The first season of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD was something of a mixed bag in terms of quality, with episodes ranging from the truly excellent to the massively underwhelming. Overall though, things generally got better the further they went along, with a fairly noticeable shift in policy from a “Case of the Week” format in the earlier episodes, to a more continuous serialised narrative in the later episodes which has continued through into the far superior second season.
Having recently re-watched the first season I found that whilst it’s slightly more satisfying the second time around (
knowing where it’s all building to helps a great deal in persevering with some of the lacklustre early episodes) it is still somewhat of a frustrating watch, with much of the overall season arcs feeling fractured and disjointed.
Therefore in order to hopefully aid future viewing, I produced the following infographic to show how the overall conspiracy behind events fits together and how all the seemingly disparate plot elements from the first half of the season ultimately fit together in the grand scheme of things.
Naturally the following contains
SPOILERS for Season 1 of Agents of SHIELD.
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The overall series villain John Garrett naturally appears at the top, with his various tentacles of influence extending out from there.
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The Centipede Project (the main core of the villains’ plot throughout the series) forms the central pillar of the diagram and is colour-coded in Yellow.
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Quinn Worldwide and the associated concerns of owner Ian Quinn are shown in Blue, whilst Cybertek and their Deathlok project are in Orange.
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The Rising Tide (one of the more neglected season elements as things wore on) are shown in Purple, whilst much of the Green area to the right relates to elements from the episode “Eye Spy”.
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The various “Supervillains” featured throughout the season are shown in Black, and whilst this diagram predominantly focuses on the villains’ plot, the relevant SHIELD elements of Coulson, Skye and Project TAHITI are shown in Dark Blue.
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Perhaps the one bit of supposition on my part was the inclusion of AIM as supplier of Extremis to the Centipede Project. It’s a logical guess given that Extremis was a crucial ingredient in the Centipede Serum, and whilst its possible they obtained the virus indirectly via other black-market sources, I still included AIM to emphasise how the Centipede Project involved numerous other outside partners and collaborators (Quinn, Cybertek, Vanchat, etc).
Whilst much of the seemingly disparate plot points from the early episodes do ultimately fit together far more neatly than you might have first thought, it’s still hard to believe that this was the plan all along. Part of this points towards the reactive nature of network TV – characters and plot points which proved to be popular (
i.e. Raina) get developed further, whilst those that don’t (i
.e. The Rising Tide) get abandoned, making way for new antagonists more in keeping with the new direction (
i.e. Cybertek). Still, it’s hard not to feel that if certain characters and elements had been developed more fully earlier on, building a more cohesive universe for the show to inhabit beyond merely referencing The Avengers every now and again, then their later significance as integral parts of a wider connected conspiracy might have had more resonance. That said, when laid out like this in diagramatic form, its hard not to have a certain degree of appreciation for the level of interconnectedness they actually managed to achieve.
There are however still some unanswered questions and curiosities remaining, such as why did Quinn Worldwide have to pay Cybertek $10m for the Deathlok leg, when Cybertek were as equally involved in the whole conspiracy as Quinn – surely there were easier ways for Garrett to obtain the leg for Mike Peterson, given that he seemingly had direct influence over Cybertek the entire time.
Also, who was controlling the “Englishman” behind Akela Amador? Was it Garrett himself, or was he indirectly giving orders via Kyle Zeller in the Cybertek operations room? In either circumstance, why did Garrett task Akela Amador to photograph the Kree symbols from the blackboard in Belarus? This was long before Garrett had been injected with the GH-325 which causes individuals to become obsessed with the symbols in the first place.
Hopefully, in the case of the latter, these are things that will become more fully explained as we move through Season 2!