tl;dr: Without Agents of SHIELD, the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be less connected.

#ItsAllConnected

First, it is important to clarify what we mean by #ItsAllConnected. The phrase means different things to different fans and creates different expectations for different people. I’m not going to worry too much about what it actually means to Jeph Loeb and those who use it at Marvel. While that does matter when interpreting was the creators mean, it’s not entirely important to what fans want

For some (and for Loeb, with the exception of that politician-level BS where he used it with regard to Legion) it means that all of the MCU properties exist in the same universe. It means that everything doesn’t always need to namedrop everything else, but a couple references and loose acknowledgements are sufficient. You can get small moments like Falcon’s scenes in Ant-Man or Claire Temple bouncing between the Defenders shows and be at least mildly satisfied. I’ll be honest and say that this is how I feel. I would rather each property focus on telling their own stories first and connectivity second. I don’t see the need for the Defenders to show up in Infinity War or for Tony Stark to appear in Daredevil.

There is another interpretation that #ItsAllConnected should mean that there are deeper connections, with many references and cameos. The Defenders need to be seen in IW for it to truly be a “connected universe”, for example. Or, SHIELD needs to show up and think that one of the Defenders is an Inhuman. Or Avengers or Defenders need to reference the Inhuman outbreak. While this is not what Jeph Loeb means when he uses the phrase, it still represents the desires of some fans who want a thoroughly connected MCU.

(Of course to suggest that everyone falls into one of these two camps is not realistic and I acknowledge that it’s more of a spectrum, but this detail is not essential to what I have to say in this post)

“I Don’t Play Well With Others”

In the sprawling sandbox that is the MCU, the truth is that the movies are not interested in playing much with the television shows. The movies are widely successful and more in the public consciousness than the TV shows (including Netflix). They have a lot to cover and only 2 hours to do it in each movie. The closest we’ve gotten to a connection from the movies back to the shows is an off-hand line in Age of Ultron in which Fury mentions getting the helicarrier from some old friends. Perhaps that reference was put in to connect with SHIELD; perhaps SHIELD latched on to that reference and tried to incorporate it into their show. (The intricacies of the movies referencing the TV shows and why, regardless of what happens, there will always be people who deny that the movies reference the shows is probably worthy of a separate blog post.)

The Netflix shows also don’t really seem keen on playing with the movies. They’ll drop references to the Battle of New York, but are wary of firmly establishing their place in the MCU timeline outside of that. Luke Cage is the standout exception in which they incorporated Hammer Industries from Iron Man 2. Outside of that, though, in the 52 episodes we’ve gotten so far, references outside their corner have been scarce.

In my opinion, this is not bad in and of itself. I am in the camp of “I just want everything in one universe, but it doesn’t have to be a non-stop easter egg hunt.”

The MCU can be broken into three parts at the moment (this will likely not be as clean-cut once Cloak and Dagger and Runaways debut): The Movies, the ABC shows, and the Netflix shows.

Two thirds of the MCU (Movies and Netflix) don’t want to talk to each other and want to play in their own corner of the sandbox. If your preference for #ItsAllConnected leans toward the first one I outlined above, you’re probably not troubled by this. After all, it means they can focus on their own stories and not get too caught up in worrying about each other. (Also: see the difficulties in production time between movies and television and the creative restrictions large references/cameos between the two would require.)

If, however, you feel that #ItsAllConnected should mean something more and expect a more “connected” MCU, you’re probably left wanting something more.

So what’s left? The last third of the MCU: ABC’s shows Agent Carter and Agents of SHIELD. These two are quite possibly the only shows attempting to actively connect with other properties.

Let me begin with my Agent Carter rant. Feel free to skip it as it is only tangentially related to the topic of this post.

