Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Our Predictions For the Rest of the Season

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

is back tonight with one of its biggest episodes of the season. Jaimie Alexander appears as Lady Sif, reprising her role from Thor and Thor: The Dark World, while the mysteries around Coulson, Skye and the Deathlok project take a back seat to Asgardian intrigue; Lorelei has made her way to Midgard and is enslaving men and forcing them to work for her...including Ward, whom she sets against his teammates. There's also a big final scene promised, which ties into the first of our predictions for the rest of the year...

We'll get an Avenger While Chloe Bennet's recent fangirl admission could have been for Robert Redford or Sebastian Stan, it seems more likely than not that we'll get a visit from an honest-to-goodness Avenger soon. Who? Well, it could be any number of people, and while we've previously predicted Captain American (Chris Evans) as a strong contender, the promise of a huge ending tonight suggests Thor (Chris Hemsworth) as a possibility, doesn't it?

Internal strife With Captain America: The Winter Soldier looming and Coulson seemingly willing to ignore any orders he doesn't like, it seems inevitable the his own personal team will find themselves caught between the feuding factions of S.H.I.E.L.D. With an influx of new, recurring Agents, it seems impossible that one or more of them won't be loyal to Robert Redford's Alexander Pierce. The most likely candidates are the incoming characters like Garrett and Triplett or established S.H.I.E.L.D.-based antagonists like Hand. Whether those decidedly-shady elements of S.H.I.E.L.D. turn out to be connected to Centipede and the mysterious Clairvoyant, or whether April could see things deteriorate into a three-sided battle, is potentially the most interesting question raised in the show. Many fan theories have connected Centipede with Hydra, an organization that hasn't shown up yet in the present-day Marvel Universe. Many have also looked at the seemingly-corrupt Pierce in ads for Captain America: The Winter Soldier and imagined him to be an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s longtime opposite number from the comics. At least one (if not both) of those theories will prove to be wrong, unless the two are connected...and if they are, that could mean seismic changes for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Skye and the Blue Alien are connected There's not a lot of evidence to back this one up, except that Skye is an 0-8-4, and they're starting to run out of episodes to wrap up the dueling mysteries of Coulson's resurrection and Skye's origins. The alien is tied to Coulson's resurrection (and Skye's recovery last episode), so tying it also to Skye's origins could be a convenient way to wrap everything up in a handy package for the end of the year. Here's the thing: I never like handy packages. I find the world doesn't really work that way and for every time it actually does work, you have another five things like the Fletch movie adaptation which dumbed down the story so far it HAD to be a screwball comedy, or else everyone would have been left saying, "So...wait...they just all HAPPENED to be connected?" That said, S.H.I.E.L.D. is a much smaller world than Los Angeles is in many ways, and if handled right, it could absolutely work. More than that, there's just a feeling in my gut that they're leading us down that path. It could be a misdirect, in which case well done for them, but more likely we'll find that it's more than coincidence that set this particular team after The Rising Tide. Could that, too, be the work of agents with questionable ethics? Could they be looking to set in motion a series of "coincidences" that expose some of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most damaging secrets? The Clairvoyant Will be Someone We Know Whether it's a familiar Marvel Comics name or somebody who has already appeared on the series, we think that part of what will make Centipede's "Clairvoyant" a big reveal is the idea that s/he is really somebody that we already know, or think we know. And there's a good chance s/he has S.H.I.E.L.D. moles, too, since every part of me is suspicious of the way Hand and the woman in the flower dress were interacting. A season-ending cliffhanger Let's be honest: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is going to get a second season. If it doesn't, it will shock everyone and, more likely than not, there will be an in-story reason that leads into the next movie or TV show, leaving everyone wondering whether that happened on the fly or was the plan all along. So there's little reason for the show -- which so far has thrived on mystery, playing up the secretive and sometimes untrustworthy nature of its titular super-spy group -- not to end on either a cliffhanger, a big reveal about the "true nature" of the season, or both. With both Skye and Coulson's understanding of themselves always evolving and the truth about those characters helping to shape the world of the series, don't be surprised (especially if, as I speculate above, the two are connected) one or both of these is on the cusp of being revealed at the end of the year.