Transcript

Taylor: Hello hello listeners. Welcome to another episode of Sisters Assembled. It is a very special episode today because we have a guest with us to talk about a topic that we’ve hinted at a couple of times. So Dan from Hogwarts: A Podcast is on with us to talk Agents of SHIELD, and we have a few topics around the show that we want to dive into, especially as it relates to the Multiverse now that we are deep into the Multiverse Saga. We’re actually going to be able to rate ourselves in about a month when Marvel releases their timeline book and tells us whether or not we’re actually right, which is super, super exciting. So without further ado, Dan, welcome to the show. We are so glad to have you. 

Dan: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I was really excited when you said the topic would be Agents of SHIELD. I am actually a massive I’m a massive Marvel fan in general, but Agents of SHIELD is probably my favorite Marvel show

Katie: Okay.

Dan: Which I know is saying a lot, especially with all the MCU stuff we’ve specifically gotten recently. I love Daredevil too. You can’t really tell, but I got a Daredevil figurine up here, so I love Daredevil, but Agents of SHIELD, I love that show. So I was very excited when you guys reached out about Agents of SHIELD.

Katie: Yeah, it’s a good show. 

Taylor: Yeah and as the listeners, anybody who’s been recently joining us for any of our shows, they know that Katie and I are in the middle of a for me a rewatch and for Katie a first watch. So this timing is perfect. We’ve got a super fan, someone who’s sort of rewatching, and someone who is experiencing it for the first time. So I think it’s a perfect mix to really dive into our three topics of the day. So to start us off, we’re going to dive into the big one, the one that everybody fights about online all the time. I’ve gotten yelled at before, we’ve told the story. People like to, you know, have strong opinions and if you don’t agree with them, they’ll tell you. And so we’re gonna give our opinions on the show today. So the question is, of course, could Agents of SHIELD actually be a part of 616, the main MCU? Why or why not? Dan, why don’t you kick us off as the super fan and expert? 

Dan: Okay, so I took this as like, when you presented me with the topics, I took this as a little bit of a two-parter. That main question and then also if it’s not, where did it diverge from? And so just by me taking it as a two-parter, you could probably estimate that I do not think it’s part of the 616 MCU as we know it right now. And where I think it diverged from was right off the bat, like season one, end of season one. And I don’t know how much you guys know about kind of the background of Agents of SHIELD and some of the challenges that they had to work with. 

Katie: I don’t. 

Dan: Just being part of Marvel television, but obviously, now all of Marvel is under the same umbrella and that’s a wonderful thing. But back then, when Agents of SHIELD came out, Marvel Television and Marvel Studios like Kevin Feige were split. So whatever Agents of SHIELD had to use that had to be approved by Kevin Feige, like, hey, we’re not going to use this character. You guys can use them. Hey, we’re not going to use this plot point, you guys could use it. And they found out what was happening because they tried, they tried really hard to make it part of that 616 universe. They wanted to, that was the goal. But they would find out at the last minute and they’d have to do writing changes, like up until shooting the show. Marvel Studios made it very tough on them. And one of the things that they found out was, oh, by the way, Winter Soldier is going to be a thing. 

Katie: Okay.

Taylor: So the whole premise of your show is now out the window like Agents of SHIELD is now done. 

Taylor and Katie: Yeah. 

Dan: And they’re like, I’m sorry, we’re in our first season, and you’re pulling like, the whole rug out from under us immediately. Okay, so that’s a long-winded way to answer your question, but season one is where I think it diverted, the end of season one. 

Katie: So I love that you’re on the show simply because I knew none of that. And so I think it opens a completely other thought process to me that I didn’t have before. But I have to say I’ll give the show some great credit. They handled Winter Soldier and the whole Hydra thing very, very well for just finding out that that was where their show was going to have to go.

Dan: For sure.

Katie: Would have never known. And I was like, by that point, so devoted and I’ve talked about it a lot for anyone who could see me for, you know, Dan here, Winter Soldier’s my guy. And so obviously that’s my movie. So that was probably my favorite part of the show and to hear that, that was kind of a last minute, oh, God.

Dan: It’s a curveball.

Katie: Yeah, that’s kind of really interesting, actually. 

Dan: You know how you know Marvel likes to do it. They like everything in secrecy, right? So they don’t let anyone in on, like, their plot points or their movie scripts or anything.

Katie: Right.

Dan: So when they’re like, oh, yeah, SHIELD is ending. Oh, okay. 

Taylor: Yeah, it’s crazy that, that extends even like within what I would consider the top brass. Obviously, we know Kevin Feige is the head but like from what you were explaining he had a somewhat counterpart in TV and it’s crazy to me that they were so separate that Kevin was like, this guy who’s writing this whole show for network television. I think it’s sometimes hard to think about it now, especially with Disney Plus, but this show was on ABC when it was airing. So we’re talking a network TV show, didn’t know that the entire premise was going to be absolutely walloped halfway through their first season. Which again, what Katie was saying, is credit to the writers because a lesser writer’s room would have been like, well, we might as well pack it up now, this is the end of the show. It was a flash in the pan and we’re done. 

Dan: Yeah, and then it just got crazier from there because I think it’s it’s been a while since I’ve rewatched the series, but I think it’s like the end of season two or into season three I think for sure you get that Inhumans bit. So obviously Marvel was leaning on Agents of SHIELD to build some background on Inhumans. And then when they released the Inhumans show and that was such an epic, monumental flop, that was yet again another point where it’s like, okay, we’re not going in that direction now. So that whole season is like out the window and it’s just like, great, awesome.

Katie: Yeah.

