Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Providence :: Art of Level 7
Season 1, Episode 18 Preview

4/10/2014

Updated on June 6, 2020.

I skipped out on the poster for "Turn, Turn, Turn." I didn't know how incredible and game-changing that episode would be. Once I knew, the prints were all sold out. Since there are to be six posters and I can't possibly buy them all, I was going to wait, thinking that the later episodes would be more important, the most memorable. But Ward's actions last week were such a shock. No wonder they started with that one. "Providence" will be an emotionally trying one for the remaining agents now without a member they had come to rely on, who they thought was part of their family. The shield that protects the world is broken, the people we've come to know over the season now gutted and rudderless.

I was right on the money about the emotion in this episode when I wrote this six years ago. (Wow! Where does the time go? Doesn't seem that long at all.) All of it is encapsulated beautifully in Coulson's speech, when the team, on the run from Hydra, is searching for Providence Base and their morale, already reduced to embers is about to be extinguished for good. Clark Gregg puts all of his emotion into the scene, perfectly demonstrating what he said in the afterward for the Season 2 Declassified book about "dumping your heart out on a concrete floor and trying to make some magic." Well, here it was on the snow, but same difference.

It was such an affecting scene that I spent hours and days making gifs of it: The Weight of the World. The post accompanying them was very short. I didn't remember that, but I guess I'd spent too much time already on the one episode. Coulson's face and "that carries weight" really says it all anyway.

The more I look at this poster the more I love it. It's still on my bedroom door six years later. I first noticed how beautifully the characters came out. As the episode tease shows, our beloved agents are literally out in the cold. This poster, capturing just an expression of each one of them, suggests the weight (I got the emotion AND the "weight" part right!) of being compromised and broken. Then I noticed that the now Hydra shield is actually a brilliant mix of both S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra. I was going to attempt something like that, but this one is better than anything I could have come up with. That sealed the deal. I think I need to set my alarm for this. For more details about the meaning behind the artist's choices, please read the interview with executive producer Jeffrey Bell at 'Agents of SHIELD': New initiative art teases team divide -- EXCLUSIVE.

Available in a limited edition of 100 at the Marvel Store on April 11 at 1:00 AM PST. Soooo...I'm getting up at 4. Yay for being on the East coast.

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