After the recent events, let us talk about the S3 finale in
greater detail.
Firstly, Daisy Johnson. In many ways, DJ seems to have
become whom she had hated the most – Grant Ward; maybe now she understood what
it means to be him, at least to a point: unlike Kara, Grant hadn’t been
brainwashed by the Faustus’ method, but conditioned and trained in a more
old-fashioned way: for all of his flaws, he admitted to Skye that he hadn’t
been brainwashed and had his free will (at least to a point). Leaving aside the
fact that how does a person know that
he had been brainwashed, it makes the show’s treatment of Ward only more
hypocritical and the treatment of Daisy – only more prejudiced – in a favored,
positive way, but still prejudiced and flawed. (Hell, Coulson did not treat
Lincoln all that fine too – but this is a different plot line, we will talk
about it when we get to Lincoln.) Yes, Daisy had been ‘swayed’ by Hive, but
that doesn’t make it okay – yet Coulson and the others try to be nice to Daisy,
to pretend that it is okay and to sweep it under the rug, so in the end it’s
May who gives her former protégé some direction in which to go from – to make
it up. This makes Daisy a ‘Black Widow’ kind of character, and one wonders why
the writers didn’t do the same to Grant, but let’s just accept that they had
designed him as a villain of some sort since S1, and then messed it up by
making him sympathetic…perhaps more
sympathetic than they have intended. Grant became a controversial character…
but we will get to him later on.
The entire Grant/Daisy dynamic aside, there is also the
matter of… Jessica Jones, which is another part of MCU. If you put Grant out of
the brackets (the man is finally dead…one hopes), then Daisy became Jessica,
and Hive – Killgrave. Seriously, watch JJ S1 on Netflix (or from other sources,
of course) and the similarities between JJ and DJ will be obvious, while Mack,
(on AoS) became a Luke Cage like character from JJ. The difference here is that
in JJ, the titular heroine had saved…well, everyone that Killgrave had enslaved
through his spores, while in AoS it was Daisy who had to be rescued – by Andrew/Lash
in ‘Emancipation’, and then helped by Mack (not that Daisy/Mack is a bad ship,
but still), and May, and finally, it was Lincoln (i.e. another man) who had to
save everyone. How nice and…conservative. Whedon and co. tried to present Grant
as some sort of a misogynist from time to time. One cannot help but feel that Whedon is a misogynist here instead,
much more so than Grant ever was.
Flashing forward? More of the same. Daisy has apparently
became a vigilante, just as Jessica became at the beginning of her show…which
does tie into the Civil War theme – registration and co. Now AoS will have
their internal conflict, and also a way to present the same situation from different
angles…just as they have used Grant in S2 and the first half of S3. Fair
enough, and hopefully they will not kill off Daisy in S4, because there are
only so many ways one can go with her character now – they will either make a
her a part of ‘the team’ once more…or not, in which case she will probably
fall, alone, or…join the Avengers, perhaps?
This brings an important point: MCU is continuing to deviate
further away from the comic canon. Hydra is gone, (well, for now – as Grant had
shown in the beginning of S3, all you need to resurrect it are some thugs and a
stencil of a stylized portrait of Hive), for example, and Rogers is alive. The
movie’s producers gave some decent reasoning for Steve’s continued survival,
but it is still a deviation, and the transformation of Daisy’s character, is
another deviation. Just read ‘Secret Warriors’ comics to see the differences.
One can ask, what is the problem here? It is not so much of
a problem, as a complication: some people will just go with the flow and enjoy
the show… or they will not and stop watching it altogether, perhaps precisely
because of this deviation: as far as ratings went, the S3 season finale managed
to beat ‘Watchdogs’ by 0.02 million viewers, but it still quite a bit lower
than the S2 finale was, for example. Now that Blood (Lance Hunter) and Palicki
(Bobbi Morse) have left the show, the ratings have recovered, some, but they
are still lower than they were even at the end of S2 – and the staff of AoS
knows it. In the future, AoS will be running at 10 pm, rather than 9, and be
darker and edgier. Again, this makes it different from AC, but ‘Agent Carter’
was cancelled. Pity, perhaps it could have been better than AoS.
Take, for example, the S3 finale – the fast pace of the
double feature was very exciting, but also quite exhaustive even for the
audience. Does it work to keep up drama and excitement? Yes, but it doesn’t
quite replace the content: for example, May’s mourning of Andrew/Lash was reduced
to a single shot in ‘Emancipation’, and as for the S3 finale proper? The entire
attempt to defeat Hive with its’ hosts’ memories was kind of pointless and went
nowhere, in no small part because Hive wanted to be captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. so
that he would unleash havoc and ‘Primitives’ upon them. Couldn’t something
else, something that did not tie onto Grant, had been used?