Taylor: Yeah. No, we actually were just talking about that on another episode. We were talking about Kamala, how she’s no longer just an Inhuman. And so like, so much of what happened with that Inhumans show has kind of just diminished, and now, you know, with the buying of 21st Century Fox, of course, has just diminished the Inhumans in like what was just TV and movies. But now even within the comics, there’s slowly like losing any I don’t want to say credibility, but any power that they did have in terms of like growing an audience or having really strong storylines because Kamala is other than the royal family, probably one of the more famous Inhumans so to lose her is a really, really big blow. And it’s unfortunate because Agents of SHIELD really does do a really good job of bringing them in and making them interesting and making them, you know, separate and different from the X-Men, but also cool characters, and obviously, Daisy is humungous. And so it’s disappointing that they set that foundation and we’re just like not able to execute that next level. And it has just started this whole domino effect of bye-bye Inhumans for everything Marvel from here on out. 

Dan: Yeah so it’s interesting to listen to some of the writers and the producers talk about like just curveball after curveball was thrown their way and there was like, I think there’s one story about them, Kevin Feige is saying, oh yeah, you could definitely use this character. And then they built an entire season around, I can’t remember the character, so they built an entire season around the character. And then last minute they’re like, no, we’re actually going to use that in a movie so rewrite the whole thing. 

Taylor: Oh my God.

Dan: Things like that would keep happening to them over and over and over again. So when you put like that into the context, I think like you were saying, I think they did a tremendous job of having to like pivot on the go and figure it out. 

Katie: Truly. I mean, I can’t tell you I mean, and we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording. It goes off the rails a little bit towards the end, though, I do think a lot of shows that are going for that long tend to. You always want to one-up what you did before or make something bigger and I don’t think it always gives the same credit it gave to the earlier seasons but you would never think that these writers are in this position of everything we just wrote doesn’t make sense now. We have to remove this character. We have to redo this entire plotline because we can’t use this. So I really like, the credit that I can give all those writers right now is insane because it couldn’t have been me. 

Dan: Well, think about this too, like you guys are both past season five. So season five is where they expected to end it. That was their ending.

Katie: Which makes sense. 

Dan: Of course. It’s a beautiful ending. It’s like a perfect ending. And then they were told again, oh, by the way, we’re giving you two more seasons. They didn’t know that when they obviously wrote the script. So it’s like they found that out last minute too, which is good news. But also, like we just wrapped up our series now we have to figure out two more seasons.

Katie: Yeah, that definitely makes sense going into season six because season six felt weird when season five had finished and it just felt really disconnected. 

Taylor: And I think too, one of the things that I’m most impressed about by the show is the way that each season seamlessly sets up the next one, like the end of season, well, really, the whole plot of season one being Phil trying to find out what happened to him in Tahiti, which then sets up his search for the Inhuman city, which sets up season three’s Inhumans, which sets up, you know, somehow I don’t remember how, but it sets up the Darkhold and Aida and all of that for season four and then all the ramifications of that set up season five and their thing into space. And then like, it’s so beautifully done and you almost can’t tell the transition between one season to another. But then to your point, it is more jarring to go from the end of season five into six and it’s like, oh, they clearly weren’t prepared to do that because they didn’t set something up.

Dan: Right. No, they expected to end it there. And I think you’re right, that season six was rough and it was weird and it was a little confusing. And since season seven, I think is just a fan service season where it’s just like, you know what? We know this is our final season. We’re done after this. Let’s let it ride. Whatever we want to do, we’re doing. Forget it. 

Taylor: Well, I do want to quickly circle back to the 616 question, because that was amazing context. Like, I did not, I knew some of it. The difference between, you know, the studio and the TV, but I definitely didn’t know that they weren’t talking like, that’s insane to me. I do want to give my opinion on the 616 question because even though I’ve been outspoken on Twitter and gotten yelled at, I’m going to give you my reasoning and I’m going to give you my moment. So I actually think like you, it’s not 616. I think there’s just too much stuff that happens in the show that is like Avengers-level stuff that just is not addressed at an Avengers level. Like the entirety of the Inhumans storyline from the back half of season two and especially into season three when they’re all over. Tony Stark should have been all over that, Bruce Banner, they should have been science bro-ing that and figuring it out and not some underground agency that really shouldn’t exist, nor should it have been not referenced in any MCU movies. And I think the moment for me that it diverges from 616 is actually before the show even starts when they bring Phil Coulson back to life. I think that in the main MCU continuity, Phil is dead. And once Project Tahiti went and it was applied to him, I think that’s when we branched off because it’s actually a theme through so many different seasons that Phil Coulson is the center of everything because, in that universe, Phil Coulson is the center of everything because he’s the guy who started it.

Dan: I mean, it’s hard to argue on that point because it’s just like, yeah, I mean, that kickstarts the whole thing and is that really a thing? And obviously, the Avengers don’t know about it at all. Yeah. So yeah I, I can’t, I can’t argue that one. 

Katie: Yeah, I mean I can argue either because I’m in the same boat with both of you. I don’t think it’s 616. Taylor, you gave, just for reference, I don’t do anything simple, so I have a list. 

Taylor: Oh my God. 

Katie: And I have three different times that it could be different. There are more than three but my first one was that Coulson lived right from the get-go. I don’t see our Coulson in the MCU being alive.

Dan: So question on that. Do you like then go to the point of diversion as when he died in Avengers? 

Taylor: I think for me at least it’s when he’s reanimated in Tahiti because he should have died and stayed dead. 

Katie: Yeah. 

Dan: Okay.

