Spoilers for the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 3 finale follow. Read with caution!
In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Season 3 finale, the team defeated Hive, but at the cost of one of their own. Lincoln paid the ultimate price, and while the whole team was rattled, Daisy was the one who took it to heart. The finale then time-skipped a few months, where a lot had changed for the Agents. Daisy was on the run dishing out vigilante justice Quake style while Coulson and Mack hunted her down. Perhaps the biggest revelation was that Coulson was no longer the S.H.I.E.L.D. director and that he was back to taking orders. The identity of the director will most likely be a mystery until the Season 4 premiere, but Clark Gregg was able to speak about how Coulson was handling his big change.
He’s not the director anymore, his destiny is not so much in his own hand as it used to be. The person he cares about is on the run and seems to be very sought after by the authorities. It’s very much changing the game for Coulson. Certainly from that teaser of where we’ll be next season, he does not seem to be in good shape.
Clark Gregg's answer to During Entertainment Weekly was directed at a fan who questioned when we would find out the identity of the new director and if it were someone we already knew. While Gregg was unable to divulge such a big spoiler, at least he talked about how this change will directly affect the Coulson Formerly Known as Director.
I didn’t think Coulson looked that bent out of shape in the finale, but he was obsessively searching for Daisy (and not in a good way). It looks like Coulson will be going through a crisis of faith of sorts, like what he went through in Season 1 when S.H.I.E.L.D. turned out to be Hydra. He has to contend with losing Daisy, someone he regarded like a daughter, and getting a demotion from the organization he devoted his life too. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will be moving to a new later time with a promise of darker storylines in Season 4, which sounds appropriate given Coulson’s bleak new status quo.
We’ve got until the new fall season to come up with lots of theories as to what went down in the time skip. The big question right now is who is the new director? Assuming that it’s a character we’ve already met, it could be Talbot (though unlikely) or May, who was MIA in the future. Then again, May has been pretty fickle with her feelings toward S.H.I.E.L.D. this season, so I can’t see her wanting a higher position of authority. Of course, it could be an entirely new character to the show altogether, either created from scratch or taken from the comics.
ABC neglected to pick up Season 3 of Agent Carter or the Marvel’s Most Wanted spinoff, so Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will be the only Marvel show on the network for a bit. The show will return sometime in the fall in its new 10 p.m. timeslot, so stay tuned to Cinema Blend more updates as they come.
