Agents of SHIELD Episode One Retro-Review

 By Mark Rodriguez

A lot has changed with the MCU since its inception, starting off with the first Iron Man movie way back in 2008. It's pretty safe to say it just hasn't been the same since End Game, and most of the memorable moments and quotable lines are still from the days of Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr and the rest. Sometime after the movie's success their first TV show was released named Agents of SHIELD, which reveals that Agent Coulson somehow survived the events of the first Avengers movie and now leads a new crew to solve smaller time issues within the MCU. 

Here's a look back at what we thought when we first saw the series. Keep in mind these reviews were done way back when the show first aired, so we had no idea what future events or movies would bring. Also, before it was retconned away, at least at the moment, the Agents of SHIELD show was in canon with the movies.

Agents of SHIELD starts off a few months or so after the huge alien invasion in New York in which the Avengers made themselves known by fighting them off and saving the day. Now the general public knows about thunder gods and green giants of boiling rage, as well as aliens in general. Agent Phil Coulson returns from the dead to start his own special team to keep an eye on  up and coming superheroes, making sure their heart is in the right place... and that the wrong hands don't gain access to such powers. There's already a group calling themselves 'The Rising Tide' that's hacking them and trying to gain access to all their secrets.

The story starts out with a struggling father and his son, making ends meet after he lost his job at a factory due to an injury. A nearby building explodes, and this guy is able to climb the burning building by punching holes into the wall as he scales it. He rescues a woman inside and then leaps off the building, landing on his feet as if it was nothing, and then disappears. A woman caught sight of him and follows.

The man is named Mike Peterson and he soon runs into Skye, the woman from before. She warns him about people going out looking for superheroes and also 'being able to cover up an alien invasion overnight'. He's not interested but she insists he should join her with the Rising Tide.

Skye soon gets captured and interrogated by SHIELD, and Coulson considers her to be an asset to the team, even though she was with Rising Tide. Meanwhile, Peterson is freaking out, unable to get a job anywhere despite his new strength. He tries to get his job back, but his former boss says there isn't any room in the factory. He shows his powers by tossing heavy equipment around. The foreman says it's not up to him, but the company. Peterson considers this man to be 'one of the bad guys' keeping good people out of work and kills him with a propane tank.

Peterson makes his way to the hospital to see the woman he rescued, who turns out to be the person responsible for him having his super powers. He has a metal centipede-looking device on his arm, supplying him with some sort of substance that gives him his power. The woman tells him the last person they tried it out on exploded, but Peterson is convinced he can control it and he can still be a hero.

Meanwhile, SHIELD is also looking for an organization related to centipedes. Phil sends his CSI experts, Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons to find out what made the building explode, since it seems to have been arrange to purposely draw out Peterson. They soon discover that it was a person that blew up the building by exploding, using the same power-up that Peterson is using. Coulson says it's the Extremis (Iron Man 3 reference) and Peterson is in danger of exploding and taking out anyone around him when he does. 

Peterson finds and grabs Skye, surprised she is working with SHIELD now. He kidnaps her and takes his son along to try to take a train out of town. The SHIELD agents try to catch him, but there are other agents disguised as cops trying to outright kill him. Agent Melinda May shows her martial arts skill in taking this fake cop down. 

Coulson and Peterson have a stand off, with Peterson explaining his motives and how he isn't  a bad guy, and really wants to be a hero. Coulson says he's counting on him to be. As they talk, he gets show in the head. At first it seems he was dead, but it seem the bullet had some kind of substance created by Fitz and Simmons to control his Extremis so he doesn't explode. We later find out he'll be fine. Skye decided to join SHIELD. Just then Phil and Skye hear of a new case, so the old fashioned car they're in turns into a hovercar and flies off......

Mark and Paige's Opinions

I thought the show was pretty interesting. There were certainly a lot of Avengers references for the fans out there (mentioning green giants, a hero from the 40's, the Stark Tower, etc etc and more etc), and both Paige and I were surprised that the Extremis, an Iron Man 3 reference was in it. Made us feel like buying Iron Man 3!

The characters are interesting and entertaining enough to keep the show going, even without the big name superheroes. It is interesting seeing Coulson be more serious, kinda like he was in the Thor movie, and not as goofy as he was in the Iron Man movies. I noticed a little scene upon his return, between Maria Hill (played by the same women that played her in the movie) and some guy. As Phil mentioned wanting a vacation to Haiti, the other guy said 'Haiti huh? He doesn't know'. Maria said 'He must never know'. Is there something in Haiti? Or is Phil possibly a clone that shouldn't gets his hopes up for a vacation?

 As for the agents, Agent Grant is mr. bad-ass doesn't play well with others and whatnot. Fitz and Simmons are an interesting pair, I'd like to see more of how they apply their CSI know-how to the weird happenings in the Marvel Universe... though Fitz' accent is a bit annoying. Melinda is a bad-ass fighter, but we both kinda felt that her fight scene just made her seem like a Black Widow wannabe. Skye was interesting and obviously a superhero fangirl. There was a funny scene where Phil was to use some new kind of super truth serum, presumably on Skye to get the truth out of her... but instead uses it on Grant, so she could ask him anything and gain her trust.

Peterson was a tragic character. A guy that lost his job due to his injury, now has his strength back but it's still not working out the way he was wanting it to. I'm glad he survived at the end cause when he was shot, I was shocked Grant did that. At first we thought everyone was surprised he took the shot, but then everyone started smiling, so we figured they were planning it all along.

The show was good and I'm curious what else they're going to do with this. I like seeing how the outside world is starting to react to super heroes and super villains popping up all over the place, just like in the comics! I just hope that eventually they do add actual Marvel superhero characters... possibly ones not bad-ass enough to be in the movies. I assume it will get a little boring if they keep adding made-up characters. There's speculation that Peterson might be Luke Cage, but I'm not sure, but then again, I don't know much about the guy or where he got his superpowers, and as far as I know, Luke Cage is his real name and not a super hero alias. 

The final thing we kinda wanna nitpick is the lame-ass ending with the hovercar. As if SHIELD wasn't like MIB enough already... and Paige felt the scene was so ripped off from Back to the Future, she was almost expecting Coulson to put on his shades and say 'Where we're going... we don't need roads...' And the effects for it was kinda cheesy... but then again it's the small sacrifice when you use a TV budget compared to a big movie budget. We end this article with a question Chuck Rodriguez asked, that I'm sure many of you will also ask. How will this show be referenced in Avengers 2 or any of the other movies?

-Extra Modern Day Notes-

I normally wouldn't do this, but I just couldn't overlook some of these things we were wrong about when it came to our initial thoughts on the series. We were still pretty new to the overall Marvel comics universe.

Lola was the flying SHIELD car from the 60's Nick Fury comics, so it is a reference, despite the cheap special effects. Mike Peterson did not turn out to be Luke Cage as we thought, but someone else. Suffice to say that "Project Pegasus" that Skye rambles off is the organization that creates the cyborg Deathlok. Special thanks to longtime fan Jake for the extra tidbits.