Katie: Like I think he died in Avengers, that was that, and that is where the MCU is. Coulson is no longer alive versus obviously, in Agents of SHIELD, he is brought back by Kree Blood. So I think that’s the first one, that’s the main one. My second one, if you want to move past it, is the whole Terragen Crystal thing. Pretty much when the entire population is, you know, getting fish oil and breaking out into terragenesis and everything feels just, as we said, way too big for nothing to be involved as far as Avengers, Tony. Even then, the Sokovia Accords are mentioned and they are having Inhumans sign it, that feels weird that that’s never referenced. And then my last one I call it the nuclear option, is just Thanos and the snap is kind of just, he’s mentioned actually, which shocks me. He is mentioned in, I believe, season five that Thanos is coming, but we hear nothing past it. Nobody is dusted. That’s the end of that plotline. So I call that the nuclear option because I do think it diverges way before that. But if you really want a concrete moment, it doesn’t seem like Thanos made it to Earth. 

Dan: Yeah, I think the Thanos thing was strictly a Marvel Studios coming down the pike and being like, you must mention this name or character or whatever. 

Katie: Exactly. 

Dan: I don’t think SHIELD wanted to do it at all. I think they knew they had already gone way off course at that point. I think that was a directive from somewhere up top for sure. 

Taylor: Oh, I totally agree. And I think, you know, I just finished season four a couple of days ago. And I think one of the things that really got me there and it didn’t bother me the first time I watched it cause I watched it pre-pandemic, so this is like 2018. So also pre-Disney Plus and the whole point of the fourth season, the whole theme of the fourth season is the Darkhold, right? Which is now a major, major, well it’s kind of broken, I think. But it was a huge point in the MCU now. Obviously, it made Wanda what she is now. We have Agatha, all of that and I don’t actually remember what they, they took it right. Robbie took the book away, so I don’t know if there’s some magical way to retrieve it, but that to me is a whole other thing. Also, I think it looks different not like that’s a huge thing, but like, it definitely did not say Darkhold on it. So it was a little bit of a slap on you over the head with that one. But I thought that one was another one where I was just like, I cannot get behind this being in the main continuity now that we have WandaVision, we had MoM like there’s just absolutely no way that this is the same thing. 

Dan: When that popped up in Wandavision I did the whole like Leonardo DiCaprio, like pointing meme. I was like, oh my gosh, I know that. Like, I feel like every Agents of SHIELD fan was like, I know that reference. You know, like just it was a great moment. 

Taylor: Totally, totally. It was so good and honestly, that realm is like, so interesting. And it was, it was actually, it makes me sad now, looking back at it that we didn’t get to see a version of Ghost Rider, whether it’s Robbie or Johnny, like, it could have been either one, and that would have been a really cool way to bring them in.

Dan: Oh, we’ll get to the Ghost Rider in this podcast. We’ll get to Ghost Rider. 

Taylor: Oh, good, good because I really hope they find a way to bring that character back. I mean, even if it’s like and we’ll get to this, but like, even if it’s in Secret Wars and it’s, oh my gosh, Nicolas Cage again in a cameo? I mean, come on. 

Dan: That’s the rumor going around right now, is that he comes back for that. 

Katie: I would be so happy. 

Taylor: I would literally die. 

Katie: Yeah. 

Taylor: I don’t even want to say, the noises that are going to come out of my face if that were to happen in the theater. But that perfectly segways us into our last question or our last official question we’ll say, related to this topic, which is could we see Agents of SHIELD characters in future projects? Now the caveat is it could or could not be, it doesn’t have to be the versions that we’ve seen in the show coming over from another universe. It could be them completely being introduced a new in 616 in the MCU main continuity and could it happen in a Multiverse-related project like Secret Wars. 

Dan: So when I saw this question, I immediately thought of two things. One, obviously this question is really centered around Skye/Daisy/Quake

Katie: 100%.

Dan: Because especially in Secret Invasion, there were so many rumors circulating that she was going to pop up in Secret Invasion or she’ll pop up somewhere. So that’s like, I get that, but me as just a lover of Agents of SHIELD, going right back to your Ghost Rider comment, I want Robbie Rayas as his Ghost Rider in the MCU. I thought he was sensational in it. 

Taylor: Yeah, Gabriel Luna was amazing. 

Dan: Oh, he was so good. One of the things that I loved most, too, was, I think the best the peak Agents of SHIELD was just the visual effects that they had on the Ghost Rider transition. 

Katie: Yes. 

Taylor: Yeah. 

Dan: I don’t think they got better than that. I mean, that was awesome.

Katie: It was so good. 

Taylor: And they did it on multiple people too, which was really cool. It wasn’t just Robbie. We saw Coulson, we saw Mack. And so, like the fact that they were able to make the quality consistent across different face shapes and different characters and different builds of bodies like that can be really hard. Like you might be able to perfect it for one actor, but then to be able to execute it so flawlessly across all three, definitely major props to that one. 

Dan: I talked with a couple of my friends who are big Marvel people about that question when you posed that to me and immediately I get responses like Fitz and Simmons or Mack or something like that, and I’m like, the issue I have with Fitz-Simmons or Mack or anybody from- Deke- throw Deke out there, why not?

Katie: Oh, Deke. 

Dan: The problem is they work so well or like Agent Ward, you know, Grant Ward. They work so well as a unit that taking it out of that unit would be weird. You know what I mean? 

Taylor: Yeah, I also think with those characters and not to diminish them in any sense because they’re all great characters, but the MCU now is moving so far away from non-powered characters. Like if you think about who we’ve got left on the board, you’ve only got maybe three or four who are just like really good spies or really good archers or, you know, I’m literally thinking the characters of Hawkeye is pretty much it, you know, who are not, powered in any way. And so if you’re going to bring in even a May or any of the characters that you mentioned, they’re just going to fall in the background against someone like a Wanda, a Thor like these really incredibly powerful beings. They’re just not going to, they’re not going to stand out. And it’s going to be the Agents of SHIELD fans who are going to be like, oh my gosh, this is awesome. But everybody else is going to be like, okay, here’s a former Agent of SHIELD, who cares? No offense. I think they’re all great characters, but that’s why I think Daisy really is the only or any of the other mystical people that they’ve brought in throughout the show. But it has to be a powered character that they’re going to bring in if they’re going to make any noise, because otherwise, people are just going to be like, oh cool, they did that Agents of SHIELD thing, but they’re not going to have any sort of like longevity within the MCU. It’s going to be a fan service cameo at most.