In which I briefly rant about Agent Carter: Oh my god, these guys suck at continuity. They are the worst at not creating headaches. Whereas Netflix shows choose to avoid connecting, Agent Carter connects and then makes awkward continuity errors that fans try to bend over backwards to explain away. #1: Anton Vanko. Iron Man 2 establishes that he didn’t come to the US until the 60s. Yet he has a cameo in season 1 in 1946. He’s not even crucial to the plot of season 1. The showrunners must have just felt “Oh, here’s something cool” without thinking through whether it made sense. Sure, perhaps Vanko was in the US in the 40s, went back to Russia, came back in the 60s, and was deported by Howard then, but that is fans trying to come up with an explanation. Which is fine, but it doesn’t score Agent Carter points in the “good at continuity” category. #2: No Howling Commandos died in the line of duty, as established in TWS. Y’know except for the one that Agent Carter Season 1 killed off. So perhaps this was a secret operation and would have been classified, but it definitely betrays the spirit of the TWS line. Not a deal breaker, but not a stellar example about excelling with continuity. #3: The One-Shot. They completely bulldozed the One-Shot. Which is fine, but again, they’re the only ones to have done that to another piece of the MCU. My point is not that it’s a bad show (that’s a separate rant: *glares at showrunners for several choices they made*), just that when it tries to connect, it’s not the smoothest. I believe that it is better not to connect than to connect and create plotholes or wrinkles in the continuity.

Agents of SHIELD and the Glue of the MCU

Agents of SHIELD has shown incredible care with continuity, while actively connecting with the MCU. Most people are probably familiar with the TWS crossover (well done!) and the AoU crossover (not as well done, but it didn’t create problems or plotholes). So I want to look at Season 3 and Season 4, focusing on two great examples:

S3E8: Many Heads, One Tale – In which the showrunners manage to retcon Hydra’s backstory. Often retcons are very awkward and not always done well. This one, however, was well crafted and well-thought out. Not only does it not negate previous movies, it enhances Hydra’s disparate plots by showing some unity and overarching goals and themes. What is Hydra’s goal? To bring back their exiled god Alveus/Hive and give him a superhuman/Inhuman army to conquer the world with. So how do past Hydra appearances fair after this retcon? Captain America: The First Avenger: Red Skull got a little too focused on the “gods” part of “Hydra god” and decides to harness the power of the gods and conquer the world. For a cult that’s thousands of years old, it’s reasonable that somewhere along the way, the true mission might get a little muddled. Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Red Skull’s world domination faction strayed from the goal, but continued down Red Skull’s path. Again thousand year old cult gets a little sidetracked. The important thing is that the episode acknowledges this and explains it instead of leaving the fans to have to craft an explanation. Avengers: If you weren’t paying attention, Gideon Malick was also on the World Security Council in Avengers. The show explains that he worked with NASA to try to open a portal. We see in the opening of Avengers, SHIELD working with NASA to mess around with the Tesseract and they end up… opening a portal. Huh, yep, that checks out. This is a great example of the showrunners demonstrating an attention to detail, by picking an unnamed character in Avengers and giving an agenda that fits smoothly with how he was previously portrayed. Agents of SHIELD Season 2: How about Strucker and List’s goals? They’re building a superhuman army. This thematically ties in with Hydra’s true goals (of bringing back Hive and giving him an army of superhumans). Ant-Man: Remember Mitchell Carson in Ant-Man? Yeah, nobody seems to. Hopefully that’ll get addressed in Ant-Man and the Wasp. Taking the Hydra retcon into account, he’s either an offshoot of Pierce’s Hydra and now has his own agenda or he needs the shrinking formula because he only has one of those mini-monoliths. A small soldier could fit through the portal created by one of the mini-monoliths to bring back Hive. Honestly, it’ll probably end up being the former rather than the latter since he never showed up in Agents of SHIELD.

A brief aside in which I defend my above rant about Agent Carter: Now, wait a minute. Isn’t me explaining away the Hydra retcon the same as people explaining away Agent Carter continuity errors like Vanko? That highlights the difference between the shows. In SHIELD, the showrunners supply you with all the explanation you need to be able to extrapolate these conclusions. Malick explains how Pierce went down a different path than Hydra’s true mission. The presence of Malick and the details of NASA indicate a very intimate understanding of the MCU and the character’s actions in Avengers, giving them new meaning. With Agent Carter, however, the audience is supplied with nothing to scaffold their explanation of the continuity error, concluding that either Vanko did a lot of bouncing between countries, or perhaps there are two guys named Anton Vanko who worked at Stark Industries, one in the 40s and one in the 60s (maybe Anton Vanko’s father?). The showrunners do nothing to explain it and were evidently unaware of the error at the time. His lack of future appearances indicates, imo, that they realized their error and decided to just not make that mistake again.

