Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 5 Season Finale Predictions

With just a couple of hours to go until the Season Finale of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (titled "The Beginning of the End"), it seemed as good a time as any to take some stock and think about what we expect to see tonight. There are plenty of questions that need answering, and while most of them will probably get some kind of answer, you never want to say that anything MUST be answered. After all, the show just got both a spinoff and a second season, and so the odds are good there will be some questions left either entirely or at least partially to be answered next year. And, no, we're not even going to dignify "do Fitz and Simmons live?" with an entry here.

Skye is connected to Raina First of all, let's get this out of the way: Ugh! That's a contrivance the type of which generally bugs me...especially because Raina seemed a little holier-than-thou about Garrett being in it for his own purposes and not the greater good. Nevertheless, it's hard to picture her comment about she and Skye having something similar inside them or whatever it was last week not come back as a plot point. The revelation that she's got a backstory that ties into the 0-8-4 business makes this whole unit pretty cozy; you had Skye, Coulson, Garrett and Raina all working to find out more about themselves -- and that's before you consider that Ward was on board with Garrett and working under false pretenses. No wonder they decided to make the two connected -- as out-of-the-blue as it feels, it's arguably LESS weird and random than just having everyone who ever touched the Bus working some odd angle.

Some kind of new status quo for the Agents The fact that Fury is going to make a cameo -- whether it's in person or as a recorded message from beyond the grave -- should give Coulson and his unit a clear mission statement for next season. And that's good, and necessary. They can't stay fugitives forever without demanding that your heroic title characters end up dealing with some pretty shady people to keep themselves in bullets and jet fuel. And you can't just pretend like Captain America: The Winter Soldier never happened and return S.H.I.E.L.D. to normal. Nevertheless, at some point they need a bigger-picture mission, because "getting revenge on HYDRA" won't really cut it when they have no authority to arrest...and if they kill enough bad guys, sooner or later the governments of the world will object to this crazy rogue group of killers flying around doing their thing. A specific objective -- ideally one that will help them re-establish S.H.I.E.L.D. in time for Avengers: Age of Ultron -- is not only a must, it's a no-brainer.

Skye has a connection to the Kree This one's pretty obvious, since Chloe Bennett inadvertently blurted it out and then later covered with "Well, that was just a guess." But the fact is, the two most obvious directions they can go with Skye's story are for her to be a Kree/Kree-human hybrid or to jump the queue and go full-on Inhuman. Whatever the case, it seems clear that the alien was Kree -- and the "monsters" Raina spoke of could be Kree, or Inhuman, or some kind of Kree-human hybrid that didn't come out as pretty as Chloe Bennett. The Inhuman route would be clever as it would allow them to pursue the idea of heroes and villains who are just...born that way, and don't need an elaborate origin story. Doing that without using the word "mutant" can be tricky in the Marvel Universe, but handling the Skye/alien/Raina drama right could make it work.

Ward will be a hero -- and suffer for it. We've been told that Ward actually adores Skye so much that he's reconsidering his relationship with his mentor. Of course, the fact that Garrett is getting progressively crazier probably contributes to that, but the hesitation he showed when not killing Fitz and Simmons last episode is pretty much all you need to know to be certain that all the theories about him getting a conscience and not actually being such a bad guy after all have a fairly solid foundation. Of course, he also killed a whole bunch of people, including two named Marvel Universe characters, so it's unlikely he'll just be taken back, all smiles and pats on the back. At best, he'll help thwart the bad guys and end up in jail for his troubles. At best, he'll have to take a bullet to prove his love. If I had to guess, his redemption will be related to bringing Mike Peterson's Deathlok back over to the side of the angels, allowing Coulson's team a robot fighter of their own to help take out Garrett. Just a guess. In any event, it's unlikely Ward will die at the hands of our agents, no matter how much May might want to take him down at the start of the episode...but that doesn't mean he'll make it out in one piece.

Triplett's family history will play a big role And no, we're not just talking about how he brings that crazy Howling Commandos suitcase everywhere he goes now. Ever since Triplett started replacing Ward on the team, there have been subtle mentions of his past. The fact that his grandfather was a Howling Commando should be something of particular interest to fans of Agent Carter, which will launch between seasons and serve as a lead-in to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which will air at 9 p.m., forming essentially a Marvel programming block. With a grandfather who worked with Captain America and the love interest of Captain America forming the building blocks of S.H.I.E.L.D. in her spinoff, it seems ripe for a kind of clever cross-era crossover where Triplett's grandfather left him something in that case or something like that -- and we see the same item or concept play out across both series at some point next year.