It's Official: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. To Be "Retooled" After Captain America: The Winter Soldier Tie-In

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in theaters now, as well as [...]

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Warning: Spoilers ahead for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in theaters now, as well as for Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.USA Today

is reporting that "at least one major betrayal" will highlight a major retooling for Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the wake of the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The status quo-shattering events of the film will leave Coulson and his crew mostly out in the cold, questioning not only their own relationships but certainly any external forces they've encountered along the way for the last six episodes of the show's first season.

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For those who don't know, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, revealed that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been quietly infiltrated for years by sleeper agents of Hydra, the Marvel Comics villain group first seen onscreen in Captain America: The First Avenger. The result is that by the time the film is over, S.H.I.E.L.D. is no more, with Agent 13 heading for the CIA, Nick Fury going into hiding and Maria Hill ending up with Ted Mosby going to Tony Stark looking for work. It's a game-changer for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in which Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. were key in assembling The Avengers and have had a presence in each of the nine existing Marvel Studios films. More than anything else, though, it's a game-changer (as one might expect) for Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. "Survival is a huge part of it," said executive producer Maurissa Tancharoen. "There is no more tapping into big S.H.I.E.L.D. through the holo-comm. The guns you have on the plane are the guns you have. They're basically left with the bare minimum." That's something that many critics have been calling for since the start of the series, as we noted in our analysis piece yesterday about the impact of the film on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Up until now, there has been a sense that the team hasn't been truly challenged, since whenever things get hairy, there's always a new piece of tech, or backup on the other end of the line. Breaking them away from their commanding officers and putting the characters at odds with the world governments who used to support them creates an inherent conflict and ratchets up the tension.

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The story also assures readers that all of the disparate stories seen during S.H.I.E.L.D.'s one-and-done early episodes will tie in not only to The Clairvoyant and the Deathlok program, but into HYDRA and the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier as well. "Hopefully people who've had mixed feelings about the show will now understand it was all part of a big plan," Tancharoen said. There has been talk of a creative reboot for S.H.I.E.L.D. since about midseason, with ratings dropping consistently throughout the year and even recent big "event" episodes like a guest appearance by Thor: The Dark World's Jaimie Alexander rating only a small ratings uptick on a night where the series had no new NCIS to compete with. Still, nobody credibly believed that showrunners Tancharoen and her husband Jed Whedon (brother of The Avengers director and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Executive Producer Joss Whedon) wouldn't be around when the series inevitably gets picked up for a second season. Since around January, when producers confirmed a tie to The Winter Soldier, part of the process has been waiting to see just what the movie (which everyone knew would be S.H.I.E.L.D.-centric) had in store for the Clark Gregg-led series and whether whatever changes spun out of the film could re-engage the audience and get the creative juices flowing for the ABC drama. If web traffic is any indication, the answer is yes; Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. stories have driven more conversation this week than they have basically since the show launched in the fall. Clark Gregg, who plays Agent Phil Coulson, describes the series as being "about a company man who finds out that everything he's dedicated his life to is not what he thought it was. To have everything dissolve around him to the point that S.H.I.E.L.D. itself is in smoking ruins (and have) that crisis of faith is such an amazing thing to explore." As previously announced, the last six episodes will not only deal with the Hyrda threat but also antagonism from elements of the U.S. Government who are probably not thrilled by Coulson's fairly cavalier way of doing things even before S.H.I.E.L.D.'s dissolution. Patton Oswalt joins the cast as Eric Koenig and Adrian Pasdar will play Colonel Glenn Talbot (an antagonist of The Incredible Hulk in the comics), while Amy Acker joins the series as the fabled cellist, Coulson's love interest referenced in The Avengers and a few previous episodes of S.H.I.E.L.D. Will his continued existence be one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. secrets that make their way public as the organization falls apart? And if so, does that mean that the two can be together? More than that, will The Avengers know their pal is back and walking around again? Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is back for its six final episodes of the season -- apparently without another week off -- starting on Tuesday at 8 p.m. on ABC.

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