AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. Editorial: THOR 2 Crossover Fail and Why Dragging Out Coulson's Resurrection is Bad

For the first time in eight episodes, Marvel's Agents of SHIELD did not lose viewers from one episode to the next with Episode 8 'The Well.' Granted it was only a small increase in viewers—6.89 million compared to 6.67 million, according to TV by the Numbers—but it's a good sign since every episode prior lost viewers compared to its last.

Eventually Agents of SHIELD will plateau out with its viewership and ABC doesn't seem worried since it already ordered a full season just over a month ago. But this increase can most likely be attributed to the fact Marvel promoted the heck out of Episode 8 as a crossover with their newly released film, Thor: The Dark World.

Episode SPOILER ALERT: It wasn't much of a crossover since there was literally a quick shot of clean up work in Greenwich in the opening moments of the episode. And that was it. Over on social media, many fans were very, very disappointed in Marvel's "misleading promotion" of this being a much bigger crossover episode with the film than it really was. The fans really do have sound reasoning for being angry. This episode was more of a tip of the cap to the Thor franchise than a real crossover because the main plot of the episode was the reveal that an Asgardian was living on Earth for hundreds of years.

Now the show's producer has confirmed there will be another crossover episode between Agents of SHIELD and next spring's Captain America: The Winter Soldier. If 'The Well' episode was any indication, fans need to reserve all of their excitement for another crossover because it could be as disappointing as this past week's episode was. Although it needs to be said that the Captain America sequel does revolve around internal issues with SHIELD so perhaps the crossover will be better because it ties into the television show better than with Thor: The Dark World.

Moving on to Agent Phil Coulson.

Marvel needs to be careful with Agents of SHIELD and their consistent teasing of how Agent Coulson was resurrected after his alleged death in The Avengers. In nearly every episode he is telling the same story about his death and it's beginning to become a stale story. Fans understand something happened and that "Tahiti is a magical place" since it's been said multiple times in the first eight episodes. Now it's time to reveal more, which was teased a bit at the end of 'The Well' episode via a nightmare by Coulson.

It's important to stop delaying the reveal of what happened to Coulson because it is beginning to hurt the further development of his character in the show.

Finally, what happened to Coulson may have already been said or written online too, according to showrunner Jed Whedon and a recent comment he made to TV Guide (via Screen Rant).

“We know that there’s going to be a lot of theories and there’s no chance that whatever we reveal won’t, at some point, be written on the Internet. We’re just trying to come up with ways to make it surprising or make it not how they expected it to unravel. We know what it is, but we know that no one else does yet.”

The longer Jed delays this, the higher the probability his show will lose viewers. After gaining ground with viewers for the first time since its pilot, perhaps it is time to start developing Coulson's character more and let fans know what really happened to him already.

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