Amidst all the excitement on the return of Agents of SHIELD after the embarrassing run of Marvel’s Inhumans, you’re probably wondering where our episode reviews have been? Let’s just say life and the holidays have taken over for a bit. But now we’re back.
Speaking of life, Agents of SHIELD Season 5’s current premise and effects are awesome, but I’m afraid there’s not much life and excitement to this season compared to season 4—yet. Season 5 is already on its fifth episode and will be back on Friday. Spoiler alert for those who haven’t seen it. Some fans might not agree with what I’ve said so if you still haven’t seen it, feel free when there’s time, and you be the judge.
First off, after all the speculation of what’s in store for the season, none of them were real. First, there is no SHIELD spinoff SWORD organization just because the team is now in space. Second, there is no Brood but the creatures known as ‘roaches’ are based on aliens featured in the Thor comics. Third, there’s no Jack Flagg Peter Quill-like character. Just some uninteresting guy named Deke. Boy, do I miss Robbie Reyes. Though I know full well Robbie won’t last, otherwise the show would be retitled Ghost Rider and the Agents of SHIELD. What I can say here is that the season seems to be on a slow start.
It’s revealed that the team is really in space on a space station but not in the present time. Coulson and friends have been transported 75 years into the future and that their space station is actually an underground bunker that survived a cataclysm that shattered the Earth. Those asteroids in the background are actually pieces of the Earth itself. To make matters worse, the station is run by some budget Kree led by a guy named Kasius. It’s also later revealed that the station’s human residents are all slaves of Kasius much like the Smokers of Kevin Costner’s Waterworld and that there are Inhumans still present. Potentials are put through Terrigenisis to be sold by Kasius, making the station an interstellar Poke-stop. Another revelation in the show is that Daisy is somehow responsible for shattering the Earth making her perhaps the most powerful Inhuman, more powerful than Blackbolt.  The new mission is to find a way off the rock, get back to the past and prevent the Earth’s destruction.
It feels disappointing though that the team just didn’t have much of a breather after their adventures with AIDA and the framework. It’s just one prison after another for the guys, especially for poor Agent May. The Philinda ship they’ve been building in Season 4 doesn’t seem to be sailing this season because the team is too busy trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic Mad Max environment. I could swear those metrics of theirs are derived from some other show I just can’t put my finger on. The same goes for Jemma, fresh from the Framework then getting enslaved by Kasius in that awful makeup. But the team needed a lobotomy to make things a bit harder. Fitz was somehow left out of the time-traveling adventure in a scenario which will allow him to redeem himself from Season 4 and to come to terms with his other side. His episode with Lance Hunter though was great as it felt great to be back on Earth again away from the claustrophobic environment of the Lighthouse space station. Lance Hunter’s return was also a refreshing change.
The whole plot so far feels awkward for the lack of a better word. That Coulson and his team be chosen by Virgil to be his people’s saviors instead of, helloooo, The Avengers? That Inhumans stay in the limelight despite mutants becoming mainstream by then, after Disney bought Fox. It’s excusable though since the deal wasn’t final while the series was shooting. It also feels that SHIELD gave the fate of the Earth and the MCU a sort of finality, that the Earth’s destruction is absolute, given Fitz’s eventual method of time travel to save his friends. He sleeps, then wakes up to find that the Earth is shattered. That ‘fact’ could resolve itself through some sort of paradox in later episodes but time travel can really be a headache.
I kind of lost interest in the season’s current pod (if it is) after episode 2, another factor why this review took so long. But I remain hopeful as the mysteries continue to unfold. Hopefully, things get much more interesting later on. If many fans agree with this assessment, then there might not be much of a future for this show.