Marvel Studios made it very clear that Captain America: The Winter Soldier on the big screen was going to have some carryover impact on Agents of SHIELD on the small screen, but I would've never assumed it'd be as much of an impact as it is. The last time they did anything like this (for Thor: The Dark World) it essentially amounted to, "Darn you, Thor, you made such a big mess for us to clean up!"
WARNING: Plenty of spoilers on the way for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, so click the back button now if you haven't already seen the movie (trust me, it's worth watching rather than reading).
One last chance! Bail now if you're not interested in spoilers.
OK, so, let's get down to business. In Winter Soldier, Captain America finds himself wondering just what to believe in after Black Widow takes a little detour during a fairly standard hostage rescue mission to retrieve some files. As it turns out, Nick Fury sent her on the mission strictly to take that detour, but without letting Cap know. Fast forward, and through Cap's digging deeper into SHIELD everything eventually goes to hell as it's revealed that Hydra has had a presence in SHIELD for, like, ever.
Now, there's a few things that I think are significant to Agents of SHIELD that occurred during The Winter Soldier. One, SHIELD has now effectively been leveled thanks to the war waged between the Hydra agents and the loyal SHIELD agents during the film's dramatic conclusion. That means that we're going to be dealing with some interesting stuff as Coulson and Co. find out what's going on in the world around them.
Two, we know now that Jasper Sitwell was a Hydra agent, which surely means that the reveal at the end of "End of the Beginning" of Victoria Hand pulling the strings on the plane means that she's a Hydra agent as well.
Three, we might have an idea of who the Clairvoyant is, or at least where he/she was getting his/her information from. Armin Zola, creator of Hydra's "Zola algorithm," seemed to be the one calling the shots for Hydra (if from the grave). His algorithm was able to basically sort every person in the world into either "good" or "bad" to determine if they should be eliminated by the gunships. That would explain how the Clairvoyant has known so much about everyone and everything, except for Coulson's return from the dead. The Centipede program could also be just another way to try to create super-people to "purge" the Earth in the name of Hydra.
In my humble opinion, I think that Zola's computer program was backed up, and whoever is the new figurehead of Hydra has the program to draw "inspiration" from. As for who that figurehead is, I'm not sure. Maybe it's actually Zola himself, who seemed to have just as much of an interactive consciousness in death as he did when he was alive. Or perhaps it could be (Double) Agent Hand herself. But it's also entirely likely that there's a whole 'nother person. Luckily, IGN was able to get some insight from the cast and crew of SHIELD to shed a little light on things.
"This is a show about a guy who's always been a company man," Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson) told IGN. "He's not afraid to make fun of people if they're taking themselves too seriously within that structure, whether they're superheroes or SHIELD agents. But he dedicated his life to this and grew up a fanboy of Cap, so everything he believes is going to be called into question if SHIELD isn't what it seems to be.
"That said, this is also a guy who died and was brought back and had one version of how that happened, and then he found out that those were all lies. So his whole world is getting torn down, and that's really interesting to play. As an audience member and someone who loves Marvel, it's always been something that they've messed with with SHIELD, and rightly so. It couldn't be more germane to this moment, because if you are the keeper of secrets, if you are the surveillance entity, who's watching you? Traditionally, anyone who's had that responsibility has abused it."
So basically, Coulson's gonna be pissed when he figures out what's going on within SHIELD. What about our little private-phone-line spy Agent May?
"They wanted us to see a rough cut of the film before they handed us the script that comes after The Winter Soldier," Ming-Na Wen (May) said. "Frankly, I was even more confused and more upset. I was just like, 'What the hell is going on!?' No other franchise has tried to achieve this, so fingers crossed that it all works out, that it does tie in. For me, I feel like it ties in incredibly well. Marvel and our producers, they're so smart in how they're developing our characters and yet being able to make what happens in that movie affect us."
Oh, and check out this tidbit from USA Today:
"Upcoming episodes feature at least one major betrayal, and what's left of Coulson's team is forced to deal on their own with the dismantling of their whole world as well as the new Hydra threat."
Oh. Well, don't get too comfortable with any character not named Coulson (and let's be honest, probably Skye, too), because someone will be turning on Coulson before the end of the season. They'll probably throw us a wicked curveball, like Fitz or something, because May or Ward seem like the obvious answer.
Whew, so, yeah, quite a bit to take in. What's your theory on how SHIELD is going to shake down over these last six weeks? Let us know in the comments.