And so, AoS mid-S3 finale had come to a conclusion. Was it
shuttering? Yes and no. Not unlike “Purpose...” (ep 3x02), AoS aimed to depict
the agents as a well-oiled team, a machine, and now, since the finale of S2, it
has done it. Lincoln is with Daisy, Mel is going to be with Phil, and the
FitzSimmons are the FitzSimmons. For further drama, Andrew/Lash is out there,
acting the villain not unlike how Ward had done it before, since the beginning
of S3, Simmons is going to be mad at Fitz over Will, and, well, Brett is going
to be now playing some sort of a space monster, now that Grant is dead (as a
canon character). It is simple, straightforward, and predictable.
Boring, basically.
The greatest strength of AoS was the unpredictability of its’
characters, the breaking of the comic-book canon in S1. By making Grant a
villain with a chance of redemption, they made it interesting. Then S2
happened, and the show’s script writers went all over places, fiddling with
Grant’s redemption (until the last 3 eps of S2), trying temporarily to pair Skye/Daisy
with Lance, trying to figure out where Raina fit in, etc.
Then the S2 finale occurred, Grant finally became purely a
villain, the rest of the team – purely heroes, and S3 rolled in. Predictability
rolled in. The characters got settled into their roles as people, not just as
agents. Marvel™,
backed by Disney™,
is a powerhouse in terms of the finances, which allows them to play out their
films (MCU), as well as AoS, on an epic scale, if by ‘epic’ you mean ‘expansive’,
‘extensive’, and ‘large’. The TV-medium does not allow the same mass media
depictions as the movie screen does, so even “Maveth” did not have the same
impact as any of the MCU movies would. The music delivered, the actors delivered,
but the old, unpredictable S.H.I.E.L.D. of S1 died. What is left, what will
appear for the rest of S3 and beyond is predictability; in fact, given the ‘grand
musical number’ at the conclusion of “Maveth”, AoS could’ve ended right here,
with a bang – the Earth is saved, the agents are (mostly) happy, etc.
...Oh wait, Grant Ward had been resurrected by the alien
horror. Of course he was – Brett’s from the main cast, so he cannot disappear the
same way that Trip did, for example. He has to remain on the show, even with a
new role, driving forth the agents as the antagonist to their happiness and
family values. Hooray!
...This had been done before, in ‘Primeval’, made by
Impossible Pictures™.
There, Helen Cutter, too had evolved from an ambiguous, and even helpful,
character into a pure villain...that proved to be the main driving force of the
show: she was killed at the end of S3 (Ward made it barely to the middle), but
she still had to be brought back post-mortem by the end of S5 as she almost destroyed
the world even from beyond the grave. Remind you of anyone?
As for the other Ward scion, Thomas...AoS was always about
killing off the guest stars. So far we see no sign of him joining the main
cast, so odds are is that he will die by the end of S3 if not sooner – Grant’s
resurrected corpse is going to get him, most likely, or perhaps Lash/Andrew
will. His showdown with May was very reminiscent of Grant’s showdown with Skye
back in S1, and AoS showed that it isn’t above ‘recycling’ the old characters
into new – Rosalind was reminiscent of S1 Raina, Lash was clearly based on her
S2 second half, etc. Thomas is going to be the redeemed Ward, most likely,
which is sad – couldn’t they have found a way to redeem Grant? Ah well, it was
obvious that he was going to die since the end of S2, when Kara died. His heart
died with her, after all.
So, from now on, it is going to be a completely different
ball game. AoS has put behind the chaotic and ill-defined S2, the embarrassing episode
3x01 and has become solid, powerful, predictable. The critics say that S3 had
revitalized the show...yet the ratings still are nowhere high enough to what
they were in S1, and now there is a big break – until March – so odds are that
the ratings will go down, as they did in S2. So for now we will wave farewell
to AoS and wait for March with more reviews.
(Or not, if the show will prove to be too predictable at
that time.)
No comments:
Post a Comment