Agents of SHIELD: Season 5

Having saved the world (again), the SHIELD team barely have paused for breath before being kidnapped by time-travellers and taken to a space station a century into the future, where humans live under the control of the Kree. As the members of SHIELD try to blend in and find out how to avert this future, a left-behind Fitz has to find his own way of helping his friends, despite the yawning gulf in time and space between them.

Agents of SHIELD entered its fifth season on a simple premise: "SPACE." Having flirted with aliens and occasional jaunts into low Earth orbit or portal-driven teleportation to other planets, this season sees the show turning into a full-on SF adventure with the SHIELD team fighting aliens in space. It's a tribute to how well Agents of SHIELD has evolved over its run that it handles this shift into another genre and location with confidence and verve.

However, it's very much a tale of two seasons. The first half of the season sees Agents of SHIELD matching the fourth season as the best it's ever been. The actors are all on good form, the plotting is solid, the pacing a little stretched but otherwise good and composer Bear McCreary brings his A-game to deliver an unsettling, minimalist score that really gives the show an atmosphere and edge it's never had before. The first half of the season is outstanding, helped by a strong villain in Kasius (Dominic Rains), who mixes elegance and ruthlessness.

The second half of the season, where (spoiler alert) the SHIELD team return to the present day to try to avert the future they've foreseen, is much patchier. The new set of villains are much less interesting and much more tedious, and the return of Hydra as a force will make some people want to scream with frustration. Hydra were a great enemy in the movies and in the first two seasons of Agents of SHIELD, but it feels like the show really needs to move on from them.

The second half of the season does have some good ideas, like the ticking clock as the team race to avert the fate they've already seen. Natalia Cordova-Buckley, who plays Elena Rodriguez, is particularly outstanding in this last set of episodes, delivering heartfelt and genuinely heart-wrenching performances as she wrestles with how to save the day in a way that doesn't mean killing one of her friends. But whenever the story shifts back to the new set of tedious villains and their even more tedious motivations, the pacing slows and the story becomes dull. Things do liven up in the finale and the last couple of episodes before it, which do a surprisingly solid job of bringing back storylines and characters from Season 1 to tie them off nicely. And the finale delivers both surprisingly-effective superhero spectacle on a budget (a huge battle in Chicago that, whilst not challenging any of the movies for epicness, at least doesn't embarrass itself in comparison) and ties off some character arcs in a very final way. Season 5 of Agents of SHIELD was supposed to be the last, but Disney ordered its renewal at the last minute, resulting in something that could have been a series finale turning into a pause instead.

The latter part of Season 5 also suffers in a minor way from the elephant in the room. When Agents of SHIELD started, it was decreed to be a canonical part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it tied into the movies in a major way. By the end of Season 5 such references had mostly fallen by the wayside and the departure of various executives meant there was no longer any such impetus to keep the two settings aligned. However, the last few episodes of Season 5 do make mention of Thanos and his impending attack on Earth (seen in Infinity War), and the fact they mention this and then don't follow through (nobody is turned to dust in the finale, and the Snap is not referred to at all in Seasons 6 or 7) feels a bit weird. They should have probably committed properly to saying the shifts in the timeline this season moved Agents of SHIELD into a different timeline, or they should have probably not just mentioned Thanos at all and pretended the last three seasons simply happen before Infinity War. As it stands, it distracts at just the wrong moment.

Agents of SHIELD's fifth season starts off with the show being the best it's ever been (Episodes 1-11, ****½), but in its second half it falters in pacing, particularly suffering a major quality drop-off with the villains (Episodes 12-22, ***½). It remains watchable, but it's a shame the show could not maintain the excellent form from early on. Season 5 of Agents of SHIELD is available to watch worldwide now on Disney+.

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Agents of SHIELD: Season 4

Having defeated the threat posed by the ancient Inhuman Hive, SHIELD is about to go public again. However, political and public discontent over the existence of the Inhumans continues to grow. The SHIELD team led by Agent Coulson have a new problem when they meet the mysterious entity known as Ghost Rider, and have to confront an enemy of their own making.

Season 4 of Agents of SHIELD acts as something of a reset of the show's premise. Although the Inhuman background story from Seasons 2 and 3 does continue into Season 4, most of the storylines that dominated the show's opening years have now been laid to rest and the season's focus is on new threats.