Katie: Yeah, I agree with that. 

Dan: I can see Ming-Na Wen coming back only because she’s a Disney legend and she can do like, whatever she wants, whenever she wants. I agree with you, it’s probably not going to be May it’ll probably be some other character. 

Katie: Yeah. I think the main two would be Quake or Yo-Yo just because obviously they’re the two big Inhumans on the team especially by the end. And you brought up Secret Invasion, we talked about them prior to the show coming out and how Secret Warriors was a thing because of Secret Invasion and they are two of the people on that team. So we were talking, will we see them? Could they come in? This would be a great opportunity to do so. I would like to see them more than anything. I love Yo-Yo. She’s the absolute best, so I would love to see her come in. But to bring it back to that question, I think it’s going to, or at least personally, maybe this is more I’d like it to be a direct come-in from a different universe rather than have them come in from our universe if that makes sense. So I don’t really want an alternate Daisy, I don’t want an alternate Yo-Yo. I want to see the ones that I just spent seven seasons watching and getting to know. 

Dan: Oh, sure yeah.

Katie: So if that means, you know, we clash with their universe and they show up because of that, that to me is the perfect way to do it, rather than just having, you know, a random version of Daisy that we don’t really have the same connection with and you might have a completely different history to her come in and it’s kind of just an awkward in-between gray area. 

Taylor: Or worse yet, she’s a Mutant, not an Inhumans. 

Katie: Oh, don’t get me started on this again, Taylor. 

Dan: I think I think the MCU is trying to get so far away from Inhumans. Like, they can’t push them away fast enough.

Katie: Agreed. 

Taylor: I know. When they uttered the word Mutant or when he said the word your genes are mutant or whatever at the end of Ms. Marvel, the anger that I felt was like I thought I was going to go full Ghost Rider. I thought my head was going to explode, I was so mad. 

Dan: You know what? I will backtrack just a bit because I personally was stunned watching Multiverse of Madness and then having Black Bolt in it. 

Katie: Yes, we talked about that.

Taylor: That is true.

Dan: And naming him as an Inhuman and I’m like, wait, they actually acknowledge that? Wow. Okay. 

Taylor: I know. One of the things that we’ve been trying to figure out and neither one of us has seen the Inhumans show yet, it’s on our list of non-officially MCU things to watch eventually just for posterity and also maybe to laugh at it a teeny, teeny bit there. But, you know, I would love to know if there’s any argument that we can make for that universe eventually being 838 or whether 838 is that universe in the future. I also don’t know the answer to this, if that Inhuman universe from the show is the same as the universe that we’re seeing in Agents of SHIELD, because I think there would be something really cool about there actually being one universe that we’ve lowkey been following this whole time, but without really knowing it, that would actually be kind of cool in my book.

Dan: It would be an effective use of their time and money. 

Taylor: Yes.

Katie: 100%. 

Dan: If I’m being Mr. Negative for a second, I don’t know that Disney would do that. The way Disney is going right now, efficient and effective money usage is probably not their route, but no, I mean, that would make too much sense to just keep it.

Katie: Right? That’s what we said. 

Dan: I don’t know what they’re going to do with Daredevil and all of the Netflix shows, too. The same questions can be applied there. 

Katie: Yeah, I think once we get Born Again, which obviously is on pause right now, so TBD on when we might actually get it, but I think that might answer a few more questions for us as well just for how they plan to connect it. And obviously, it’s called Born Again, so I think it’s always been the question of is it literal? And we’re kind of starting semi-over or are we going to have a reference to the other show and this is just Marvel’s reboot, but not really. So I’m waiting for that to get a little bit more confirmation on where we might go.

Taylor: Yeah, I also think there’s a part of me that thinks that you know, if they’re not the same universe because we’re looking at it differently, you know, the shows are not equal to the movies or the old shows are not in any way going to tie into anything that they’re doing now. Going back to the Inhumans, because I’m still stuck on that, there is an argument then that we can do the Inhumans at some point because we have now seen one on a big screen for the first time ever. So as much as I really like a good throughline and I like things to be organized and I like rules which anybody who listens to this on the regular knows I’m a stickler for a good rule. But as much as I love all that, I feel like I would also really not be opposed to knowing that there’s an opportunity to bring characters like Black Bolt, flesh them out, and not just have his head implode, you know, after 5 minutes. I think that could be cool. And then we can open the door to more Inhumans stories because it’s really untapped. And I know they’re all Mutants all the time now, but eventually, they’re going to, you know, maybe try new things, question mark? I don’t know. 

Dan: I think that was Marvel kind of making fun of themselves for a little bit because they’re like they built Black Bolt up to be in the movie and in the actual show. I mean, he can destroy cities with his voice. Like he’s overpowered to an extreme level. And then they’re like, oh yeah, we just dropped Inhumans in Multiverse of Madness, that’s crazy, and he’s dead. 

Taylor: I mean, even the same thing with Professor X, like, oh, my God, it’s Professor X, snaps his neck in 2 minutes, which was violent, but it happened.

Katie: And also really freaky because she was like a weird zombie version of herself when she did that. And that actually was the jump scare that got me during that movie. Not going to lie. 

Dan: I was too busy still geeking out over the fact that they used the X-Men animated theme to introduce him as he came in. I’m like, I’m good. I don’t care what happens after that. I’m good. 