Well, maybe not. Ever since Grant’s turn to dark side back
in second half of S1 the show’s writers had tried to introduce an ‘anti-Grant’
onto the show, as Daisy’s love interest, perhaps. First, there was Trip – but then
he died in the S2 mid-season finale…just because. Maybe AoS couldn’t handle two Afro-American actors in its cast?
Mack took over as Daisy’s partner (and potential love interest?) in S3, but it was
not the same, especially once Slingshot appeared as his love interest, especially since she did not die in S3 finale. That said, Trip never became Daisy’s love
interest in S2, and neither did Mack, not really – that role went to Lance, and
then – to Lincoln.
Seriously, if you watch the opening episodes of S2, then
Daisy’s attitude towards Lance was like that she had with Lincoln for the
second half of S3. Lance could’ve made a good ‘anti-Ward’, but then along came
Bobbi, and the possibility of their own show, so Lance’s romance with Daisy
vanished, and instead along came Lincoln, who died at the end of S3, just as
Kara died in the end of S2, leaving Daisy devastated, as Kara did for Grant. …Yes,
Daisy/Quake will not become a new Grant – i.e. a villain, hopefully, especially
since she already did this in the second half of S3, thanks to Hive, but the
similarities are there. Moreover, they are blatantly obvious: AoS disrespects
its’ characters, unlike ‘Blindspot’, ‘Quantico’, or even ‘Killjoys’ – maybe that
is why the ratings are falling? Who knows?
Back to Lincoln? He
became the ‘anti-Ward’, more or less, especially after Lance (and Bobbi) left
the show. For, for as long as ‘the HuntingBird’ couple were on the show, Lance
apparently got some of Lincoln’s lines and plotlines – AoS always had problems
balancing out its cast, especially when it became large (10) in the S3
beginning, so it isn’t really surprising that ‘the fat’ was ‘trimmed’.
(Also – Palicki is more of a movie actress than a TV one.
Ditto for Blood. That may too have been a factor in why ‘Most Wanted’ failed to
launch – twice).
It is not likely that they will return to the series,
especially since Palicki/Bobbi did not become ‘The Mockingbird’, no matter if she
had been called this unofficially on various sites – the AoS itself did not
call it this. Instead, Melinda May, Ms. Wen, became ‘The Cavalry’ – perhaps Bobbi/Palicki
was supposed to star on Coulson’s team since S1? This could have made Ward much
less sympathetic from the start, but instead things worked out in canon as they
did, (May, Morse and 33 may have done something of a musical chair in S2), and
Morse came out as a somewhat controversial character, at least for some viewers
– and MCU does not like controversies. Nowadays, Hydra is gone, Grant is gone,
and so’s Bobbi, alongside Lance.
The same goes for Lincoln/Luke. Just as in S2 were signs
that Morse was supposed to be with Coulson from the start, and May – with Gonzales,
S3 has signs that Brett wasn’t supposed to become Hive in the second half of
S3, but remain Grant, albeit with powers of his own, all the way until the end.
Brett, however, probably had it with character assassination, so Grant died in
mid-S3 finale and Brett became Hive instead, making some of his best acting
performances in AoS. Also, his last, (most likely), because not even Hive can
survive a nuclear explosion in space. Yet…
Yet Grant Ward has appeared in AoS comics – as a double agent of Hydra for S.H.I.E.L.D., perhaps? He
is certainly more redeemable and likable than how the show tried to present
him. What gives? AoS show and comics are diverging further apart themselves,
and making it all more confusing.
And as for Lincoln, then yes, he did become some sort of an ‘anti-Ward’
– and then died. As a hero, yes, but on his own. He was not part of the team,
not ‘a piece of the puzzle’, which goes against the show’s own canon. Why?
Well, probably because Luke (i.e. Lincoln) did not want to
be a part of the show anymore? Certainly, the twist where Lincoln decided not to stay with Coulson, despite his
love for Daisy, was unfounded, but this is typical of AoS twists – they are not
just unnecessary, but they are also unfounded. It is unknown, just who decided
to keep AoS and let AC go, but it was a dumb idea. The AoS S4 is in the works.
Just how successful it will be, and whether there will be a S5 is another story.
So. Skye/Daisy had experienced character assassination of
her own and has come out broken. Lincoln is dead. AoS continues with plot
twists, and has added episode pacing to them – some episodes go much faster,
others – much slower, than the rest. Just like the plot twist idea, this idea
is ambiguous and can go either way.
Finally, the old idea – of ‘Daisy and her men’, which was
one of the major elements of the S2 and 3 plot – has been thrown out, and Daisy’s
career and her relationship with S.H.I.E.L.D. got restarted completely; AoS
probably got restarted completely, with a brand new plot, just as it was
supposed to do in S3, but instead it became an extension of S2, with plenty of
old S2 ideas recycled for a newer, S3 season. Good luck to AoS with the
upcoming S4 – it will most likely need it.
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