Agents of SHIELD, Season 5, Episodes 1-2: Orientation
I completely missed out on the fifth season of Agents of SHIELD that ran through November and December, by the simple virtue of completely forgetting that they had a fifth season confirmed at all. And, well, after the shitstorm that was Marvel's Inhumans, it's definitely welcome to return to the original Inhumans show. And season five begins with this two-parter that quickly shows us just how different Agents of SHIELD's fifth season is going to be from its last four entries. Agents of SHIELD has alternated as far as its quality goes but it found a really sweet spot in its fourth season, and I hope that streak comes with us to its fifth.
As Coulson and Mack lampshades, they figure that they'll go to space "sooner or later". After four seasons of dicking around on Earth being a super-spy agent, working with the government, then against the government, dealing with Inhumans, magical skull-headed angels of vengeance, robots, dimensional travel and a digital alternate universe, it's about time they get sent off to space. But here it's not just space that they're sent to. They end up in this odd space station that seems to be overrun with aliens and humans are fighting them, and the first half of the first episode ends up having them more in a 'survive, figure shit out later' mode. Mack and Elena encounter the Kree, a recurring alien species not just in Agents of SHIELD but in other Marvel movies as well.
And don't get me wrong, fighting a group of Kree who has seemingly held humans hostage is pretty cool, but Agents of SHIELD goes one step further at the end of the first episode by unexpectedly telling us that, no, it's not just space that's the problem. They're also in a post-apocalyptic future, and oh boy, apocalypse it is.
We're shown in one of the most haunting and amazing shots I've seen in television in a while a chunk of Earth's crust floating through space as May and Simmons fly a ship in an attempt to figure out where they are, and a combination of context clues make more sense as the human residents of the 'Lighthouse' station end up not just being out-of-touch with Earthen culture, but with the culture of the 2010's... because we're in the future!
It's a possible future, of course, since no one's going to blow up the Earth, not when we still have like 30 more MCU movies and TV shows to make. But it's definitely a great buildup as we go from one sci-fi trope to the next. The first two episodes also dole out aspects of the strange Lighthouse space station they're trapped in very well. The Kree are in control, and humans are slave scum. There are these little arm-embedded chips that the Kree use to brand and control humans. There's the constant reference to 'a life owed, a life paid', which culminates in a horrible Battle Royale style shootout that the Kree enforces upon the human population, seemingly in response to Yo-Yo and Mack killing two Kree guards. No one has any proper medical skills, too, and everyone not named Jemma Simmons just looks in apathy when some random human fool gets shot in the gut.
It's a very cool setup, even as we go from 'abandoned, Roach-infested section' of a space station to the dystopian Kree-ruled society. None of the new characters really stand out to me that much. 'True believer' Virgil gets murdered by what appear to be the Kree's pet Roaches -- bestial xenomorph-esque aliens properly called 'Vrellnexians', as google tells me -- and Virgil was apparently the only person who expects them to rescue the station. The SHIELD team (sans Fitz, who's missing although his role is hinted in a cryptic message behind a postcard) ends up allying themselves with the cynical Deke and the slightly-less-cynical Tess, and Deke apparently runs a black market Framework to allow people to experience life-as-it-was. Deke also informs us that apparently it was Daisy who destroyed the Earth with her Quake powers.
Oh, and Deke's first introduction is also pretty cool, as he apparently has a very Star-Lord esque helmet deal going on.
May also gets teleported into a piece of metal that wounds her leg, which is a neat nerfing of SHIELD's fighting capabilities (apparently it's to cover up the actress's real-life knee injury?). Both Quake and Yo-Yo get to use their powers a bit through the premiere, but I really like that they keep these moments relatively subtle and hidden from the Krees... which I don't think will react well to knowing that there are Inhumans on board their station.
Simmons is perhaps the only one that feels more detached from the rest of the cast, having a subplot of her own. The rest are in 'survive' and 'figure out what's going on' mode, but Simmons' attempt to help a wounded man ends up causing her to be brought up to Cassius, the Kree head honcho over the station. I did feel that Simmons' freaking out over the heartless Kree that treat humans as little more than funny pets is a bit too naive (especially since she's been undercover in Hydra in season two) but it kind of works. Cassius ends up finding some favour in Simmons, and puts some device in her ear that causes her to only be able to hear selective words from her master, and she's dressed as one of Cassius' servitors.
At this point, the goal isn't to beat the bad guy (although Cassius and his smug henchwoman Sinara certainly someone I want to see beaten up) but to return home to their timeline. It's a very cool gradual buildup that keeps me asking questions even as my previous questions are answered. Who is the organization that sent the SHIELD team to this alternate future, and what is that cool white monolith that gloops over? (The Agents of SHIELD monoliths are so, so cooler than stupid Eldrac-the-door from Inhumans).
The first episode definitely works better to communicate the new setting to us, and the second one feels a bit more choppily-paced and somewhat infodump-y, and some of the lampshade-hanging dialogue ends up feeling a bit too much... but it's otherwise a very solid pair of episodes to introduce us to this new setting. When other Marvel TV shows have started to essentially clog up the 'Earth' setting, it's very nice for them to abandon it and go explore something more fantastical. This sort of setting is what Marvel's Inhumans should've been, but of course it's always Marvel's original TV show, Agents of SHIELD, that really gets what makes the 'weird' side of the Marvel universe work. It's a well-needed reboot to allow these characters to function in a brand-new style of story that I don't think the MCU has had a chance to tell before.
MCU Easter Eggs Corner:
- The Kree previously appeared in the second season of Agents of SHIELD, as well as both Guardians of the Galaxy movies. Their machinations are what created the Inhumans in the first place, causing them as the 'bigger bad' of a good chunk of multiple Agents of SHIELD seasons.
- The Framework returns from last season, although it is an incomplete one reverse-engineered by Deke.
- They were sent to the future by a white monolith, and Coulson notes that while the glooping transformation is similar to the black Inhuman monolith that was an important plot device in seasons two and three, it seems to have transported them through time instead of space.
- Simmons makes several callbacks to Maveth, the planet where she was trapped in for 4722 days in the third season.
- Yo-Yo off-handedly joking about how she always thought that there were people on the moon is, of course, a reference to the Inhumans, who got a crappy show last year.
- Yo-Yo asks Coulson if SHIELD has 'an outer-space division called SPEAR' is a reference to comic-book SHIELD's outer-space division called... SWORD. SPEAR is apparently a Chinese equivalent to SHIELD. Huh.
No comments:
Post a Comment