Good news, Agents of SHIELD fans. It appears that the show will be on for seven consecutive weeks leading to the end of the season, beginning with tonight's episode.
That's maybe the most important thing you can glean from IGN's look at the rest of the SHIELD season since the show would ter the show consistently would go about four weeks between episodes recently, but it's certainly not the only thing. After interviewing a number of different people involved in SHIELD's production, IGN got some pretty tasty bits of info:
"When I asked (writer) Jeffrey Bell how (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) might affect the show, he replied, with a grin, 'Well, I would say episode 16 airs the Tuesday before the movie opens. Episode 17 airs right after it opens. So I would suspect that if there were anything to reverberate, it might happen in that window.'"
So it seems like this week's episode might actually have something that leads into Winter Soldier this weekend, and then conversely the movie will lead back into the show on Tuesday. Disney/ABC/Marvel are getting pretty brilliant at this cross-marketing thing, and I'm very intrigued as to how this will affect opening weekend for Winter Soldier if more SHIELD fans come out to the premiere.
And what about Agent May, who last episode was seen keeping tabs on Coulson to some mysterious person?
"Regarding May's mysterious agenda, Clark Gregg ('Agent Coulson') remarked, 'You know, Coulson doesn't know that yet. I would imagine that's going to get sorted out pretty soon. All I know is that she's the most personal, longstanding relationship he has on that unit, and I believe from the episodes you've seen so far, she's the person he trusts the most. So if she's keeping secrets from him... You know, it's one thing if Nick Fury keeps secrets; he always keeps secrets. There's something about your trench buddies, the people you go through the door with. If she's keeping a secret, I think that's going to hurt him pretty deep.'"
Well, good job at telling us nothing while acting like you're telling us something, Mr. Gregg. But that's par for the course when you ask pointed questions like that before an episode comes out.
We'll also be seeing some more of our old buddy Mike, new enemy Dethlok in the upcoming episodes, and Joss Wheedon commented a little on him to IGN:
"Added EP Joss Whedon, 'As he says in the pilot, it's an origin story. The more interesting villains are the ones you're sympathetic to.'"
So true, because Mike is a pretty tragic case. Lastly, IGN noted that there will be a big SHIELD assembly on "The Bus" at some point, featuring, at the very least, most of the SHIELD bosses we've seen thus far (I'm assuming short Nick Fury, but who know? He was on once before).
I'd strongly encourage any SHIELD fan to check out the whole article over at IGN, and let us know what you're expecting from tonight's episode in the comments!