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‘Agents of SHIELD,’ ‘Winter Soldier’ building to … ?

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blue-alien-agents-of-shieldIt shouldn’t be surprising that Disney/ABC/Marvel is practicing synergy in how it’s handling ABC’s Tuesday-night series “Agents of SHIELD” and the April 4 release of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” the second Marvel movie – after “Thor: The Dark World” – released since “SHIELD” debuted last fall.

There was a “SHIELD” episode earlier in the season that tied in, in a minimal way, to the “Thor” sequel. And Jaimie Alexander guest-starred this week as Sif on “SHIELD,” tracking down fellow Asgardian Lorelei.

But it’s increasingly obvious, as I noted in an earlier piece, that both “SHIELD” and “Winter Soldier” seem to be building to something.

On “SHIELD,” Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) has had a season-long arc of discovery as he tries to determine how and why he was brought back from the dead after Loki inflicted a fatal goring in “The Avengers.” So far, we’ve learned that Coulson – and SHIELD team member Skye – were saved by a mysterious liquid that appears to be generated from the half-missing corpse of a blue alien bottled up in a remote SHIELD facility. In last week’s episode, Coulson asks Sif about “blue aliens” and she mentions several, from frost giants (obviously not the answer in this case) to the Kree, the longtime Marvel alien race that spawned not only the original Captain Marvel but also is the mortal enemy of the Skrulls (or the Chitauri, as they were depicted in “The Avengers.”)

By episode’s end, Coulson – frustrated that alien biologics were used in his resurrection and to save Skye – is seeking answers and demanding to speak to Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, who’s already appeared on the series).

Promos for the series – using the subtitle (“Uprising”) – would lead us to believe that Coulson’s quest for knowledge may shake up the prevailing image of SHIELD.

As I’ve stated before, SHIELD’s been the subject of sinister undertones in the big-screen Marvel movies, most notably “The Avengers,” when our heroes discovered that SHIELD was experimenting with Hydra weaponry.

I have a feeling this will tie in, more or less, to “Winter Soldier” when it comes out on April 4. The promos for the movie indicate Cap, Black Widow and new partner Sam (aka The Falcon) Wilson might find themselves pitted against SHIELD itself or at least leader figures like the one Robert Redford plays. I’ve previously speculated the role Robert Redford’s character plays in all this (spoilers here if you look).

So what can we infer from this?

Marvel is trying to pull off something that’s extremely tricky. It’s making some pretty big changes to SHIELD, the organization that has been, more or less, the glue that’s held its cinematic universe together from the start.

And it’s doing some while it’s producing a weekly TV series about that organization.

Is the series going to turn its “good guy” into a “bad guy,” with the rank-and-file agents on the outside? Or even on the run?

‘Agents of SHIELD’ slow burn or burning down?

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Agents of SHIELD magical place coulson

It’ll be really interesting to see how we feel about “Agents of SHIELD” in May.

The Disney/ABC series, about halfway through its first season, debuted in September to good ratings and impossible expectations. The street-level spin-off of Marvel’s cinematic universe and follow-up to “The Avengers,” the show looked at the non-superhero agents – like Phil Coulson, played in the Marvel movies and here by Clark Gregg – who are left dealing with the aftermath of the Battle of New York.

But while ratings are still … fine … disappointment set in as each successive episode not only failed to hand over the candy – Marvel characters we’ve wanted to see and fantastic events, even on a TV budget – but seemed like a routine supernatural procedural, an “X-Files” knockoff.

The showrunners have promised that “Agents of SHIELD” was in the middle of a slow burn, with the mismatched agents who are the series’ central characters still learning to trust each other and the mystery behind the resurrection of Coulson – who was ostensibly killed by Loki in “The Avengers” – slowly playing out. Sooo slowly. And obviously.

Last night’s first episode of 2014, “A Magical Place,” followed up on the kidnapping of Coulson by agents of Centipede, the organization that has been trying to turn people into superbeings. Centipede wants to know Coulson’s secret – SHIELD’s secret, really – of how you bring someone back from the dead.

Most of the rest of the episode really doesn’t matter and already has mostly disappeared from my memory. Vivid in my mind is the scene in which, through a Centipede experiment, Coulson recalls his resurrection at the hands of SHIELD director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson. There’s Coulson, strapped to a table, his brain exposed and being probed – seemingly being kntted back together – by a high-tech device.

And the entire time, Coulson is begging to be allowed to die.

It was an unsettling scene and Coulson’s unsettled reaction to the memory makes me wonder if the series isn’t going the way I speculated a few weeks ago in making SHIELD itself a bad guy – or at least an organization that needs reigning in.

That would also appear to be setting us up for the plot of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” which debuts in theaters in April and appears to pit the Sentinel of Liberty against at least some elements of SHIELD.

Considering the showrunners of “Agents of SHIELD” – created by “Avengers” mastermind Joss Whedon – would certainly never be able to tip the hand of the Cap movie, it’s possible this is where “Agents of SHIELD” has been heading all along.

We’ll know within a few weeks, certainly by the time the movie comes out in April and the first season of the series winds down in May.

It’s asking a lot of today’s short-attention span, general audience viewers to wait an entire season to get a bead on a show’s characters, tone and plot.

But maybe, come spring, it’ll all make sense to us, and we’ll see if the show’s slow burn has been worth burning some early viewers.