S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Gravity' - May 12

…Real life sucks. It just does. The end of that bon mot. And AoS?

AoS is not doing that well either: its’ numbers continue to fall, although the viewers’ fatigue may have something to do with it: ever since the S4 finale nothing really seems to impress them anymore, and AoS knows it: it campaigns considerably less aggressively than it did before S4, and it shows.

…Actually, some elaboration regarding AoS ads can be put here. Marvel™ comics, especially the paper ones, often show one or another promo image for the AoS episode of the week, at least the S4. These promos are accompanied by a message, left deliberately vague. But! One of them promised an epic fight between Daisy and Ruby. On TV, the actual fight was a disappointment, and Ruby eventually died because she went crazy from gravitonium, and then Yo-Yo slit her throat with Ruby’s own chakram – but we’ve discussed this earlier already. This week, it was the turn for Melinda and the captain of the alien ship…and the actual fight was nothing special either. Last week’s episode had a mention of Thanos, the big…purple cranberry of MCU, but so what? S3 had a mention of Stark – probably Tony Stark, since Ned Stark and his family do not really have any holdings in the US…still, since the second half of S2, AoS seems to be doing its’ own thing, separate from the rest of MCU…of course, so does everything else – ‘The Defenders’ on Netflix, for example, and the ‘InHumans’ are gone.

No, really, they have been cancelled. Considering that their first and only season had various features, but most importantly, they were insipid – neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm, with some amazing suits, but nothing else. Again, the script was not bad, and the actors did the best they could to come across even better, but it seems that it was not enough. The ‘InHumans’ got cancelled. Now what?

…AoS continues to soldier on, with just one episode – the finale – left for S5. This makes S5…the shortest season of AoS yet, with two less episodes than the others had, I think. Maybe these are signs that there are some troubled times ahead? So far, there is no talk about AoS getting cancelled, but the cancellation of AC came unexpected too, so there is that. There’s no rumors of the ‘Runaways’ getting cancelled, in fact the show got renewed for an S2 in January 2018, and of course ‘Cloak & Dagger’ are coming this summer, so MCU isn’t down for the count yet.

Back to AoS? Not really. AoS does its’ best to deliver…but it fails, and the viewers are not interested in helping it keep going – the fans ignore most of the new characters, (surprisingly, Kasius and Sinera are the most popular ones out of them), and as for the reintroduced ones…Talbot killed his former friend and sidekick Carl ‘Absorbing Man’ Creel in this week’s episode, and how does S.H.I.E.L.D. react? They ignore it and move on. Considering that Creel saved Coulson’s life literally in one of the earlier episodes, this makes Coulson, and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D., look like uncaring jerks. Go AoS and S.H.I.E.L.D.

…And sadly, this is it for this week’s discussion: AoS S5 is ending, so we will discuss it in greater detail in the future weeks. Until then – see you soon!