‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’ Is Back! Well, The Show Anyway

Late yesterday, ABC announced it was renewing the show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., despite what was generally viewed as a weak first half of its inaugural season, and a drastic drop off in viewers from its first couple of episodes.

According to Entertainment Weekly’s site, the renewal was expected by most TV pundits. It seems to be an indication that the value of having a second screen on which to promote the big movie releases is important enough to offset usual considerations of viewership levels.

In fact, having such a TV product available to flog its overall empire seems to work so well for Disney, its ABC subsidiary has also announced a new series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a spin-off of the original Captain America movie, Agent Carter. EW quotes the ABC press release:

“Marvel’s Agent Carter,” starring “Captain America’s” Hayley Atwell follows the story of Peggy Carter. It’s 1946, and peace has dealt Peggy Carter a serious blow as she finds herself marginalized when the men return home from fighting abroad. Working for the covert SSR (Strategic Scientific Reserve),  Peggy must balance doing administrative work and going on secret missions for Howard Stark all while trying to navigate life as a single woman in America, in the wake of losing the love of her life – Steve Rogers. 

Of course, there is one hole in my theory — the fact that it will be tough to have any members of the MCU appear to promote movies since the show is set in 1946. Perhaps we should expect lots of Asgardians to join Agent Carter, played by Hayley Atwell, reprising her role from the movie, and the Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter.

Getting back to the present, I hope that AoS will continue to be as good in its second season as it has been in the last 10 episodes. The tie-in with the aftermath of the movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier has been solid and well integrated into the previous action on the series. People have died, betrayals have happened and they have taken a very interesting turn on two lesser-known comic book characters — Deathlok and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent John Garrett from the Elektra: Assassin series.

Marvel, ABC and their alien overlords Disney show again that they are very smart when it comes to maximizing the return from the best comic-book-to-screen conversions the world has seen.