A handful of things

[sholio]

I decided to watch the Agents of SHIELD finale tonight (I quit watching the show after the first few episodes, but have spoiled myself gleefully and it seemed like the later part of the season was getting to be more my cup of tea than the early episodes) and I really enjoyed it.

I've seen a fair bit of rage on Tumblr about Coulson getting the directorship of the new SHIELD over Maria. Which I totally, 100% get, and I am also quite conflicted about SHIELD being resurrected at all; yes, it has a plot function in the MCU as in the comicsverse, but I thought CA2 made quite a good argument that handing over a bunch of power to a shadowy quasi-governmental organization is not a great idea.

But I genuinely think Fury's playing some kind of long game and Coulson is just a pawn in it. For one thing, I know characterization is a little .... flexible between different movies and media (that is, TV!Fury is not necessarily quite the same character as movie!Fury) but Fury's open admission of trust/respect for Coulson seemed less like genuine sentiment and more like Fury playing to Coulson's hero-worship (albeit with shades of genuine feeling mixed in, because the best lies have truth in them). I also think the final scene was setting up Coulson as either a Big Bad or sacrifice/tragedy in the next season. Maybe I'm wrong; and if so, yes, I FULLY agree with the criticism of the MCU writers' choice to dismantle the organization run by the powerful black guy and build it up under a white guy instead. And it may be naive of me to think that's not what's going on ... but I truly think that's not what's going on. I think Fury is still pulling the strings as always, and right now I think he's playing out one long string to Coulson -- with his hand still firmly attached to the end.

Anyway, I do think I will be back to watch it next season and see how things go.

In other (fannish) news, I wrote a story for Remix Madness - they will remain anonymous all week; can anyone guess which one is mine? :D

I continue to spend way too much time on Tumblr, where my Tumblr is about 90% Marvelverse reblogs and 10% other random stuff. (This may be considered either a warning or an enticement.)

And now back to doing useful things (I hope).

Comments

[medie]

I think you've pretty much nailed it with that theory. When you look at where Fury's lieutenants are right now, we've got Natasha in the field taking care of business, Steve is chasing down Bucky (Clint is who the hell knows where) so they're variables, but Maria and Coulson are very strategically placed. He's got Phil, the true believer, tasked with the mission of rebuilding SHIELD the way it's supposed to be, and he's got Maria over at Stark, the company that will be behind the rebuilding of SHIELD's physical infrastructure which plays to both their strengths. So everything's in hands he trusts and he's free to hunt down Hydra.

I'm thinking that this probably plays right into Avengers 2 somehow, but we just can't see it yet.

[sholio]

*nods* Yes, exactly. This fits very well with Fury's other (quasi) trusted people having important business elsewhere. And Coulson, the ultimate company man, is a good detail guy to lay the basic groundwork of rebuilding SHIELD, while not necessarily being the person who will be a good figurehead/leader once the organization is rebuilt.

I think they're definitely setting up plot dominos here, though it's still a very open question what it'll lead to. When SHIELD collapsed in Cap2, my best guess was that they were setting up the rise of Osborn and HAMMER. Which may still be where it's going, or some approximation of that. And wow, I do love the way they spin out long plot threads through multiple movies. I know the MCU is not without its problems, but I don't think I've ever seen this kind of thing done with movies before; sequels, yes, but Marvel is approaching movies the way they approach their comics, except somewhat more cohesively because it's not quite so huge -- with the long arcs and the crossovers and the complicated plot threads weaving in and out. And I'm really digging it. :D