To accommodate the show's original airing schedule, the season is broken into three distinct arcs, each of which has its own subtitle and title card. The Ghost Rider arc takes up the first eight episodes and sees the SHIELD team first hunting down and then allying with Ghost Rider, in this case the Robbie Reyes incarnation of the character, to confront the threat of the Darkhold (which recently showed up in WandaVision and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness). SHIELD was, at least nominally, originally pitched as a slightly more grounded story that just happened to take place in the MCU, but the transition to having a guy walking around whose head is a flaming skull is surprisingly well-handled (helped by Gabriel Luna's splendid performance). By keeping this story down to a modest eight episodes rather than sprawling across all twenty-two episodes of the season, the showrunners keep things pacy and fresh, although the main villain is forgettable.

The transition to the "LMD" or "Robots" arc is also well-handled, although this seven-part arc is not as well-paced. There's a bit more wheel-spinning and the storyline, where the SHIELD team have to deal with an errant android they helped create, is so reminiscent of Avengers: Age of Ultron that it's even brought up a few times. It's fun, but a little wearying.

The final arc, also spanning seven episodes, is known as "Agents of Hydra" and sees the SHIELD team trapped in a VR simulation called the Framework, where Hydra won the war against SHIELD and now acts the enforcement arm of a totalitarian world government. They journey into a dystopian otherworld is surprisingly fun, helped by the show bringing back characters killed off years ago to create a new team of heroes. What I really wasn't expecting was how this storyline elevated Iain De Caestecker to the role of the show's MVP. He's always been a good actor and each season has given him more and more acting challenges that he's always risen to, but his role here as the outright villain is brilliantly played. The rest of the cast are on top form as well, but De Caestecker goes to the next level. Henry Simmons as Mack gets close in the season finale as well.

Season 4 of Agents of SHIELD (****) is easily the strongest to date. Splitting the season into three arcs improves pacing and the cast deliver excellent performances, especially Iain De Caestecker and the brilliant John Hannah, promoted to regular for this season. It's not a flawless season, with a few saggy episodes in the mid-running and the usually-reliable Zach McGowan not getting a lot to do beyond growl menacingly, but it finally delivers the promise that this show is a worthy part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even if it doesn't get the respect it deserves. The season is available now worldwide on Disney+.

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Agents of SHIELD: Season 3

The world is changing rapidly. The release of the terrigenesis crystals has converted dozens of people across the world into super-powered Inhumans, triggering panic. SHIELD are trying to keep a lid on the crisis, but officially they no longer exist and their authority and reach has been dramatically reduced. One of their number is also missing, whilst another has defected to Hydra.

Way back in 2013, Agents of SHIELD launched as the first TV spin-off from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Its first season had a mixed response, mainly due to an early run of dull, procedural episodes only enlivened by a game main cast. However, a tie-in with the film Captain America: The Winter Soldier dramatically changed the show's fortunes as it became a much more compelling, pulp action show. The second season continued being solid, but was let down a little by an over-focus on the Inhumans arc, which had been drawn out over too many episodes.

Season 3 picks up where Season 2 left off, with SHIELD trying to contain the Inhuman problem by helping "good" Inhumans and neutralising "bad" Inhumans who are using their newfound abilities to commit crimes or hurt people. Making these kind of moral judgements whilst the governments of the world only want all Inhumans destroyed or neutralised becomes an increasingly difficult situation for Phil Caulson and his agents. The moral murkiness of this storyline is a nice contrast to the more straightforward good-vs-evil stories the show started off with and having to balance murky and shadowy agendas against one another becomes a satisfying source for tension across the third season.

The first half of the season focuses on the Inhuman issue and also on Hydra trying to satisfy the reason for its creation centuries ago, namely opening a portal to another world and locating the mysterious being known as "Hive." Jemma Simmons is MIA on that same planet (having been accidentally transported there at the end of Season 2). She is rescued relatively quickly, but it takes a while before she opens up about her experiences. This leads to flashback episode 4,722 Hours, oft-cited as the best single episode of the entire series for its balancing of horror and survival elements and for Elizabeth Henstridge's outrageously great performance.

Peaking so early does hurt the rest of the season a little (if not the entire series), which never really gets close to that level of quality again. However, the season continues to serve up some interesting stories and character arcs. Like the first two seasons, it helps that the season is split in half by a mid-season break, meaning it only has to sustain two 11-episode arcs rather than one huge 22-episode one. The shift in antagonist and story in the mid-season is handled well.

