Each of the three episodes that have aired of Agents of SHIELD‘s second season have featured a constant refrain from Skye, the show’s point-of-view character: “Why are things being kept from me? What aren’t you telling me?”
This was a theme throughout the first season as well. It is the question at the core of the relationship between Skye and Agent Coulson, the show’s patriarch and ostensible protagonist*. I interpreted this dynamic as a commentary on or reaction to the Privacy versus Security debate that has risen to a cacophony in the post-Snowden era. Coulson represents the position of fascistic security agencies (the NSA, Shabak, MISIRI, the Chinese Ministry of State Security) who hold that privacy is the provence of governments, that states have the right to both keep secrets from their citizens and to monitor those same citizens lest they attempt to harbor any secrets of their own. Skye, who before joining SHIELD operated with the hacktivist cell Rising Tide, represents the position of groups like Wikileaks and Anonymous who hold that information beckons to be free, and that is the right of citizens to monitor their governments and not vice-versa.
There is another interpretation, another layer, another secret. In episode three of the new season, Fitz, the brilliant engineer brought low by hypoxia-induced brain damage, asks** Coulson the same question Skye has been asking.
Coulson’s response: “I am the Director. There are a lot of things I am keeping from you.”
Coulson is of course referring to his new position as Director of SHIELD. But might not that word, “director,” have a double-meaning? Even more so than other media, television programs have a tendency to become ‘about’ the creation of themselves. Viewed from that angle, perhaps Skye and Fitz’s constant questioning of Coulson is not unlike the constant clamoring by fans for explanation and resolution. The fans that hounded the creators of Lost into attempting to tie every loose end. The fans whose unending speculation has seemingly ruined the ending of George R.R. Martin’s yet-unpublished final Song of Fire and Ice novels. The fans who spent all summer dying to find out who Skye’s father is and why Coulson has started carving Kree electrical diagrams into every flat surface. The fans whose intense interest sustains shows and franchises for years and decades.
And Coulson, the “Director,” would then represent the *cough* beleaguered showrunners. Who are keeping a lot of things from you.
For your own good.
*Although May, the Spock to Coulson’s Kirk, is the more nuanced and ultimately rewarding character.
**Though not in so many workds
