Hey team it’s Charlie and Agents of SHIELD just came roaring back, so this is going to
be my top 10 video from episode 1.
Thanks everyone that tweeted at me during the broadcast.
I’m going to try and live tweet as many shows as possible but I can usually only do
for one show per night.
Since this is the first video of the season I’ll make some Marvel related announcements
at the end of the video.
Okay, so TOP 10 Moments from the episode, careful for spoilers if you haven’t seen
it yet.
I’ll wait just a sec...okay, here we go.
Number 10 - Haley Atwell and the Howling Commandos
The Agent Carter flashback was intended to bookend the mystery object plot.
That’s going to be the first major plot that will cover this half of the season.
The other, less obvious reason they did the Agent Carter flashback was to promo the Agent
Carter TV Series that’s premiering in January.
That show will air when SHIELD goes on break.
So far there are only 4 episodes of Agent Carter planned.
Since it’s airing during SHIELD’s timeslot while it’s on break, if Agent Carter gets
picked up for a full season it’s possible they’d reschedule it to another night so
they could run both shows at the same time.
But until we hear otherwise, Agent Carter in January.
And yes, Haley Atwell is doing all the episodes.
Dominic West is coming back to play Howard Stark and they just cast the real life human
version of JARVIS, the man that inspired Tony Stark’s Artificial Intelligence.
Number 9 - Skye is a full time agent now
This is going to be both very cool and very funny at times.
Skye is still the rookie but now she gets to be a part of the action in a way she wasn’t
in season 1.
She gets to play with all the fun toys.
Toys that are supposed to help her decode the Kree or Inhuman code.
I asked people on twitter what they thought during this scene and Kree is the leading
theory right now.
But I’m trying to keep my mind open to Inhumans or some other marvel verse alien tech.
That’s going to be the second major running plot.
So we’re up to 2 now, The 0-8-4 device and the kree symbols.
Number 8 - Fitz goes crazy
It took till the end of the episode for us to see that he had been hallucinating Ward
for the entire episode.
In the beginning she wasn’t there either, he was the only one talking to her.
What happened was in the finale last year his brain was injured when Ward dropped them
into the ocean.
As a result he’s not able to function on a normal level.
I think a couple of things could happen with this.
Either he’ll do something crazy to try and fix himself, like take some mystery kree blood
or whatever Coulson and Skye took at TAHITI or some other miracle fix.
Some how he will be made whole by the end of the season, but he’s going to have to
change.
I’m not expecting him to get crazy cybernetic implants, I think it will be more of a personality
change.
So I’m really looking forward to watching that unfold.
Number 7 - The Playground is the new headquarters
This whole place will be like their big standing set.
This office.
It’s so they don’t get stuck shooting on the bus all season.
It’s just a way for them to keep things fresh.
I like the old school analog look.
Number 6 - I don’t think Patton Oswalt is going to be in all the episodes this season,
but he will be in the episodes that take place at the Playground.
He was a lot of fun in the episode.
I’m happy that they let his character be a part of the action.
Patton Oswalt is one of those rare people that’s really quick and has a vast knowledge
of Marvel Canon.
So I think it’s much easier for him to exist as an actor in those types of stories.
Most people only know him as a comedian but he has also been working in Hollywood as a
screenwriter for a long time.
He gets brought in a lot of times to make movies funnier.
He’s a great writer, so I’m interested to see if he does any writing on Agents of
SHIELD in the future
Number 5 - Absorbing Man aka Crusher Creel
I believe he’s going to be in the first two episodes at least.
It feels like there are too many opportunities for them to have fun with the character to
get rid of him forever.
I really liked that they didn’t let him talk.
One, he’s more threatening that way.
And two, it gives them the opportunity to make him more sympathetic later.
We don’t really know anything about him other than the brief notes they read on him
in the episode.
Clearly he’s working for Kraken so it’s possible he’s in a Deathlok type situation
where Kraken is forcing him to help him.
As for his powers.
In the comics he got his powers when Loki gave him a special potion that would allow
him to absorb other people’s powers.
Loki was going to use him to defeat thor.
Thor beat him by turning the ground around crusher into helium with a hammer strike and
he turned into helium and floated harmlessly away.
Let that be the lesson.
I’m interested to see if SHIELD uses absorbing man’s powers against him.
Like getting him to absorb something that immobilizes him.
I loved that moment at the end where he turned his hand into rubber to pick up the alien
device.
That was comic book nerd logic right there.
Number 4 - Ward is on Ice in the Playground and Informing on HYDRA
I think a couple of things are going on here, one he’s trying to get out just because
he hates the cell.
