Why Are Agent Of SHIELD’s Secret Warriors Still A Secret?
Agents of SHIELD has come a long way since the first episode aired back in 2013, when a resurrected Phil Coulson brought a group of individuals together to form a team and to fly around in a bright red car named Lola. After the intense conclusion of season 2, Marvel has teased that season 3 would introduce another Marvel comic super team into the film universe, Secret Warriors. With Agents of SHIELD currently halfway through season 3, one has to ask, where are these Secret Warriors?
During an ABC Television event this past winter, IGN was able to ask this very question to showrunners Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen, who promised that this season would see the team come together. Whedon stated “We feel a duty to the Cinematic Universe to not hyper-accelerate how many people have powers.” Would Iron man have been as great of a movie if they introduced Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Hulk at the same time? Marvel Cinematic has done an excellent job at building a web of characters, one character at a time. Agents of SHIELD is no exception. This was illustrated last season after SHIELD agent Skye [Chloe Bennet], became an inhuman and was revealed to be an existing Marvel Comics character, Daisy Johnson. Marvel clearly enjoys building up its characters and Johnson’s transformation was the start of something big. This reveal brought inhumans into the MCU, which introduce new found abilities that left Johnson fearful of her own strength and divided her team to varying degrees of paranoia and fear of this new “threat.”
This is a concept that Marvel has tackled for years with many of its characters; the fear that something new and different can be a menace and how people’s inability to accept change, can lead to bullying and hate mongering. The X-men are a prime example of those who have persecuted because of their difference. However Marvel has been currently redirecting the attention off of mutants and onto the inhumans.
For those unfamiliar, inhumans are the descendants of humans that were genetically manipulated by the alien race known as the Kree. Along with Daisy Johnson, other inhumans have being developing powers across the world. SHIELD’s current goal has been to try to find and train them before they could be turned into weapons or cause mass damage and hysteria. Johnson is the one chosen to head up this team of Secret Warriors. Just as in the comics Nick Fury wanted a team of gifted characters without the notoriety of the Avengers, ABC is pulling the same with Coulson and Johnson’s team.
As evident from the midseason finale, Daisy Johnson has begun to assemble her team. IGN also caught up with actor Luke Mitchell, who fans of the show know better as the inhuman Lincoln who recently joined Johnson’s budding team. Mitchell revealed a bit more about his character’s decision to join SHIELD and Johnson’s team, “He’s part of the team, he’s integrating of sorts into the team, and that’s where there will be a little bit of conflict coming up because it won’t be the smoothest transition or integration. He still has his own reservations and perspectives and one or two demons in the closet that are unresolved.” Lincoln’s feelings for Daisy played no small part in convincing him to push past his apprehension towards SHIELD. Mitchell added that, “There definitely will be a little bit more romance.”
These Secret Warriors may seem like small time compared to the Avengers but their importance will most likely increase over the next few years. With the Inhumans film launching in 2019, this is clearly the start of big plans that Marvel has for the race. Maurissa Tancharoen stated “If we’re just going to dive right into having all these people who can do this, that and the other, I don’t think that would be fair to our theme. Now that there is starting to be an awareness in the world about the presence of inhumans, what we’re doing there is just a metaphor for anything different in our society, obviously.”
A Terrigen cloud is spreading over Marvel’s properties as it builds towards something greater than just the Agents of SHIELD can handle. Do you think Johnson’s team of Secret Warriors will be ready in time to join the big screen Inhumans?