How Marvel’s Agents of Shield Turned Into an Anti-Authoritarian Satire

The shaky TV drama returned to its comic-book roots by appropriating Trumpian ideology.

The ABC action-drama and Marvel Cinematic Universe tie-in series Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has had a rough tenure on television. The show has never received the sort of praise the films or even the Netflix Marvel series have gotten. Still if you’re like me and are drinking in every bit of this comic-book-movie renaissance, it’s a fitting addition to the Marvel canon that has many bright spots to go with the show’s low moments. However, in the second-half of its fourth-season the show really got back to the roots of what comic books were about, and I don’t mean super-powers, alternate realities, and weird villains. (Spoilers for the show below the jump.)

The show has always been tangentially parallel to what’s happening in the films. Captain America: The Winter Soldier saw the spy agency fall and, ironically, that’s when the show first really found its footing. They brought in some lesser Asgardians when the Thor sequel was in theaters, and the first half of season four focused on the “magic” parts of the Marvel Cinematic Universe while Dr. Strange was in theaters. Yet, with no movie to really promote or push, the second half of season four dived into a weird alternate reality whose existence I won’t really waste time trying to explain.

Simply put, the characters found themselves in a world where there was no S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra has essentially instituted a fascist state in which “Inhumans” (the MCU’s version of “mutants” since 20th Century Fox owns the rights to them) are feared and hunted. It’s this theme — which parallels the nativism inherent in the far-right populism currently en vogue — making this subtle(-ish) political commentary that has truly brought back the show to the the roots of what comic book stories are really about.

Superhero stories are the myths of the modern age. Once we realized that the unknown things in the world and cosmos were not controlled by a pantheon of gods we started creating our own. Though instead of using these stories to explain where the sun goes at night or where lightning comes from, comic-book stories have been subtle ways to shape political thinking by creating stories that parallel sociopolitical issues of the day.

This is a longstanding tradition in comic books since the beginning of the superhero genre in the 1930s. Marvel, who really came of age in the 1960s, is perhaps the comics company that truly helped to pioneer this effort. (Though, when mixing politics with art there are always missteps, and comics have had more than their share of these, too.)

The narrative arcs surrounding Marvel’s mutant storylines, or in the MCU’s case the Inhuman storyline, can be generic stand-ins for whatever historically-oppressed minority you want. This is not because the artists and writers who create these stories are careless with their causes, but rather because human hate follows the same predictable patterns whether the subject of that animus is a racial/ethnic group, LGBT+ folks, or any sufficiently “different” group.

The AoS alternate reality — called “The Framework” because it’s actually a digital simulation — is no different, as it could be seen as a satire of anti-immigrant sentiment or the authoritarian response to the threat of terror that we’ve toyed with as a global society since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The fascists, as represented by Marvel’s Nazi stand-ins and perennial S.H.I.E.L.D. villains Hydra, trample on the liberty of the powered and non-powered alike all in the name of keeping people safe. However, without much subtlety, they made these villains parrot the sentiments of the Republican party under President Donald Trump.

Fitz, the awkward scientist type who essentially becomes a villain in this reality played by Iain De Caestecker, is the most obvious source of this. In one episode he literally says “make Hydra great again.” After torturing one of the inhuman heroes (and his friend in the real world) Daisy Johnson as played by Chloe Bennet, he drops a “nevertheless, she persisted” as a reference to her resisting their torture.

The latter episodes of this arc bring back a wormy Hydra operative from earlier seasons named Sunil Bakshi (played by Simon Kassianides) as a minister of propaganda for the villains. The heroes decry his program as “fake news” and “alternative facts.” There’s also a very subtle reference to the president’s notorious Access Hollywood tape, when Bakshi talks to a beautiful female colleague about taking her “furniture shopping.”

Comic book stories are more popular than ever before, having shifted in my lifetime from being the center of interest for a cult-following of nerds and outcasts to being the dominant cultural genre in American film today. Sure, it’s a testament to the fact that people of all ages have grown up with these stories in their cultural lexicon and digital effects advancements have it possible to to do anything on film and make it look realistic.

Everything has its cycle and, by all accounts, the comic book movie should be nearing the end of its time at the top. Yet, as the recent blockbuster performance of Wonder Woman shows us, audiences are still very hungry for these stories.

My theory about why that is has to do with why people turn to comic books (or myths in general) in the first place: uncertainty. The first major, modern comic book film (outside of Tim Burton’s Batman and Donner’s Superman) was X-Men in 2000. It was new and better than expected, so it makes sense it spawned its copycats. Yet, I think the fact that there are going to be more than a dozen active superhero series on television and Netflix in the 2017–2018 television season shows the appetite for magical heroes is only growing.

The uncertainty gripping folks today comes from the fact that we have no more real-life heroes. If Democrats like someone, Republicans hate them and vice versa. Everyone in public (or private) life is “problematic” in one way or another. Yet, the flaws in the characters of comic book heroes are part of what makes those characters relatable and real. We are far more accepting of regular human foibles in fictional characters than we are in our own flesh-and-blood neighbors.

This is why we, as a culture, turn towards superheroes. Even with the sorts of “shades of gray” surrounding the “dark” takes on heroes that one finds in most Batman films, Logan, and Deadpool, there are clear lines about who in the story is “good” and “evil.” In plenty cases, like the aforementioned Wonder Woman, compassion for one’s enemies is a key hallmark of the “good” character. They are not defined by their actions as much as they are their core values.

However, as evidenced by the shift of conservative priorities under President Trump, our values are all mixed up, right now. We turn to these stories because the heroes at their center have values we can cling to, can identify with. Yet what people may not realize is that the values in these stories are easily translatable to our real-world problems.

It’s not a partisan issue, as evidenced by the many lifelong, extremely partisan conservatives who have taken a stand against key policy proposals from the Trump administration. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t criticizing “Republican” values in this story, but rather giving their villains Trump’s words to simply show that they fit in their mouths.

Fiction is more powerful than nonfiction because we know what people are thinking. You can read any of the dozens of biographies of former President Richard Nixon and come away with various interpretations of his character and his motivations. There is no way to truly know for certain what people think or why they do what they do.

In fiction, the authors take us inside their characters’ heads. We’ll never know if Trump ran for office thinking he’d lose only to accidentally win or if he was serious about it the whole time. We’ll never know if Nixon was a conniving creep who only wanted control or if he was a patriot who just made horrible mistakes. (For what it’s worth, the reality is probably somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.) Yet, we know that President Lex Luthor was an evil bastard and that someone like President Jed Bartlett from The West Wing (the superhero-like unreality in that show is the idea that everyone in D.C. is there working in good-faith) is a good man trying his best.

This is something that the latest Hydra storyline in AoS tried very hard to do. Rather than simply saying that those who support the domestic Trump Doctrine are villains, they make two of the heroes of the show true-believers. Their journey to the realization that they were working against the values held by “good guys,” is a warning not a criticism. Our heroes and those who feared inhumans in this alternate reality were not bad people, but simply scared and lacking a figure around whom they could pin their hopes.

What do you think? Share your thoughts and reactions in the comments below.