Taylor: And the cartoon yellow wheelchair, I know that was like in the trailers, which I still don’t understand why they put that in the trailer, but whatever, that just I was like, I feel like I am seven years old again. Like, I was so excited. Oh, so awesome. 

Dan: It’s such a silly thing to make everybody so happy. Also, there is like, oh, that might not look the best in live action. Like it looks so cool in the animated, but it looks like half of a school bus just coming in. 

Katie: Yeah, it definitely didn’t look right. 

Dan: I don’t know if it translated to live-action, but anyway, it’s fun.

Taylor: Yeah, it was still a great moment. Those are all of the questions that we had, the official questions. Was there anything that you feel like as a super fan of Agents of SHIELD that you want to get out and make sure that everybody knows? Because I’m going to speak from like my own experience. I feel like they’re the people who are strictly MCU, and then they’re the people who watch everything because sort of maybe it might all be connected, especially now that we have the Multiverse. So for any listeners who are all MCU all day, what would you say to them about Agents of SHIELD? 

Dan: So I know when it first came out, people were disappointed at the lack of Avengers in Agents of SHIELD. So some people just tuned out immediately once they got over the fact that they’re not going to see Chris Hemsworth in this show or Chris Evans or whatever. I enjoyed season one. I thought season one, especially towards the end where they have that Winter Soldier switch is really good and I think they did a great job of building all of the characters, you care about each one very quickly. So I like that. Season two is where it starts to lose some people, I feel like, and then season three is a struggle. I get it. I get the inhuman issue. I do. But if you can get to season four, I loved Season four. It’s one of my favorite seasons of television, I think, between the Ghost Rider story and the Framework, I will go back and just watch Season Four over and over again. 

Katie: It’s so good. 

Taylor: The few episodes where everybody’s in the Framework are some of my favorite episodes of the whole series. Also, I didn’t catch this before because, or in my previous watching, there was nothing to reference at the time, but they actually name one of those episodes, ‘What If’ which blew my mind when I saw that I was like, this is literally the exact premise of What If? seven years before that show was ever a concepted, so really Agents of SHIELD set up in so many ways how to do TV for the MCU. Unfortunately, many of the more positive lessons were not learned in terms of longer seasons equaling better pacing. They have yet to learn that lesson, I hope they do someday. It doesn’t need to be 20, but six really isn’t working for them. I think we’ve realized that now. Hopefully. But I think that was one of the things that I love most about the Framework is it really is the whole concept of What If? and you get to expand it beyond just a 20-minute What If? episode into what are they in three or four 45-minute episodes and you actually get to see what it’s like and really get to experience life inside the Framework and what would have happened if Hydra one and the fact that it all stems from Agent May saving that girl in Bahrain is incredible how that just spiraled. And I think it goes back to the whole idea of like time travel and how you know, I know we’re not supposed to do the butterfly effect because that’s not a thing in the MCU, but that’s a perfect example of the butterfly effect. Her one regret literally let Hydra win and created like this horrible authoritarian state that is just insane and saw Ward as a good guy. So it just put the whole thing on its’ head.

Dan: And Fitz as a villain. Fitz is a compelling villain. He is really good. 

Taylor: So good. Iain De Caestecker was so good. 

Katie: I have to say season four was hard in such a good way because there was a part of me that was like, I want the Framework. Just give me this universe right now because I have to say, I was not a Ward person until about halfway through the first season. I finally, finally was like, you know, I see it, I get it. And then he like, was Hydra and I was like, noooo. I really enjoyed seeing him be the person that- I always said Skye but I guess it was Skye at the time, wanted him to be, and so it was nice to see that. But oh my gosh, Fitz as a villain. And then to keep that storyline kind of going for a while and how that haunts him, so well done. 

Dan: I like Agents of SHIELD, they wanted Brett Dalton so bad as Ward. They worked so hard to try to find ways to just bring him back, which I appreciate. I enjoyed the character of Ward. I think his, you know, heel turn is great, especially like rewatching some of the earlier episodes of season one. I think that heel turn is great. I think he plays the bad guy great and then you get the turn again it’s so well done.

Katie: Yeah, they didn’t want to let him go. 

Dan: No.

Taylor:  I don’t blame them. 

Dan: If people are watching it, get to season four because you’ll get so rewarded by getting to season four. How did you like season five? You said you were getting through season five. 

Taylor: I’m about a third of the way through. It’s fine. It’s weird to me. This is the other thing that I said this early on to Kate when I was watching season one, and now I’m thinking about how even more it’s like strange to me, the fact that Phil Coulson doesn’t recognize the Kree when he was a part of Captain Marvel, which obviously came out after this show like he’s a part of that whole thing. And so when he pulls out the Kree body in the Tahiti Room in the guesthouse and he like, has no idea what the thing in and I’m like, oh, that bothers me. I don’t hate it. But I also know season five in my first watch a few years ago was where I started to like, check out. I was like, I don’t know how I feel about this. And then it deals with time travel. 

Katie: That’s your craft. 

Taylor: Not my favorite premise, hence why I’m struggling a little in the Multiverse saga. It’s a little hard for me. I think, truly, I watched The Flash when I was in college because Grant Gustin went to my alma mater, so I watched the show and that show does not do time travel well either. And so it just totally ruined the whole concept for me because I was like, I don’t understand any of this so now when time travel is involved, I simply refuse to engage. And so I’m struggling with season five. 

Dan: So was the Endgame okay for you then or still no? 

Taylor: I could understand it. It was like base level enough that I was like, okay, cool. They got me a little bit with the whole no-butterfly effect thing. I was like, I don’t agree with that. But now that we’re like, all Multiverse, all try out time travel all the time, I kind of knew Endgame was a gateway into that and I was like, oh no. So yeah, it’s a challenge. 

