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Read on to learn how Marvel's announcements mean bigger changes to the Cinematic Universe. This week's news of major changes within Marvel Comics are potentially bigger than those when the company relauched its comic series under the new banner Marvel Now! nearly two years ago. At that time, the shifting of writers, the introduction of new lines, and the re-positioning of characters like Rocket Raccoon and The Guardians of the Galaxy made their introduction into the Cinematic Universe possible. But as news this week of shake-ups for Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man were slowly rolled out on various television talk shows, two things became very apparent. Before getting into that, let's look at the changes themselves. On Monday, Marvel announced that Thor was losing his ability to wield Mjolnir, and that his power was being transferred to a woman. On Wednesday, The Colbert Report announced that Captain America will soon be replaced by The Falcon, as America&

The Mind-Blowing Saga That Began in Marvel’s The Avengers Continues in ABC’s Action-Packed Series MARVEL’S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D . Relive All 22 Thrilling Episodes, Plus Get Level 7 Access with Newly De-Classified Bonus Features Available On Blu-ray and DVD. In Stores September 9, 2014 The mind-blowing saga that began in Marvel’s The Avengers continues in ABC’s action-packed series, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — The Complete First Season. In the wake of The Battle of New York, the world has changed forever. An extraordinary landscape of wonders has been revealed! In response, mysteriously resurrected Agent Phil Coulson assembles an elite team of skilled agents and operatives: Melinda May, Grant Ward, Leo Fitz, Jemma Simmons and new recruit/computer hacker Skye. Together, they investigate the new, the strange, and the unknown across the globe, protecting the ordinary from the extraordinary. But every answer unearths even more tantalizing questions that reverberate across th

TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. “The Beginning of the End” By: Brandon Wolfe ‘ Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ’s’ first season stands as one of the more curious failures in recent memory. Here was a series that seemed to have every advantage laid out before it and felt poised to become the next great television phenomenon. Given the track records of both Marvel Studios and producer Joss Whedon, this should have been an easy win, yet a stifling blandness and frustrating ineptitude took hold immediately and never let up. So going into the season finale, the question taking shape was no longer what could be done to save this inaugural year at the buzzer. That ship had sailed, the damage too thorough to come back from. Thus the question became of what shape will Season 2 take. Is there any reason to hope for a brighter future from this enterprise? Basically, what assurances do we get that none of this will happen again? It’s a question that the show seemed to shift its focus to as

The series gets a second season, but does it deserve one? Story by: Matt Cummings Despite sporting a continually declining ratings base and failure to capitalize on many aspects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, ABC has renewed Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for a second season.  The renewal was announced on May 5th, in preparation for ABC's Upfront Event on Tuesday May 13th. While we've never been entirely sold on the series's flat characters and overall cheesy tone, we were most disappointed in its inability to maximize the gains behind Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World .  In fact, many were ready to call the show dead in the water after enduring the mostly unwatchable 12 episodes leading up to the Captain America: The Winter Solider tie-ins.  Since that time, AoS has delivered solid episodes one week and filler ones the next, as Coulson and team attempt to pick up their shattered lives post-HYDRA.  The revelations of Ward as a HYDRA agent

TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. “Ragtag” By: Brandon Wolfe Agent Ward is boring. This is one of the immutable truths of the universe. The character is such a black hole that he manages to stand out as bland on a series populated entirely with flavorless ciphers. He is a perfect storm of dull, the yawn-generating point of intersection between generic actor, stock character and bad writing. Even going as far as to make him a surprise villain hasn’t managed to successfully nudge him into the realm of interesting. At best, it merely thrust an interesting development into his orbit. If ever a television character could be chalked up as a lost cause, too hopelessly humdrum to continue to bother with, it has to be him. Unfortunately, boring is where ‘ Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D .’ hangs its hat, and so it sets up “Ragtag” as a means of finding out just what makes Agent Ward tick. His HYDRA turnabout seemed pretty clear-cut. We had previously been told that he was recruited

TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. “Nothing Personal” By: Brandon Wolfe ‘ Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ’ needs all the help it can get at this point, so it wastes no time this week bringing in a secret weapon in the form of Maria Hill, the agent played by Cobie Smulders in the films. Because we associate Hill with two good films instead of with this show, she is a sight for bored eyes. Now working for Stark Industries in the wake of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s implosion -- and the purpose of her new employment was left vague in ‘ The Winter Soldier ’, but is explained here as a means of personal protection behind Stark’s crack team of lawyers, making this the show’s first-ever instance of being useful – Hill is cornered on the street by May, who asks for help with Coulson, whom she worries might have been compromised by HYDRA during his resurrection. Hill, however, is resistant, so May strikes out on her own. Back at Providence, Coulson and the team are trying to piece together what happe

TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. “The Only Light in the Darkness” By: Brandon Wolfe I want to like ‘ Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D .’ Honest, I really do. For as much fun as mocking its ineptitude has consistently been, I still find myself rooting for it to turn it all around. I don’t know how it could possibly do that at this point without a top-to-bottom shakeup, but I see that Marvel logo at the beginning and that Mutant Enemy logo at the end and I want to believe that the stuff sandwiched in between could surprise us all at a moment’s notice and become the show we wanted and expected it to be. But “The Only Light in the Darkness” is not the episode where that happens. Ward is back with the group at Providence and informs Coulson of the inmates set free from the Fridge by Garrett, whom Ward lies and claims to have killed. One of the more notorious of those criminals is Marcus Daniels (known as Blackout in the comics, though no one calls him that here, because this show is no

TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. “Providence” By: Brandon Wolfe It was generally agreed upon that ‘ Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D .’ improved a bit with last week’s episode, if just by its usual dire standards. The show’s problems, primarily its soul-deadening mediocrity on the plotting, character and dialogue fronts, remained in play, but with the events of ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ acting as a catalyst, and with a final twist that seemed surprisingly gutsy for a show that has been anything but, ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ managed to rise to a rare level of basic watchability. You take your victories wherever you can. ‘Providence’ does not present us with a series now crystallized into focus, but ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ is still getting along as far as it can by swimming in ‘The Winter Soldier’s’ wake. S.H.I.E.L.D. has officially fallen as an organization and the fallout has left it exposed and with only three bases confirmed as secure. Coulson’s team are now m

 Story by Matt Cummings **Warning: This post is loaded with spoilers for Episode 17 of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. **   If you missed Turn, Turn, Turn  on ABC last week - and it looks like many of you did - then you missed the AofS  we had been hoping for since the pilot.  The series is in freefall now, with news of HYDRA infiltrating the spy agency, revealing sleeper agents even on Coulson's team.  With S.H.IE.L.D. in shambles and Victoria Hand dead, Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) and what remains of his team are on the run, cut off from their support system and with a new-old enemy in their rear view mirror.  The video above features the cast reacting to Turn , but it's the last five episodes that will determine whether the series returns for Season 2.  Stuck in 3rd gear for the first third of the season, viewers need answers to several burning questions, some of which we include below: Who's that blue dude?  While searching for a cure after Skye was

TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. “Turn, Turn, Turn” By: Brandon Wolfe *This review contains spoilers for ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’* ‘ Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ’ has been one of the more baffling disappointments in recent memory. This is a series that is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that is spearheaded by pop-culture maestro Joss Whedon and that stars Clark Gregg as the beloved, resurrected Agent Phil Coulson. Given its pedigree, this should have been one of the easiest slam-dunks imaginable, yet one would be hard-pressed to find anything the series has done right in its first season. From its blandly attractive cast to its pedestrian writing to its dull, nonsensical stabs at cultivating a mythology to its utterly uninvolving team of characters, ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ seems less like an extension of the wonderful Marvel film series and more like some lame syndicated show from the ‘90s that aired between Pamela Anderson’s ‘V.I.P.’ and