S4E7: Deals With Our Devils. This one made me very giddy watching it. In this one, the showrunners do not explicitly bring all of it together and the audience is left to make the connections. We see Aida creating a contraption with the same mechanics of the sling-ring, never called out in the show, but visually alluding to it. We see Momentum Labs is an evolution of Isodyne Energy. Both were working with Zero Matter/Dark Force and both Agent Carter S2 and this show indicate that one effect is to cause people to become ghostly. This also solidifies a connection back to S1E9: Repairs in which after an explosion at a nuclear reactor, Tobias Ford gets caught in a similar ghostly situation. This then connects – later on – to the tests with nuclear weapons opening a rift to the Dark Dimension in Agent Carter S2, providing darkforce that makes Wilkes go ghostly.

I feel that these are best examples of #ItsAllConnected, within the limitations of the mediums. But I also feel that Agents of SHIELD is the only one whose showrunners seem to be able to connect. Perhaps its a confidence and a thorough knowledge of what everyone else is doing. After all, they showed the fears of the cops in Luke Cage coming true, with Judas bullets becoming available on the streets (as seen in S4E10). The distinction here is that they don’t have to make these connections to tell their story. You can have an attempt on the Director’s life and not have it be Judas bullets. But they do and it’s not in violation of established canon. They don’t have to have Aida’s contraption model the sling-ring visuals, but they do anyway, and again, without invalidating established canon. They go the extra mile to make sure #ItsAllConnected.

(This paragraph includes spoilers for S4E15: Self Control) The upcoming arc, basically a “What If…” alternate universe spin-off, highlights the need to understand continuity outside your own property to pull off. While it remains to be seen for certain whether they won’t trip up on the continuity, I believe that they are the only MCU property that is capable of doing an alternate universe storyline. (And given that, based on the last few minutes of S4E15, everything seems to make sense so far – Coulson doesn’t join SHIELD -> Avengers don’t come together -> Cap doesn’t join SHIELD because they nuked NYC or because he didn’t survive the BoNY -> Cap’s not present to take down Hydra -> SHIELD falls, Hydra rises)

So What?

When Agents of SHIELD gets cancelled (regardless of whether it’s this season or next), where will the MCU be with regard to #ItsAllConnected? They are the only show making an effort to connect with everything. They’ve referenced

Avengers

Iron Man 3 (Extremis in Centipede serum)

Thor 2 (clean-up crew in S1E8)

Cap 2 (’nuff said)

Guardians of the Galaxy (Kree in S1E14, S2E12, S3E19)

Age of Ultron (Theta Protocol)

Ant-Man (minor reference in S3E1)

Civil War (ongoing Accords complications)

Doctor Strange (Dark Dimension, Aida’s sling-ring to name a couple)

Luke Cage (Judas bullets)

Daredevil (WHIH News ticker in S3E14)

Punisher? (Microchip namedrop in Season 2 Episode 7?)

Agent Carter (S2E8, plus Nitramene in S3E14, and others discussed above)

No other property has attempted to touch all three corners of the MCU – Movies, ABC Shows, Netflix Shows. Without Agents of SHIELD, we will be left with movies who either can’t or don’t want to talk to the shows and Netflix shows who don’t want to get involved with the movies. Regardless of how you feel about the role of references and #ItsAllConnected, it will feel less connected in the wake of Agents of SHIELD’s eventual cancellation.

Coulson was said to be the glue that brought the Avengers together and I believe that his show is the glue that keeps the MCU feeling at least somewhat connected.

Perhaps some of the new shows – Runaways, Inhumans, Cloak and Dagger – will try to connect more with the rest of the universe, however I do not have high hopes. They have their own stories to tell and their showrunners probably aren’t as well-versed in the mountain of shows and movies that have already come to pass. It is better to be like Netflix and not try to reference than to be like Agent Carter S1 and reference, but create plotholes in the process.

My hope is that – even when SHIELD gets cancelled – the showrunners stick around, as I believe they’re the only ones in the entire MCU who really believe #ItsAllConnected means something beyond a common aesthetic or thematic connection.