Katie: I feel like Endgame was that downward spiral of like, this is going to get hard and it’s going to give us headaches and we’re just going to have to deal with it.

Taylor: Yeah, then we got to Katie’s favorite show, Loki.

Dan: I definitely went out afterward and like, okay, so this is how this works, right? 

Katie: I’m still trying to figure it out. 

Taylor: We’ve done diagrams with Oreos and water bottles and markers to try to lay out the whole idea of the parallel universes and the crisscrossing. This was like post-Loki, so yeah.

Dan:  I missed that post from you guys on social media. I want like a video of you guys doing the whole Oreo. 

Taylor: We definitely have a picture somewhere. What we need to do, Kate, I think, is we need to film one of our off, we do quite a few off-mic theory sessions where we’re both just trying to work through it. These are two people just for a little bit of context, not science people. We are very much arts and humanities people. I was forced to take science in high school, didn’t love it, and barely took science in college, not my forte, right? So two very non-science people trying to figure out the concept that real science people have yet to figure out.

Katie: Yeah.

Taylor: Yeah, it will be entertaining. 

Katie: Oh, yeah. It’s been a journey. But I will say going back to season five, just to give my thoughts, I have to agree that it was and I listen I was on a train, guys, and you all know that from listening. I started because of Secret Invasion they said, hey guys, you should probably watch Agents of SHIELD. So I said, crap, I haven’t seen any of it, so I have to watch the show now. And so I was chugging along really well. And then I hit five and I started to slow down because I was like, it wasn’t even necessarily, well, it was a little bit the time travel, but it just-

Taylor: It gets everybody. 

Katie: Yeah and I guess I just was like, okay, now the earth falls apart. But then when I was finally getting there, the whole General Talbot thing, I can’t explain how it lost me, but I just, I had to take a few days. I’m not going to lie. I needed to be away from the show after that because I was just like, I don’t know what I watched. And I know that was when they were throwing around the Thanos stuff. And I just was like, I don’t I don’t know. I don’t know what this is and I can’t watch this right now. 

Dan: That’s another actor they tried to bring back a bunch. 

Katie: Oh, my gosh, I know. They were like, oh, we’ll just throw Talbot in here. Oh, he could be in charge of this now. Great. Everywhere we need him, there he is. 

Taylor: Shoots him in the head, he comes back, he won’t go away. 

Dan: And they bring back like the whole Gravitonium whatever his actual name is, the whole Gravitonium thing is back for like episode three or whatever of season one. 

Taylor: Okay, I have not gotten to that being back yet, but I knew that that was an Easter egg. It took them four seasons to bring that back around?

Katie: Yeah. 

Taylor: Dang.

Dan: Yeah, that’s a very deep hole. 

Katie: Well, because I feel like season one was, I watch a lot of crime shows, I feel like it was very every episode is a new case, right? That was what we were doing. So it was like, okay, now we dealt with this, now we dealt with this, but everything still went to one bigger situation to wrap up a whole season, to have a big finale, whatever. And so it was cool to see all these Easter eggs or references to things that we would see. But yeah, that Gravitonium thing, they sat on that for so long, it feels like what I’m thinking this Mordo thing from Doctor Strange one, that end credits scene where they’re just sitting on it and it’s now what, seven years later and we still don’t know if we’ll ever see it again. That’s what it felt like. 

Dan: Yeah, I think, this is still going to be an Agents of SHIELD thought because I’m going to tie it in. But I think one of the big problems with phases four and five of the MCU is not enough interconnectivity.

Katie: 100%. 

Dan: And it’s not that the characters are bad either. I love Shang-Chi. I thought that was a really good movie. 

Katie: So good, oh my gosh. 

Dan: I love Simu Lui. Why have I not seen him in anything since? That’s a really big problem.

Taylor: Yeah, I agree. 

Dan: So now, by the time he gets in, they’ve just rumored to have, like, Shang-Chi 2, like, post-Secret Wars and post, you know, Kang Dynasty. So you’re putting, like, multiple years between, like, that’s not enough. And with Agents of SHIELD, I think it’s the same way you could if you wanted to put Agents of SHIELD characters in the MCU, four and five might have been the time to do it and integrate some familiar characters to at least some Marvel fans, so you have some level of like, oh, I know that character. Okay, I recognize maybe their plot line or their motive or whatever, and you can connect in maybe a spot where it wasn’t connecting for somebody. 

Taylor: Yeah, especially five too because at that point, if I’m thinking about the years correctly, five would have been like 2017, 2018, if they’re talking about Thanos. So, you know, you already have the Guardians on the board and you’re in space like you don’t have to have a Chris Pratt because I think that’s obviously tough, but you’re not going to get Chris Pratt on network television for one episode, but you could get probably a Bradley Cooper to go in for a day and do a voiceover for Rocket Raccoon. Like, is that really that challenging? 

Dan: I need a Melinda May/Rocket Raccoon meeting. I need that in my life. 

Taylor: Honestly, secret BFFs in the making.

Dan:  I think so. I think so. 

Taylor: Just saying, power couple right there, like platonically, obviously but you know.

Katie: It’d be so good. 

Taylor: I mean if that scene with him and Bucky is any indication where Bucky’s got the gun in one arm and Rocket with the gun in the other arm can you imagine what Melinda May could do with a super angry trash panda? Like, come on. 

Katie: Wait. If we’re going to say this, then he needs to meet Yo, yo. Hello? 

Dan: I want to see a Deke/Groot conversation. I want to say I want to see Rocket try to get Coulson’s arm. All these things are possible and I am now really sad that it didn’t happen. 

Katie: It was right there.

