Over the next weeks Octagon staffers will explain why they’re excited for the season premieres of their favorite TV shows, both familiar and new.
There’s no denying “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” got off to a bad start.
Yet its third season premieres Sept. 29 on ABC, and I’m super excited. This is going to require some explanation.
Marvel put a lot of money into the advertising budget for this TV series that would tie into their hit “Marvel Cinematic Universe” movies.
To emphasize this, the series would star fan-favorite character Agent Coulson, aka the man who assembled the superhero team, the Avengers.
Unfortunately, the first few episodes were plagued by generic characters, boring plots and minimal overarching narrative.
The five other characters can be summed up as two “gruff field agents,” two “ditzy nerds,” and a “hacker who doesn’t like rules.”
Those are their entire personalities, right there.
In addition, many fans who were used to seeing Coulson deal with superheroes on the big screen became very disappointed when the show revealed it was very focused on the small-scale events of S.H.I.E.L.D.
In fact, the premise of every episode was as follows: the team finds an artifact, and then seals it away in a box, with something going wrong either before or after retrieval.
Seriously, every episode.
So at this point, you are probably wondering why this even got a second season, let alone why I’m excited for the third. Let me tell you why.
Episode 17 happened.
“Turn, Turn, Turn” marked a significant change in the series, as the episode dealt with the collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the agents being forced to go out on their own.
Suddenly, all of the characters are forced to re-examine their viewpoint on why they are agents, and more interestingly, what will they do now that everything they know and worked towards for most of their life has collapsed.
This episode caused a drastic shift from a lighter, episodic show (read above) to a much darker and more serious series with a stronger emphasis on an overarching plot, now about the reconstruction of the organization.
Basically, it got good.
Really good.
By the end of season two, the large majority of the characters have grown significantly distinct, despite the doubling of the cast size (up to ten “main” characters), and the show has covered four major arcs in just 28 episodes.
Which of course begs the question: What is coming in season three?
One answer: Secret Warriors.
If you have no idea who the Secret Warriors are, you aren’t a hardcore Marvel comics fan.
I won’t comment on whether that’s a good thing.
The shortest description is that they are a secret team of superheroes led by Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D., who go on covert ops missions and go where teams like the Avengers can’t because of their celebrity status.
It’s been confirmed since that Fury won’t be involved. Instead Coulson will be the team.
For the new season, expect to see more superheroes, an even larger cast (at least four more characters, if not more) and a larger tie-in with the main MCU movies, especially to set up the “Inhumans” movie in 2019.
If you haven’t seen the series up to this point, it’s on Netflix for free and Amazon Instant Video for a price ($1.99 per episode, $29.99 for a season).
To get caught up in the shortest amount of time, I would recommend watching the first episode, then episode seven, then episodes 11 and beyond.
Maybe now I’ve convinced a few people to give it another chance.