Two, he still has feelings for Skye and three he wants to hurt someone just as a way to
deal with his problems.
So why not hurt HYDRA.
He’s really not loyal to anyone right now, he’s like the lone wolf.
They did have a hannibal lecter thing going on with Skye.
I thought the creepy way he was talking was almost a little too much, but when those two
are together all I can think about is the meta skyward ‘ship narrative.
It’s like the actual text of the scene doesn’t matter, it’s all about the subtext.
Most of the time I focus on the actual plot and what’s going on in episodes, but sometimes
it’s fun to examine subtext.
Which is where tumblr comes in.
Skye and Ward together are like Tumblr Gold.
He’s going to go on like this till someone breaks him out, he escapes or they let him
out.
I think he’ll be back on the team eventually.
Brett Dalton will continue to be a main cast member, so there are only a few things they
can do with the character that will allow them to feature him in all the episodes.
And I don’t see him going all bad.
My early prediction is that by the end of the season he will have mostly redeemed himself
to Team Coulson.
Number 3 - Lucy Lawless Agent of SHIELD
It’s hard to tell right now what they’re intending to do with her character.
They wouldn’t have cast such a notable person to make her a redshirt.
This is what I think is going on.
The Alien Device will do something to change her, but because of the car crash and cutting
her hand off, she’ll be stuck in a coma or something for several episodes.
Then they might bring her back for the mid season finale with special powers or something.
It just feels like they were very clearly setting her character up for a big reveal
and we just haven’t seen the reveal yet.
If they weren’t planning on doing something like that, they would have just cast an actual
red-shirt actor.
Someone that was half the cost, Lucy Lawless does not come cheap.
So for now, just keep your eyes peeled on her.
Isabelle Hartley isn’t someone from the comics.
So I’m thinking they just gave her that name to throw us off the scent and they’ll
turn her into someone from the comics.
Number 2 - Hydra is still everywhere
Pay very close attention to this map of HYDRA cells.
Those aren’t just people, they’re bases full of people.
This is the backdoor teaser for Avengers 2 Age of Ultron.
During that movie, they’re going to be dealing with all those.
The Avengers are.
The reason Tony Stark creates Ultron is because there are too many HYDRA cells for them to
deal with.
Thus he pulls an old peace keeping program out of mothballs.
Upgrades it and puts it into the body of one of his modified Iron Man Suits.
That’s where Ultron comes from in Avengers 2.
He’s created because of all these HYDRA dots on the map.
Of course that’s where things go south in a hurry and he starts his mission to kill
the entire human race.
You know how it goes with rogue AI…
And my number 1 moment - Intro Big Bad of the season Dr Whitehall played by Reed Diamond
You might remember him from Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing, he was also on Dollhouse.
He’s a long time whedonverse veteran.
He started out as a HYDRA agent but in present day he’s also going to take on the persona
of Kraken from the comic books.
Daniel Whitehall is the characters name.
He has special armor with this really trippy helmet that has a will of it’s own.
He’s very much the big bad of the season and introducing him in the first episode,
the first moments of the first episode was one of the best things I think they could
have done.
It’s a lot easier for people to follow a show if they know who the villain is.
We got to see Bill Paxton put on crazy centipede armor last year in the finale.
So I’m betting that we’ll get to see Doctor Whitehall in the Kraken Armor eventually.
Now it’s your turn, let me know what your favorite moment was and what do you think
of the main villain so far?
Overall this episode was a solid A as far as premiere’s go.
I feel like this is the type of episode everyone was expecting given the amazingness of the
last half of season 1.
The established a clear villain for us to root against in the first moments of the episode,
introduced us to at least 3 major plots and all the new character arcs.
I’m really happy with the challenges they’re giving to all the characters, It’s very
Wizard of Oz.
Fitz has to fix his brain, Skye and Ward are like the tin man, they have to fix their heart.
Coulson has to deal with HYDRA and Kraken and there’s this shadow of alien code all
around them.
This is going to be a really fun season.
Since Arrow isn’t back yet, I’ll totally do a Q&A for this tomorrow morning.
So write all your questions in the comments.
If you’re just finding me for the first time and you like to talk about Marvel stuff
please subscribe and join the team, we’d love to have you.
We’ll be meeting every Tuesday night.
So right now click here for that Q&A, I’ll add the annotation tomorrow when I post it
and click here for my top 10 moments from the Gotham Premiere.
Thanks for watching, now let’s all high five and meet back up tomorrow for round 2.