Dan: It was there. 

Taylor: The Guardians would have played so well. And just like even the tone of Agents of SHIELD, like, even though some of the stuff gets dark, it’s a much lighter show than especially now where we are in the MCU, which tends to be less fun, tonally. It’s still fun to go see them, but the Guardians being as light and fun and jokey as they are fit, the tone of, you know, Agents of SHIELD. They’ll be like on death’s door, cracking jokes and that is literally like the Guardians. So I feel like there’s a lot of synergies that were missed, missed opportunities. Kevin, what have you done? 

Katie: Yeah, I have to agree with that but also Dan, actually I think then you said this really early on about how there were a lot of fans who, oh, we’re not seeing the Avengers in the show, I’m not watching it. But I have to say I think a missed opportunity is even with Natasha and Clint, I mean, those are some of your top-tier Agents of SHIELD, and to never even have a small cameo with them felt kind of a missed thing. 

Taylor: And how many times did they name-drop them in the first season? Oh well, Barton and Romanoff never have an extraction plan. I was like, well, why don’t you name-drop them for the thousandth time this episode? Thank you. 

Katie: Right, I never needed to see a Chris Evans Captain America. I mean, it would have been cool and especially with the whole Winter Soldier thing, I wish, and again, this is just because of Bucky. I do wish there would have been a little bit more reference to him as a character because like, that would have been a whole, like icing on the cake moment for me. But those are your best agents and before the Avengers they carried SHIELD just due to their abilities. So it was just that felt like a really obvious missed one. 

Dan: Well, I mean, they only have I think Fury only shows up in one or two episodes. I think he shows up in like two episodes. 

Katie: And then he leaves.

Taylor: I’m shocked they even got him for that.

Dan: Yeah and I get that the whole filming schedules for TV and movies are vastly different. So I mean, that’s part of the problem, I think. But even in speaking of schedules, you wonder why Fitz kind of disappears there for like season six and season seven for a little bit. It’s because I think especially in seven, but it’s because he didn’t think they were coming back for season six and season seven. So he was booked on another show and had scheduling conflicts. So I like I get the scheduling conflict thing. But now that Marvel’s all together and is under one umbrella, you could do a lot more than I think what they have done and they’re just still choosing not to. 

Taylor: Yeah it’s now an active choice to keep things separate and with certain characters it makes sense. Like with MoonKnight, that makes sense. Like he’s just totally, like, not even related to anything other than through his God totem, right? Because there’s that whole God realm that Katie and I truly believe they need to tap into sooner rather than later. There’s a lot of stories there.

Dan: Oh, I need a MoonKnight two. 

Katie: Oh, my gosh. Me too. 

Taylor: Yeah, I honestly, I was a little bummed by it initially the show and then they brought out Love and Thunder and that whole Room of Gods. And I was like, oh, now I want to explore this more because there’s clearly a whole lot more going on. We got to see Bast for the first time. There was an Eternal there. I was like, all right, so all of this stuff is starting to come together. But yet they shelved that whole thing where there was a mush of franchises coming together and they’re like, oh, this thing that connects, yeah, yeah, you’re not going to see that every year. Here’s another few new things that connect to absolutely nothing. We need to stop with the introductions for a hot minute and start putting people together, and then we can do a little bit of both.

Dan: Yeah. 

Katie: Yeah. 

Taylor: And I think that’s what one through three did really well, but four and five thus far and honestly, if you look at the slate, even six just do not seem interested in putting anybody together and it’s feeling less like a joint universe and more just like we’re going to pick some random stuff out of the comics and put it on the TV, you’re going to love it.

Dan: Well, I think it doesn’t even have to be like Shang-Chi doesn’t have to be a major character in the Fantastic Four movie. You just had to put him in an end credits scene, and I think that would pacify most people. It would pacify me. Like, that’d be fine. 

Katie: And I think, too, I mean, are we not, knocking on wood that we still get it, the Thunderbolts next year? Are we not getting that? But yet, okay, we have Valentina coming in recruiting, but other than the connections they already have, obviously Yelena and the Red Guardian, Bucky and John, they don’t know each other like I feel when we were building the Avengers, you got Tony start coming in in the Hulk and you had, you know, Natasha was in one of Tony’s movies before and everything wrapped together before and after the Avengers film, and we don’t have that yet. So it just feels, to your point, so disconnected. That’s why I think, you know, we liked Hawkeye so much. Yelena was one thread that followed through from the Black Widow movie and it made sense. And that was one of the few shows that I think has done it. 

Dan: You want a really weird experience? Watch like Secret Invasion and Rhodey and then go back and watch Iron Man two and like, see Rhodey’s introduction and, oh, I guess sorry the Don Cheadle Rhodey introduction and like Natasha.

Taylor and Katie: Yeah.

Dan: And like how they blend all that together and then where they take it, like for Secret Invasion, wherever else. It’s a mind trip to do that. 

Taylor: I can’t talk about Secret Invasion and Rhodey because I go full flame on angry when people tell me that he was a Skrull since Civil War because that is just patently false and I refuse to believe it.

Dan: Are they just basing that off of his, like, hospital gown? 

Katie: Yes, primary.

Taylor: The director has said has made some comments. Now, do the directors know everything? Absolutely not. He also was like not totally like absolutely 100% confirm. He hinted at it and I was like step off. Absolutely not. There are so many reasons why that doesn’t work and I’m not going to go into it because I will start screaming. But I can’t even think about Rhodey in that show because I just get so mad at the very incorrect takes that the internet has decided are correct. 

Dan: Going back a bit, I would love for you guys to do a comparison of MoonKnight and Thor: Love and Thunder specifically because those are two vastly different projects. But like you said, they can interweave a little bit and connect. 

