Talbot became ridiculous — "I can fix things, I'm a superhero, I just need more Gravitonium" — and thereby lost most of his dramatic weight as an antagonist. Instead, he became the MacGuffin, and the real story became the team's struggle to hold itself together.
That struggle and its resolution might have been satisfying if only the entire season hadn't already been invested in the Shattered Earth future and trying to prevent it. An existential threat like that is too big to be relegated to the B plot. It made the whole thing feel skewed. Sure, each member of the team emoted pretty much as I expected them to emote in that situation. Their character development was fine. But their character development shouldn't have been the focus of the story, not in that particular situation.
I'm also annoyed that nothing was done with the
Infinity War crossover. It was explicitly referenced in the last few episodes before the finale, and more than enough time passed for you-know-what to happen, but it didn't happen. Which means
Agents has diverged into an MCU-adjacent universe, unless the next Avengers movie completely retcons
Infinity War so that you-know-what never happens and no one remembers it.
This season's finale was obviously written and produced with the expectation that the series would be cancelled, but also with just enough options — newly promoted characters to replace Coulson and May, a new mission to find the cryogenically frozen Fitz — to keep things going. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm interested in an
Agents without Coulson. The series was literally created for that character, and so much of it depended on his wisdom and humor. Without him, they're just another bunch of tryhard superspies.
It'll be the ninth season of
Scrubs all over again.
Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 5:44 pm
