Agents of Shield, Season 5 | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in TQF64 (March 2019). Daisy Johnson did not go on to appear in Avengers 4, unfortunately.

Agents of Shield has always been a decent, dependable show, rather than a knockout. Like Flash, Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow, we tend to catch up with it during the summer. But it has improved steadily, and looking back through online wikis about the characters, it’s striking how much they’ve been through, how many adventures they’ve had, and how much I enjoyed them. The division of seasons four and five into mini-seasons has re-energised the show. In season four the team met Ghost Rider, dealt with life model decoys and got stuck inside a virtual bubble universe, while in this season they are stranded in a desperate future timeline, and then try to prevent it happening in the present. (The latter storyline takes place contemporaneously with Thanos and his goon squad duking it out with the Avengers.) Regularly changing the premise of the show keeps the show feeling fresh. The main cast – playing Coulson, May, Daisy, Mac, Yoyo, Fitz and Simmons – are by this point very comfortable in their roles, and this season, originally thought to be its last, pays off our investment in those relationships. There are also references back to the previous four seasons throughout, tying the whole saga up in a bow. If this had been the end, it would have been a good one. But it’s been renewed, and though it’ll be a long, long wait till season six in the summer of 2019, it’ll be great to see Coulson back on the big screen in Captain Marvel, and I have my fingers crossed for Daisy Johnson in Avengers 4. Though it’s still not the fully-fledged Marvel Universe programme everyone was hoping for when it was first announced, it does its best. And though it’s still not a show I need to watch at the earliest possible opportunity, that’s only because the competition is so strong these days. The special effects are spectacular, the jokes are funny, the villains are hissable, and the stakes are high. Plus there’s Deke, who seems at first like a stand-in for Starlord and ends up being the breakout star of the season. I like Deke. Stephen Theaker ***