanos with the Avengers, is enough to tie it in concurrently with the movie.

 

[JD]

That wasn't a direct reference to events within AIW, it was a reference to foreshadowing that's been going on since the first Avengers movie. The specifics were never directly referenced; no mention of the ship descending on Manhattan, The Black Order, Tony being missing, or the confrontations in Scotland or Wakanda. IIRC I don't think they even mention what Thanos is after on Earth.

It was still the most non-vauge reference we've gotten to the events on one of the movies in several seasons.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I hope they don't reference the movie at all. I don't even pay attention to the Marvel movies and just think of SHIELD as an adventure show that has a distracting habit of borrowing names and terminology from the Marvel Universe.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Occam's Razor suggests a reset is most likely, so it seems a safe assumption.

Occam's Razor doesn't even apply to stories written by fiction writers (not minding it's not a shortcut to an answer even when it does apply). If anything, a reverse of it might be in order because the writers actively like more convoluted answers (but then so does reality from time to time, like I said – not a shortcut).

We don't know how the fingersnap will be resolved, and we shouldn't make big assumptions. Time travel is likely to be involved, yet not because of any razors, but for other unrelated reasons:
a) It is already involved in the solution (in Infinity War)
b) Scott, and even Strange who is a known time travel guy, have higher name recognition with own namesake films than Nebula
c) Involvement of the Quantum Realm has been hinted both in rumours, and in Ant-Man and the Wasp's post-credit scene, and – if you read too much into it – the trailer.

However, that still amounts to little, because we:
a) We don't even know if the QR enables travel back in time (I don't even recall a suggestion it did), and if Strange gets his Time Stone back we got the whole Infinity Gauntlet back. Since we're definitely tired of monoliths, those are the only two time travel mechanisms that are still on the table.
b) Getting the big muscle, including Captain Marvel, any time shenanigans will still be only part of the solution. Wanda and Danvers need to kick some ass together.
c) Time reset isn't the only possible time travel option; and we only know how AoS did time resets – it might work differently here. (Whatever suits the plot, really)
c) Time reset won't bring Gamora back – unless we got my joke suggestion that Scott takes the Soul Stone from Red Skull to destroy it. Damn, Scott, your daughter's ants already have a soul, you don't need no goddamn Soul Stone to fix them.

Quiz time: What happens if cryogenically frozen Fitz in space got dusted by the fingersnap, then both the futures in which he got dusted and he got invited to travel to get reset? What happens to the timeline in which Fitz got dusted, leaving Earth destroyed killing Thanos in the process, before he could dust anyone?

 

[Christopher]

Occam's Razor doesn't even apply to stories written by fiction writers (not minding it's not a shortcut to an answer even when it does apply). If anything, a reverse of it might be in order because the writers actively like more convoluted answers (but then so does reality from time to time, like I said – not a shortcut).

Good point, though I'd express it differently. Occam's Razor basically means that a hypothesis should be based on the existing data; if you have to make up additional variables with no support in the evidence in order to justify a hypothesis, then that makes the hypothesis less credible. But fiction is all about making stuff up.

Of course, a story shouldn't be more convoluted than it needs to be; it shouldn't contain anything that isn't needed to advance the narrative (although of course there are plenty of imperfect or bad stories that do). In that sense, a version of Occam's Razor does apply; a story shouldn't have variables it doesn't need.

 

[JD]

We don't know how the fingersnap will be resolved, and we shouldn't make big assumptions. Time travel is likely to be involved, yet not because of any razors, but for other unrelated reasons:
a) It is already involved in the solution (in Infinity War)
b) Scott, and even Strange who is a known time travel guy, have higher name recognition with own namesake films than Nebula
c) Involvement of the Quantum Realm has been hinted both in rumours, and in Ant-Man and the Wasp's post-credit scene, and – if you read too much into it – the trailer.

d)

Spoiler: stuff we've seen in spy photos and rumors about Endgame

We've seen several spy photos and stories about characters appearing in costumes from earlier movies, and there are rumors that they recreated at least part of The Battle of New York from the first Avengers movie.

 

[JD]

AOS character Christmas Cards. I love the descriptions they have for each of them. My favorites are Bad Axe Lumberjack for Mack, Tough Holiday Cookie for May, and Genius Elf on a Shelf for Simmons.
So Ming-Na Wen is coming back then? I thought both her and Clark Gregg were gone.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Nope. Ming Na Wen is returning. May stayed behind with Coulson, but Coulson only had a week of life left to him.

 

[JD]

I see. I knew Coulson was dying in just a few days, but I just thought that she was leaving permanently even after he died.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Don't know where you got that impression. I'm pretty sure it's always been stated that she was returning.

The Christmas cards are cute but couldn't we get one for Coulson for old time's sake?

 

[RJDiogenes]

Or new times sake. I'm sure Coulson will return somehow.

 

[JD]

We never actually saw him die, so that right there is a big indicator he isn't dead. With a show like this even if he did die, it still doesn't mean couldn't come back, he's already done it once.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

He's had worse deaths.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Sure...but that would be emotionally cheap. I love Coulson to death but the character has earned this death and I actually don't want him back because of the nature of his swan song (and the build up to it).

 

[RJDiogenes]

Understandable. I felt that way about Spock's death in TWOK. But I think SHIELD is essentially the Coulson show, so unless the actor has decided that he's done, I think the character will be back.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Understandable. I felt that way about Spock's death in TWOK. But I think SHIELD is essentially the Coulson show, so unless the actor has decided that he's done, I think the character will be back.

Clark Gregg has said that Coulson's death felt real to the character and that he didn't want to undo it. However, Clark Gregg also said back in 2012 that he had nothing to do with the upcoming ABC television show because Coulson was cold on a slab and that he didn't want to see Thor: The Dark World because he had heard that Thor was throwing Coulson a Viking funeral.

Clark Gregg knows how to play the game.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

...however, if Gregg returned as Coulson's twin brother, FBI Special Agent Michael Casper, who knew nothing of his brother's life as a SHIELD agent, I wouldn't complain.

 

[JD]

I'm assuming that's a reference to something?

 

[Christopher]

Special Agent Casper was Clark Gregg's recurring character on The West Wing. He was basically Coulson before there was a Coulson.