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Why ‘Captain Marvel’ is also an ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D’ movie

Before we start, let’s just clarify….

IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED CAPTAIN MARVEL, BEWARE, THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS HUGE SPOILERS!

Scroll past the photograph if you want to keep reading…

Why 'Captain Marvel' is also an 'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D' movie
Photo: ABC/Matthias Clamer

Still with me? Good. Captain Marvel is basically a movie made for Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D fans. Sure, it’s not been branded as a S.H.I.E.L.D movie or advertised as S.H.I.E.L.D related but it absolutely is intrinsically linked with the tv programme. Fans have been campaigning for an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D movie for years, or at least, for the characters to appear in the MCU. Not only does Captain Marvel set the stage for  S.H.I.E.L.D characters to appear in the MCU in the future but it also drops so many wonderful easter eggs for fans. After watching this film, it becomes completely obvious just why Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D has been delayed until July 2019. It clearly plays a huge part in Captain Marvel and I predict a huge part in Avengers: Endgame. The Captain Marvel movie also sets up future plotlines for S.H.I.E.L.D for the involvement of Skrulls and a recently suggested theory that Coulson could return through being impersonated by a Skrull. So let’s discuss exactly how S.H.I.E.L.D slots into Captain Marvel

The location and sets

The majority of the film is shot on locations and sets used in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Their main base features a large part of the action: we see the hangar, their offices, their lab space, their file stores…sets that appear throughout the tv show. Cut to the aircraft used to fly into space and it is literally the same interior design as the S.H.I.E.L.D jets including the cloaking technology. They even relocate to another S.H.I.E.L.D base during the movie, the one set into the mountains.

Also, did you recognize the base where they leave the Skrulls that is hidden via cloaking? The one where they discover Mar Vells lab and Skrull technology. Yes, that is the base from the future in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, the one where they find Deke and the rest of the humans living after the earth is destroyed. Captain Marvel explains exactly how the Kree end up there, how the humans end up enslaved and deprived there and how such a base happens to exist in the first place. It ties up so many loose ends.

Shot by shot

There are so many moments in this film that are shot-by-shot directly copying from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  In Captain Marvel, the team sits in the jet and it jolts them up and down: the camera is the same angle as that in the tv show and the Captain Marvel characters make the same comment about whether it is meant to do that as are made in Series 1 of S.H.I.E.L.D. When Fury and Carol lock themselves into the room by using the crowbar to hide from the Skrulls, this directly copies when the S.H.I.E.L.D Agents are hiding. Other shots include when in both this movie and the tv show they hide in the file storage area and fight back against the aggressor. When Coulson sees the person being hunted (Fury) but lets them go anyway because it’s the right thing to do, he does this frequently in S.H.I.E.L.D, putting moral judgment above protocol. There are too many scenes copied directly to Captain Marvel to mention here.

Characters and themes

If you’ve watched S.H.I.E.L.D you know that we’ve already met the Kree who play a huge part in the series. Not only that, but S.H.I.E.L.D fans know an awful lot more about the monster that is within Goose the cat.  It’s funny because whilst the audience can see that it’s a cat who is a monster who has taken out Fury’s eye, S.H.I.E.L.D fans know that Goose is so much more dangerous than that.

We see that the reason that mixing Coulson’s DNA with that of the Kree brought him back to life, is because of its healing qualities. We also find out exactly what that machine was that messed with Coulson’s memories, and allowed his own remembrance of his death to be rewritten and confused in his mind. We learn how S.H.I.E.L.D even had access to such a machine. We also realize that Coulson went through a similar process of combining Kree with Human and implanting false memories, just as Carol Danvers experienced the same thing.

Answers uncovered to S.H.I.E.L.D mysteries

Thanks to Captain Marvel we finally learn exactly why S.H.I.E.L.D has a Kree’s body and blood in the first place and why this was used to revive Coulson. We also learn more about the language that Coulson has been adorning onto the walls and that Carol Danvers too was described as being just as ‘mad’ as Coulson first appeared by feeling the desire to express the Kree language in written form.

We also learn exactly how S.H.I.E.L.D got hold of the tesseract. It becomes clear that S.H.I.E.L.D developed its jet engines and cloaking devices based on Skrull and Kree technology, which also cleverly explains why S.H.I.E.L.D has such high impossible equipment but the rest of the world does not.

So many mysteries, gaps in the plot and tiny details that didn’t have answers are tied up in a neat little bow here. There are too many to list in one article and I certainly need to rewatch the movie a second time to spot them all! It is all so well planned, so intricately crafted, and a testament to the Marvel team. It is a service to long-term S.H.I.E.L.D fans who have been watching since Season 1, as well as showing just how long the journey has been to get where we now are in the MCU.

Feel free to add any more S.H.I.E.L.D references you noticed into the comments. There’s so many and not enough space in this article to mention any more!