In the world of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the word “pod” was used to describe somewhat self-contained story arcs – Ghost Rider, L.M.D., and the Framework – for the show’s 4th season. Instead of the usual straight 22-episode run they did prior with story threads jumbled into one another, they split things up, allowing a better sense of pace, an opportunity to better navigate network TV’s erratic schedule and an easier way for fans to digest a long network season. And in NYCC last week, Jeph Loeb shed light on how pods came to be for the show, revealing an exciting tidbit about the 5th season’s first pod in the process:

It gave an opportunity to the writers to tell a complete chapter so that as the audience… It came out of necessity of the fact that ABC runs the shows and then needs to take breaks to have specials and things like that and you go into the holidays or the Olympics or something like that. So rather than waiting and having the audience have to play catch up because we’re not on for three or four or sometimes seven weeks, they said, ‘OK let’s try to do this in bites.’ And so this first bite is the first 10 episodes of this season.

One of my initial worries about last season’s Framework Hydra-world pod was that it would suffer the same fate as The Flash‘s Flashpoint episode, given the immense ramifications to the world as a whole. To my surprise, they stuck to it for several episodes and gave us one of the most exciting storylines of the series yet. And all that is attributed to this idea of “pods”. The fact that they’re giving us a whopping 10-episodes of ‘Coulson v. Aliens In Space’ goodness is something we are beyond happy with. If their whole 20-minute preview blew us away and gave us so many goodies in such a short amount of time, we can’t imagine how crazy awesome a 10-episode arc featuring aliens is gonna turn out. We need this ASAP!

Source: Screenrant