What We Want in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 3
Agents of SHIELD has a third season which still surprises me, though not as much as those last thirty seconds involving a Kree stone and Simmons. Just like always, we’re still in the dark about exact details beyond the Secret Warriors making a grand appearance. Until the season airs and possibly a few days after it, we won’t know or understand what will happen, but there are a good number of things that should happen.
More Superheroes
This is pretty much a given since the finale, but it bears repeating so they don’t forget. With the Secret Warriors set to appear following a supply of terrigen fish oil capsules being distributed to an unsuspecting population, the powered people are surely meant to be important next season. And they should be. It’s interesting and the real drive of a comic-book based story. Last season proved they could carry a plot with the superpowers front-and-center rather than behind the Hydra plots. Sure, you can still have three-quarters of the cast be normal, but superpowers are never a bad thing.
Tying into this idea is not only the use of superpowers but superheroes, familiar names and faces that should probably appear. Season 2 did a significantly better job in introducing some figures such as Bobbi Morse the Mockingbird and STRIKE Agent Lance Hunter as new main characters, not to mention ultimately revealing Skye to be SHIELD Agent Daisy Johnson complete with vibration powers. Still, it could always be better since it took them a season and a half to get here. Using the Secret Warriors is a step even though most of their characters don’t even have a Wikipedia page, but there are still a lot of name heroes that Marvel has the live-action cinematic rights to or even partial rights to if we’re counting Spider-Man. Now would be a time to use them.
A Seasonal Plot
As I’ve said before, Season 2’s story is pretty split when it comes to its story. Past “What They Become,” the show becomes more about Inhumans, keeping secrets, and conflicting opinions more than anything in the previous half. Sure, there were some connections based on the buildup to Skye’s history and unfortunately Ward’s descent from creepy Hydra traitor to an even worse sociopath, but there are still some complete splits from 2A and 2B. It would be hard, but the season could benefit from a concept or goal that actually lasts front and center for the full twenty-two episodes.
One way they could do this is just by having a season-long villain. Granted, the first season was scrambling for a clear villain until the reintroduction of Hydra, which was then killed off in “Aftershocks” to leave them in villain-limbo for about ten episodes. It looks like SHIELD’s never had a clear-cut villain for a full season now that I think about it, which could explain this problem in the first place. Now would be as good as time as any to try, though I realize that might include Ward restarting Hydra possibly collecting some Inhumans of his own. Hey, they can’t all be good .
A Death or Two
With the recent additions of Henry Simmons and Luke Mitchell, Agents of SHIELD now has ten characters in its cast. That’s right, we’re now using double digits to describe the important people on this show, and that’s not even counting characters likely to fill out the Secret Warriors. At least the show won’t be lacking in plots. Now, it’ll be a wonder if anyone will get enough time to talk let alone have a decent storyline. Few shows have a cast this large, and even fewer can handle it well. Because of that, the only solution, besides quick write-offs or going the Graviton route of just ignoring it, is…well, death.
SHIELD started with six people, added one after the season one hiatus, then another after the season two winter finale. It clearly has a problem with slowing down, so by the end of the series, it’ll probably have twenty cast members unless it starts crossing off heads now. If it’s any consolation, if Ward is indeed the big bad of the new season, he’d probably be the most likely candidate for the chopping board as well as the character that would probably get the least complaints after passing. I say this not only as someone who would like to see Ward gone as soon as possible (don't worry, I do) but as someone who knows that the show still needs to fill out a possible superhero team in line with ten characters, eight of which are still ordinary.
A Tie-In with Civil War
Agents of SHIELD deserves that much for developing a story in season two based on people’s understandable mistrust of superheroes and their accountability to the public. If the show can find some way to connect to Age of Ultron, then a connection to a film about the public opinion of powered people shouldn’t be a stretch with one of the leads heading up her own group. Of course, nothing would really happen until the end of the season much like this year, but if they devote an entire episode as the prologue to Age of Ultron, I have high expectations. Or at least the expectations that are just below a Spider-Man cameo.
The Kree Stone
Just give an explanation. At this point, it doesn’t even have to be a good one, though the show will surely be penalized eventually if it isn’t. But that’s really the standard here. Explain to me what exactly happened to Simmons whether she was transported, mutated or just plain eaten, and you will definitely score some points as far as answering questions. These are the consequences of ending a season on a cliffhanger.
We’ll still be in the dark about things until September 29th, and it’ll take even longer for most of those things to actually develop on-screen. Until that day, there’s always Netflix to buy some time, relive all the heartbreaking moments, and skip the ones with Ward in it. That’s already a better season in mind.