Handled less well is the abrupt departure of two of the series regulars. During the production of Season 3, ABC decided to commission a spin-off series following Bobbi Morse and Lance Hunter as the protagonists, so wrote them out of Agents of SHIELD in a manner that feels highly unconvincing. Then, of course, the spin-off was dropped after an unsuccessful pilot, removing the reason for them leaving in the first place. Although neither character is missed too much, the manner of their departure and their reasons for it feels contrived in the extreme.

The second half of the season is not quite as strong as the first, although it does stretch Brett Dalton's acting range. A veritable block of wood early in Season 1 (due to the writing choices), he improved immensely in Season 2 and in Season 3 he has to effectively play two completely different characters, and handles it well. However, the pacing in the latter half of Season 3 does feel a bit off and Hive using his mental powers to turn good characters "bad," only for the rest of the team to inevitably find a way of freeing them, is the kind of plotting that feels like it's on autopilot.

Still, Agents of SHIELD's third season (****) delivers effective, entertaining action and some nice character arcs. It also has the best episode of the entire series (4,722 Hours rates ***** by itself). It is available to watch, with the rest of the series, on Disney+ worldwide.

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Agents of SHIELD: Season 2.5

Hydra has been dealt a serious blow and the remnants of SHIELD are able to regroup, but they soon find themselves caught up in a new conflict. They have discovered a race of humans with superpowers - Inhumans - and a second branch of SHIELD believe they could be a threat against humanity. Coulson and his team have to navigate treacherous waters between what is right and preventing a greater threat from emerging, made all the more complicated when it is revealed that Skye is an Inhuman herself...

After its disappointing first season, Agents of SHIELD has become a surprisingly watchable slice of hokum. Not operating on the same quality level as the Marvel Netflix shows, it nevertheless delivers frequently cheesy-but-fun entertainment on a weekly basis.

In the second half of the second season, the threat of Hydra takes a back seat (although Ward still manages to occasionally show up and glower impotently for a few minutes each week) as Coulson tries to sort out the dual problems of the Inhumans and another branch of SHIELD led by Admiral Adama from the battlestar Galactica Robert Gonzales from an aircraft carrier. Skye/Daisy has her loyalties tested in all directions and there is a lot of angst floating around.

It makes for a fun, soapy storyline although one that irritates as it has no real depth to it. Story twists are mostly predictable and the betrayals and plot reversals are frustrating because they are so clearly signposted, sometimes episodes in advance. It's only in the last couple of episodes as Skye has to choose her loyalties and Kyle MacLachlan gets more to do rather than just look enraged by constipation that the show steps up its game. In fact, it genuinely surprises a few times in the finale mainly by having our heroes lose, setting the scene for the (fortunately) superior third season.

The second half of the second season of Agents of SHIELD (***½) is certainly worth a look if you have the time, although given how many far superior shows are around at the moment fitting it in can be a struggle. But it's good to see the show continuing to improve away from the weakness of its opening episodes.

Agents of SHIELD: Season 2.0

The world is reeling from the revelation that the Nazi terror group Hydra has survived, operating in the shadows, for seventy years. Many SHIELD agents have defected to it and the two groups, both outlawed, are now at each other's throats. As the rest of the world struggles to deal with this conflict, the agents of SHIELD are on the back foot. Deprived of their normal resources and funds, Phil Coulson and his team are barely keeping their heads above water. But they have some aces in the hole, including an agent placed inside Hydra and a very unusual source of intelligence about the enemy.

Agents of SHIELD's first season can be summed up as "Pretty poor up until Episode 15, then it got good." This was a show running with its training wheels still on until Captain America: The Winter Soldier came out and allowed the show to take some risks and go in some very interesting directions. The season ended on a high, but the question remained if it could continue on that path.

The answer is yes, more or less. The opening half of Season 2 has the series in a state of barely-controlled chaos. There are new agents on the team, but thanks to a between-seasons time gap we barely get any introduction to them. They're just there and we have to deal with it.

The first season left a lot of balls in the air which the show does a good job of catching and running we. We have the fall-out from Fitz's severe injury in the Season 1 finale which has reduced him to a shell of his former self (a superb performance from Iain De Caestecker). We have Ward's brutal betrayal of his former team which has left him their prisoner, being pumped for information by his old friends. There's the ongoing mystery of the alien symbols in Coulson's head, not to mention Skye's ongoing search for her father and her own origins. There's also the ongoing main storyline about Hydra's rise to power and the various world governments struggling to tell Hydra from SHIELD. It makes for a busy season with no time for interminable stand-alones, which is good.