Katie: We definitely want to tackle that god realm a little bit more eventually. 

Taylor: Yeah. I also think, I mean, realistically, other Thor five, which I still can’t believe is happening, but other than Thor five, where are they going to bring in Hercules? Because up until now they’ve kept the gods super separate other than like Thor and he, I don’t want to say he barely counts as a god. That’s not fair. But they’ve made him so human in the way that they write him in the movies that he doesn’t seem like a god. Like he doesn’t seem that like majestic next level up because you also have regular humans who are just as if not more powerful than him, a la Carol Danvers. So he doesn’t seem as like crazy out there as Hercules born of Gods, born of Zeus, lived in that place that had all the gods, that just seems totally different. So where are you going to bring that guy in? I’m not really sure. That’s another plot that probably is going to dangle until I’m like 75. 

Dan: I think the other big thing Marvel is running into now that’s a problem is with Thor: Love and Thunder, with Eternals and the idea of Celestials being like, what are those tiers? Where is a Celestial, where is Odin, where is Thor, where is Icarus? Like, like where are these levels? And it’s very unclear and if anything’s clear, it’s that they don’t know and they haven’t really like defined that. 

Katie: And I actually think it’s interesting because you’re bringing up how the Eternals are also on this board now and we were talking about if we actually kind of wrap it all into a nice bow. We had been talking about this as well, where now having the context of Eternals and some of the Gods and Celestials for Agents of SHIELD itself, actually makes it make a little bit more sense of where it was going and the thought process with the Kree and the Inhumans storyline and everything. So I actually, you know, bringing that up, I think you can almost throw in the Inhumans in that kind of triangle pyramid thing that we want to create because it’s like, well, they were created by Kree who kind of got the idea from Celestials, and then you have the Eternals floating around up here. Just feels like we have a lot of things going on. So it’s, it’s messy. 

Taylor: And depending on how you look at the Eternals and your interpretation of their origins, they may or may not be the best LMDs in the universe. So, you know, there’s that too. 

Dan: Yeah, I think you said it. It’s messy. It’s a little messy, and they need to clear that up and, you know, MoonKnight was awesome, but I think you guys were talking recently about your rewatch of Black Panther and the ancestral planes and just ideas of, okay, well, now you got different cultural gods in the MCU, which is cool and that’s great and I love that cultural context. But where do they like where is Khonshu compared to like, where are these? It’s messy.

Katie: Right. 

Dan: I’m still here for it all. I’m here for it all, but it’s messy. 

Taylor: Oh, yes, 100% and we’re just going to all be here trying to make heads and tails of all of it forever. Honestly, until the day that I go to whatever ancestral plane is calling me. So that’s it, but this has been such a fun conversation and so glad that we got your amazing perspective on Agents of SHIELD because it has given us a lot to think about and a lot of context that quite frankly, we didn’t have. So thank you, thank you so much for joining us. Please tell everyone about your show, what it’s about, where they can find you so that they can migrate over there because I have a feeling they might be interested in what you’re talking about.

Dan: Yeah, so I’m a nerd of many likes, so I love me some Marvel, but I love me some Harry Potter. So, gosh, I guess a little while ago now, like over a year ago, I decided to do a reread, and then that turned into the podcast. So what we do is we read through the series and I should specify now, we basically analyze each chapter as we go. So we give an analysis, we give our deep dive into one of our guests calls it an AP English class is essentially what we’re doing.

Katie: Been there, done that.

Dan: Breaking down the book, yeah, and that’s kind of what it is. So we’re bringing up some stuff as we reread it. We’re discovering new things about the series that we never picked up before. We drop an episode every Saturday morning, which is a lot of work to do to get one out every Saturday. But yeah, it’s a lot of work. A lot of work goes into it, but we are all the way through book four, we’re about a third of the way through book five, Order of the Phoenix. So things are ramping up, things are getting a little darker, a little bit more adults in the series. So it’s really fun to kind of dive in and talk some Harry Potter. 

Taylor: Awesome. Well, you all should definitely check it out. There is plenty of backlog and a long episode list for you to check out, so definitely recommend you guys do that. We are big Harry Potter fans, as you may or may not know in this house. Well technically we’re in two separate houses now, but in the house we grew up in, you know, Harry Potter was the thing includes dad, dads a big Harry Potter fan, too. So everyone, highly, highly recommend you check that out. And as for us, you know where to find us on our blog and also how to support the show on the home page. So you feel like you want to do that, you definitely should. Links are all in the show notes. 

Katie: And before we wrap up, I just want to give Dan one more shout-out for joining us today. Thank you for coming on. It was such a pleasure to have you. 

Dan: Thanks for having me, I really appreciate it. 

Katie: Of course and we should definitely do this again because you brought so much amazing insight it’s not even funny. And so to wrap everything up, as usual, you guys can follow us on Twitter at SisAssembledPod or X, whatever you want to call it. I’m still very married to Twitter, so it’s staying that way for me. But you can also follow us on Instagram and Threads at SistersAssembled. Coming up, we have another fun episode where we will be doing a question of Civil War: where would the new Avengers stand? Obviously, we don’t have official new Avengers, but we’re going to be picking a few where we will discuss where they land on that spectrum. Team Cap, which we all are on this podcast, or at least Taylor and I are. I don’t know if I want to know what team you are, just so we keep this good friendship. But you know, Team Cap or Team Iron Man we will be figuring- oh there we go, Team Cap. 

Taylor: He’s wearing the right shirt. It’s all good, correct answer. Friendship preserved. We’re good. 

Katie: All good. All right, so I can say we are all Team Cap on this podcast, but we will be breaking it down next week with that. So make sure you guys stay tuned for it and keep up with us as Marvel just blew your mind, so let’s talk about it.