What to Expect in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 3B
In what’s become Marvel’s horrible new pattern, Agents of SHIELD finally returns after about three months of hiatus. Overall, the immediacy for its return is far less exciting than the previous season. Granted, if we’re comparing Skye getting superpowers to Ward becoming the ultimate evil, I already got to the root of that problem. Still, the season continues, even if the previous half apparently meant almost nothing.
Remember when the season began with Coulson and Daisy tracking down recently-turned Inhumans in order to create a superhero team and protect the world? Turns out we’re actually going through with that! After levelling the ATCU through the deaths of Rosalind Price and Banks and destroying an old Hydra castle and alien portal, the team finally returns to the thing that actually excited people about the new season. Since Joey survived and we have to deal with Lincoln, the Secret Warriors are actually getting their start, best represented by the newest Inhuman character Elena Rodriguez (AKA Yo-Yo Rodriguez/Slingshot) with the power of super-speed and the ability to bounce back to her starting point. “Bouncing back”, get it? Yeah, this pun’s not as good as “Aftershocks.” Since she’s actually a comic-book character, be prepared to see a bit more of her as a decent addition to the Secret Warriors, but that bar’s pretty low with Lincoln.
I guess now’s the part where I actually have to talk about Ward. It looks like he’s a pretty big part of this season especially since the writers seemed to have him go full-blown villain finally. With the freaky Inhuman thing taking over his corpse which is a thing now, he can now carry out his incredibly vague plan to do…something. I guess taking over the world is a good option. What a worm-like parasite would want to do with the world is his own business.
There’s also the interesting reveal that this Inhuman is in fact be the Secret Warriors villain the Hive, a parasitic creation meant to embody the Hydra ideals that survives by amassing many different hosts. Regardless of whether or not you read the Secret Warriors comic, this doesn’t really tell us anything about what he wants or how to beat him, especially since they seemed to have changed everything about his origin. Still, it’s a lot easier to imagine a direction we could go when there’s a semblance of a place to start. In the end, the Hive is still Ward, and, unless they’re planning to add other abilities, this is going to be an excruciating plot.
The other characters become a lot harder to predict at this point. Coulson looks like he’ll be dealing with damage control by discussing things with the president and trying to keep the Inhuman thing steady. That’s a story apparently, better than the romance he had last year anyway. There’s not really a starting point for FitzSimmons though since her space boyfriend died on Maveth. Maybe the fact that Fitz had to kill him will come up, but I fail to see how the fact that that could cause drama since Will was possessed by an evil parasite creature at the time. Even their outrageous drama doesn’t work.
May has a possibility of a plot regarding the still-unresolved Andrew/Lash plot. Since he escaped the Hydra castle and murdered a few bodies along the way, they have to confront him eventually. It has a little more credence than anything that the other romances will give, but this unfortunately can’t end well. Then there’s Bobbi and Hunter who we know, thanks to the description for the Marvel spin-off, will not only survive this season but end up on the run. That’s definitely not what I expected, but knowing the ending tells me absolutely nothing about how on earth they get there. At least Mack, who’s still working alongside Daisy with the Secret Warriors, looks to be getting some exciting moments.
Following the pattern from the past two seasons, all I can really guess is that someone out of the blue will end up being the villain which will be a challenge for them this year since there are so many potential villains already. All I really want is for Daisy to blast Ward’s corpse body apart, but I know they’re going to somehow keep him alive in the end. I guess a proper superhero team fight will help with that. In addition to that, I would also like to see FitzSimmons not go through some other drama between them and a decent two-parter episode.
There’s also the possibility of a Civil War connection, considering it would be a LOT easier than their attempt to precede Age of Ultron last year. They should get a little credit for planting the seeds of disagreement in how to deal with superpowers last year, especially since Age of Ultron didn’t, but that never qualifies for anything. Still, if the events in Civil War DO have lasting impact, it would definitely affect SHIELD’s prospects with a superhero team defending other super-powered individuals. Expect something like that in the third-to-last episode.
I won’t lie, after another force through Agent Carter, there’s always a part of me excited to get back to Agents of SHIELD. The events seem to mean something, and I can never predict what happened. It’s also been exactly one year since I started writing these, so they hold a special, if not misplaced, place in my heart. Let’s get this started.
