Where is Agents of SHIELD going?

Sadly, Agents of SHIELD has not capitalized on the incredible hype the new series had going into its premiere. Using the Marvel Cinematic Universe to launch a film series was an obvious idea in hindsight. The film series has done phenomenally well, and Marvel has such a large library of characters and stories that would easily translate to the small screen. But SHIELD has tried to put its own stake in the ground and create something new.

But – unlike Iron Man 3 – SHIELD hasn’t shied away from what has come before. Phil Coulson’s arc that started in The Avengers has carried through. The team operates in a world that knows of demigods, iron men and green rage monsters. Chitauri artifacts and Extremis injections and Colonel Nick Fury himself have all been a part of the SHIELD story thus far.

But the show has struggled. Keith weighed in a couple of weeks ago, pointing at the lack of compelling characters as one of the show’s main troubles. He’s not wrong – though I don’t think I’ll ever live down my appreciation for Ron Moore’s “characters” line. While personally I am digging Coulson, Melinda May and Jemma Simmons (I’m a sucker for the accent, leave me alone), I think SHIELD has failed to make either Grant Ward or Skye interesting, despite quite a bit of focus early on.

As much as the collective, royal “we” want Agents of SHIELD and bring us a Mutant Enemy production that is both a critical and mainstream success, it is becoming more obvious that Marvel will be measuring the show’s success with additional metrics. The recent news that tie-ins with Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier are on the horizon should not come as a surprise, but how the movies will affect the show — and vice versa — will be interesting to track.

I have already seen Thor (which premieres this weekend), and I am not expecting next week’s crossover to be important to the greater MCU story. I am much more interested with what will happen in Captain America in the context of Agents of SHIELD. It is apparent in trailer for the flick, which I’ve embedded below, that SHIELD will play a major role in the story. But it seems that the organization that we have learned to trust — through the actions of Agent Coulson; through the several movies — has more secrets to reveal. Who is Robert Redford playing and how is his leadership of SHIELD different than what we have seen so far?

 

When you step back and take the long view of both SHIELD and what we have begun to learn about Captain America, it is obvious that one is driving towards the other. If Winter Soldier is about SHIELD, then Agents of SHIELD has to tell the same story. On one level, that’s really cool: a story that is interwoven between television and multiple movies, all managed by Marvel masterminds Kevin Feige and Joss Whedon.But could that be a little limiting?

Comparisons to Arrow have haunted SHIELD since the pilot, but it seems that the discussion has exploded this week. As much as we want to love SHIELD, there is no question that Arrow is the better show. Even when you look only at the respective shows’ first seasons, the DC property is still clearly superior. I’d like to think that a great deal of that has to do with Arrow’s pace; this week’s episode and everything to do with Sarah Lance proves that the show is adopting the Julie Plec/CW methodology: the pedal to the medal, no-holds-barred embracing of breakneck storytelling. Arrow shares that same DNA with The Vampire Diaries and The Originals and is all the better for it.

But if Agents of SHIELD has a season one endgame defined by where it needs to be for Captain America to work, then that map could become a pair of handcuffs. Feige and Whedon have figured out a way to weave the MCU films together in a nearly seamless way while managing to tell individual stories. It does not feel like that is happening with Agents of SHIELD. Granted, “FZZT” was a step in the right direction – at least the second half – but there is nothing to say that it won’t be another misstep. I’ve got a great deal of faith in Team Whedon, but that currency is wearing a little thin.