Agent's of SHIELD Season 2 Premier

Having just finished watching episode 1 of "Marvel's AoS" Season 2, all I can say is wow. Clearly they are going to be upping the, well everything. We open with Coulson and SHIELD (such as it is) struggling to maintain a foothold in the fight to take down the remaining HYDRA cells in the world, while getting themselves in order as what could be described as SHIELD 2.0. For Phil Coulson, that means taking on the duty given him to by Nick Fury at the end of Season 1, to be the new head of SHIELD. So far, since they can't risk taking out "The Bus" since it doesn't have cloaking technology, that means Coulson has to fly coach in his various around the world jaunts to recruit allies, gain new technological toys for SHIELD's agents, and also obtain intel about HYDRA's various placements.

Audiences are also introduced to a mercenary team headed by Isabelle Hartley (Lucy Lawless), who has been thus far working with Coulson and SHIELD. But they've got a mole on their squad. Marvel Comics supervillain Absorbing Man aka George "Crusher" Creel (Brian Patrick Wade), is in their midst, gathering intel for HYDRA, who seem to be calling the shots for the infamous bad guy. When word gets out that HYDRA is searching for another 0-8-4 artifact (just like back in Season 1 when everyone jumped on "The Bus" and flew to South America for some old HYDRA tech). But this isn't any old 0-8-4, its the FIRST 0-8-4 that was ever recovered by SHIELD, making it a prize worthy of HYDRA's attention. In the grand game of deception to infiltrate the military facility that holds the 0-8-4, Coulson and his team have to kidnap now Brigadier General Glenn Talbot (Adrian Pasdar), in order to obtain his voice patterns and fingerprints to play a little game of hacking to fly under the radar. The 0-8-4 of course turns out to be more then the team imagined, and sadly HYDRA gets away with the goodies.                          

For everyone who came into Season 2 expecting it to follow the same slow pattern that started Season 1, I hope you were surprised. Everything about this first episode made me smile, the action, the new characters, the return of old characters, the dialogue, all of it was awesome. I get the sense that Season 2 will be stronger in terms of all aspects, and I for one can not wait to see what new adventures everyone at SHIELD will face.