On the negative side, there is still some repetition, with a few episodes showing Daniel Whitehall embarking on some plot only to be thwarted by Coulson's team. There's also the ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe reliance on magical maguffins. Hydra and SHIELD spend this half-season battling for control of the "Diviner", a mystical key thingy to some secret city which could something bad, potentially. It's all a bit vague and the stakes aren't really spelt out. The show is better when it's pitting SHIELD and Hydra against one another (with Kyle MacLachlan's character as an effective wild card), fighting over clearer objectives and with the consequences made clearer. The decision to introduce the new characters in media res also backfires a little by not providing the audience with any reason to care about them: Lance is such an underwritten character that the decision to make him the focus of a couple of episodes is baffling.

It isn't plain sailing then, but Agents of SHIELD's second season (***½) is off to a reasonable start and has a powerful mid-season cliffhanger that raises the stakes again. It'll be very interesting to see where the show goes in the back half of the season.

AGENTS OF SHIELD: Season 1.5

Intelligence organisation SHIELD is on the back foot. Agent Phil Coulson has been kidnapped by an enigmatic enemy, their key ally Mike Peterson is presumed dead and the organisation is under threat from within.

How the fanbase feels after waiting fifteen weeks for the show to even start to get really good.

It is fair to say that Agents of SHIELD did not set the world on fire when it debuted last autumn. Some indifferent performances, ropey dialogue and over-cliched scripts made for an uneven series, despite some impressive production values and a large amount of potential in the premise. Upon its return it's initially the same deal, with the show teasing but ultimately refusing to give up any solid information about how Coulson returned from the dead and some lacklustre villain-of-the-week episodes standing in for real drama.

And then Captain America: The Winter Soldier came out and suddenly Agents of SHIELD got good.

I don't think I've quite seen a show spin on a dime and go from being so average to highly enjoyable overnight in quite the same way that SHIELD manages. In fact, it's clear that the writers were under strict orders to hold fire on their biggest plot revelations and surprises until the movie came out. From episode fifteen onwards, SHIELD becomes much more compelling, with some genuinely startling plot twists, much higher stakes and, for once, a built-in reason why the superheroes aren't sorting out these problems the team is running into. The sense of worldwide panic and chaos following the revelations in the movie and the team having to survive on its own without its normal resources is extremely well-done. Then we get the Patented Whedon Gut Punch Betrayal which spurs even the weakest actors in the cast (Brett Dalton's Ward and Chloe Bennett's Skye) to deliver some great performances.

The final seven episodes of the season are very strong, with the team having to recover from the massive blows it sustains and go on the offensive. This makes for some strong TV, enhanced by the presence of Bill Paxton (in fine scenery-chewing mode) as SHIELD agent John Garrett. The series even tries to redeem some of the earlier, weaker episodes by bringing back characters, weapons and elements established earlier on and giving them a reason for existing.

Unfortunately, this late-season improvement in quality doesn't quite last into the finale. Given the disastrous slump in ratings Agents of SHIELD suffered early on, it's clear that the producers were unsure if it would return and hedge their bets in the final episode, wrapping most of the storylines up (a couple of elements left possibly hanging for future films) a little too neatly. There's also some very grating and inappropriate humour in the finale (most noticeably Coulson making clever quips to the villain whilst standing over the dead body of a colleague). However, the show also does finally get a more definitive mission statement in the finale which should make the second season a little bit more interesting. The Fitz/Simmons relationship, which has been mainly used for comic relief throughout the series, also gets a much-needed shake-up with a terrific turn by actors Iain de Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge as their characters are put in a no-win scenario.

The second half of Agents of SHIELD's first season (****) is altogether superior to the first. The fact that the producers kept treading water for no less than fifteen episodes before allowing the show to really cut loose is annoying, supporting the idea that SHIELD should have launched later (maybe with fewer, higher-budgeted episodes), but the show does finally manage to redeem its indifferent start by showing what it can really do. Whether this improvement in form will last into Season 2, or if the show will again switch back to a cheesy procedural that only takes off when the films give it permission, remains to be seen.

AGENTS OF SHIELD: Season 1.0

In the aftermath of the Battle of New York, SHIELD is putting together a new team led by Agent Phil Coulson...who is supposed to be dead. Recruiting two combat specialists and two scientists, Coulson goes after a hacker working for an activist group, the Rising Tide, and aims to be ready to face a whole host of newly-emerging threats to the security and peace of the world.

