'Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.' Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot Recap
by EGAside from glimpses of Thor's hammer, Captain America's shield and the Hulk's grimace, along with a few name checks, The Avengers were absent from the premiere episode of "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." Instead, we got an introduction the non-superhero characters who lurk on the fringes of the Avengers' universe, the men and women who will be the focal point of Joss Whedon's new series.
There are, though, some familiar faces on hand. Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) is back, his death apparently having been faked by Nick Fury in order to "motivate" the Avengers; as far as Coulson knows, he recovered from Loki's attack in "The Avengers" after spending some time in the ICU, but there's a hint that something more intriguing surrounded his resurrection.
We also get a couple of brief appearances by Agent Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), but other than that, we're dealing with a new crew. There's Grant Ward (Brett Dalton), the hunky agent whose security clearance has just been bumped up so that he can join the high-level team, and Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), a reluctantly re-activated veteran agent. The team also includes Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge), a pair of science brainiacs who will be in charge of the gadgets and CSI-style techie stuff for the series.
The first episode's plot involves Skye (Chloe Bennet), an activist hacker who begins as an adversary but becomes a S.H.I.E.L.D. team member when she uncovers a shadowy lab that is turning people into super-powered time bombs using the volatile version of Captain America's super-soldier serum introduced in "Iron Man 3."
One of the lab's experiments, a disgruntled unemployed factory worker (J. August Richards) provides the plot for the episode, and the clash between the lab and S.H.I.E.L.D. provides the trajectory for the series, at least in the near future.