Agents of SHIELD is Marvel and ABC's collaborative TV show set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which in English means it is set in the same continuity as movies such as Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Avengers. Agent Phil Coulson returns - despite being apparently killed by Loki in the first Avengers film - to assemble a new team of agents to take care of relatively low-level threats whilst the superheroes are dealing with bigger stuff in their own films.

This is a fine idea for a TV show, especially one created (although, crucially, not run) by Joss Whedon, and there was a fair amount of hype in the run-up to the show's launch a few months ago. Despite hugely impressive launch ratings in the USA (which have dropped off somewhat, though not - yet - disastrously), the show has endured a fairly tepid critical reception since its launch. Rumours of rewrites and creative re-jiggling behind the scenes (with rumours of Whedon rewriting scripts whilst he's prepping The Avengers: Age of Ultron) have hinted at a show in some creative trouble.

It'd be fair to say that Agents of SHIELD has not set the world on fire since its launch. The show has varied its tone all over the place and the writing and characterisation has been inconsistent. One problem is that whilst the series may have an impressive budget for network television, it's still not a patch on anything the films can do and as a result the action scenes and superheroics can feel very tepid compared to the movies. Also, the series seems to suffer from an issue where the threats our team are facing can't be too dire, as then SHIELD would simply jump in with helicarriers and Iron Man and Captain America to solve the situation. This results in a show that feels like it's riding around with its training wheels still on. Rather than using and exploring all that the Marvel Universe has to offer, the film instead feels straitjacketed by its mythos. That is definitely not what fans signed on to see.

As a series lead, Clark Gregg works as well as ever as Agent Coulson. He's restrained and stoic, but his deadpan humour and well-judged leadership works well. Ming-Na Wen brings considerable presence to the role of Agent Melinda May. Although she's a walking example of the 'taciturn badass' archetype, May works because the actress brings total commitment to the role. More problematic, at least initially, is Brett Dalton as Agent Grant Ward. Ward is a weapons expert, capable in combat and the show's action hero. In early episodes he's about as interesting as a solid block of wood, but as the series goes on he improves, his rather cliched characteristics become a topic of humour and his ill-advised romance with a colleague allows him to show another side to the character. Dalton also shows some promising comic timing.

The plane is a high-tech Serenity stand-in, but works as a (easily-infiltrated) mobile base of operations.

Iain De Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge as scientists Fitz and Simmons start off as irritating geeks, but fortunately get some much-needed development a few episodes in and become a lot more likable as a result. In fact, the most problematic character is, unfortunately, also our audience-substitute one. There's no denying that Chloe Bennett brings enthusiasm to the role of hacker Skye, but she fails to convince in her portrayal of a supposed computer expert. Her story arc - trying to learn the identity of her parents - is also rather half-baked in these opening episodes. Bennett is at her best when either making quips or showing a vulnerable side, but otherwise seems to be as confused by the constant shifts in the quality of the scripts as the viewers are.

The episodes themselves leap around in quality. 0-8-4, complete with its South American cliched characters, is embarrassing and Girl in the Flower Dress completely fails to evoke much fear or tension when the team go up against a genuine supervillain. The Well is a tie-in to Thor: The Dark World which simply doesn't work. Repairs, The Asset and Eye Spy all show some promise, but the episode FZZT may be the stand-out so far. This isn't due to its premise (which is ropey) or denouncement (which is unconvincing) but simply because the episode focuses on the dynamics of the team and how they work together and does so more convincingly than any episode before. The pilot and mid-season finale The Bridge also feature J. August Richards (a regular from a previous Whedon show, Angel) as a would-be superhero whom the team initially fights against and later joins forces with. Richards's presence and charisma gives an immense lift to the show and should really have been a regular all along.

Still, despite some problems the show generally (if erratically) gains more in confidence and quality as it goes along. Ten episodes in, by the mid-season finale, there's at least several ongoing storylines gaining traction, the characters are better-defined and the show as a whole seems to be getting more of a sense of direction and purpose. It's all still taking a lot longer to work than it should, and it's rather dismaying that the super-spy heroics are often less convincing than the same things on comedy-drama Chuck (which is starting to look like some kind of weird trans-temporal piss-take of Agents of SHIELD), but the show has at least managed to elevate itself from the 'total write-off' stage.

Agents of Shield's first half-season (***) is moderately entertaining, despite having enough teething troubles to write a book about. There is a huge amount of unfulfilled potential here. If the show can start delivering more regularly, it might become something more worthwhile. The remainder of the season starts airing on 7 January in the United States.