Multiplicity Meta
Mar. 1st, 2021 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urthA self-fill for meta month, and the ‘secret twin/doppelganger’ square on my trope_bingo card
Multiplicity
An Agents of SHIELD season 7 consideration, focused on ‘Coulson’s’ character arc
If you haven’t read my![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
tori_reviews of Agents of SHIELD s7, some of this would make more sense if you did. But there is one term I must define at the beginning, since it’s very heavily used through this reflection.
Coulsoid: my way or referring to the Coulson-android of AoS season 7. It makes it a hell of a lot easier than trying to define which Coulson I’m referring to at any given moment. Coulson means Coulson-through-season-5; Sarge is not-Coulson in s6; Coulsoid is kind-of-Coulson in s7.
Sometimes I question myself why I find it so much harder accept Agents of SHIELD ending with the Couloid ending we got than I was prepared to accept it if Sarge was turned back into Coulson in s6.
To quote myself in my pre-s7 spec fic
Daisy asks [May] if it's so different to accept the robot from what happened to Fitz; Simmons quickly brings up Sarge, Mack simply points to it being a robot, and Elena defends that May's had to deal with the grief much longer; all four of them are right.
And…I stand by that. At least, it covers most of the bases of why it’s harder to accept in character. I would however add a collection of meta-textual problems, even though with those we can’t know if they would be better handled in a different outcome. Plus, a lot of the reasons play off each other, so it becomes hard for me to shake them out or try and mentally make peace with one specific reason. But I’ll try and keep this as ordered as possible.
So I present to you…some number of reasons why this ending didn’t work for me (in general, and as compared to s6 options).
Why should I?
At its core, this is the biggest problem. It isn’t necessarily the most foundational one; as you can tell from the spec fic, I always had some issues with the prospect of Coulsoid, and always wanted it to lead us to an ending with proper Coulson. But I also know myself, and I know s7 could have given me a story that answered why I should accept him, and I likely would have. I might have still been angling for the preferred real Coulson to be brought back, but I wouldn’t feel cheated by what we got.
The more time passes, the angrier I get at season 7. It was not good. It had some good moments, even a few good episodes, but it is not good. The season is conceptually bad, being pulled in too many different directions, trying to cover too many bases in too little time, that it ends up ripping itself apart. Nothing is earned in s7; so in that way, of course Coulsoid isn’t earned.
None of the characters have a proper arc in s7, which is why I always meant to do a breakdown character by character of why it fails (this is kind of the first of those, also kind of not). And Coulsoid’s attitude towards his new existence tends to be whatever suits the episode. But as I saw it, whatever suits the episode tends to be reasons why he would no longer see himself as Coulson or even quite human. Even in the last episodes, his attitude is whatever suits the episode, it’s just that at that point it happened to suit the episode that he be okay with it; otherwise we might notice that the show had a crappy resolution where several of the main characters are never going to get a happy ending.
There’s no arc there to show me Coulsoid still being Coulson; I suppose by implication the season is that arc, but it doesn’t flow. We don’t go through a process of Coulsoid deciding for himself that he’s still the same man and he doesn’t mind that he’s different now. Or demonstrating that being both of those things is even possible, seeing as Coulson was so unwilling to be anything but the same man that he died for it (I went on a rant about that mid-season). They could have shown that he learned better than that, but they didn’t; I’m pretty sure they don’t know he needed to.
So why should I accept him as Coulson? If he doesn’t accept himself as Coulson, why should I?
May
This is not a full breakdown of my issues with May’s story in s7; we don’t have a week and a half for me to go on that rant, but I have to cover elements of it that concern Coulson/oid before I go any further. The show shot itself in the foot from the first episode (maybe second) by eliminating the possibility of using May to guide the audience (hell, Coulsoid himself) through the process of accepting Coulsoid as Coulson.
May and Daisy are the people closest to Coulson, I don’t think many would disagree with that. And, although probably in character (it’s basically what I used in the spec fic), Daisy accepts him very quickly. This is likely how the writers wanted the audience at large to feel, to just accept it and go with it. He has the same memories, the same feelings, the same personality; so he’s Coulson, it’s basically the same thing as Fitz.
But by removing May’s ability to have an emotional reaction to his presence, she also can’t show acceptance (quickly or slowly) of him as the same man. She starts off not caring, and she ends up not really caring, because she can’t care. And because the story doesn’t fix her emotions, how am I supposed to see any of it as acceptance? She will never love him if she can’t feel love. She will never be done grieving him because she can’t grieve. She’ll never be angry or hurt or sad or happy that he’s there, because she literally can’t be any of those things.
This is what I mean by shooting themselves in the foot through their choices with May’s story (non-story though it largely is). Because Daisy accepts him so quickly, literally the most important person to convince becomes May, and they took away any chance of doing that. Which was a stupid move. It would be okay for them to delay it by first putting things through an arc that restored May and then moved on to whether she accepts Coulsoid, but we don’t get any work on her recovering her ability to feel. Which hurts Coulsoid’s story and ruins May’s.
Sarge 1
Sarge is kind of his own point, because in character I think he is an issue and the emotional fallout to it was never dealt with. But in the question at the heart if this ramble, why I still think I could have accepted restored Coulson-from-Sarge but don’t accept Coulsoid, sometimes I need to stop and directly contrast one with the other. So I’ll bring it in and out of focus a couple times.
A big one of those is May. Throughout s6 we saw her emotional journey regarding what Sarge was. It has missteps but it follows a general path. Her rejecting him on sight, because he couldn’t be Coulson. Her hatred of him for daring to walk around with Coulson’s face, because that’s desecrating his memory and something akin to sacrilege in her mind. Her starting to realize there could be something of Coulson inside him, and questioning whether they can or should try to draw it out, or if they must write it off as coincidence. Her allowing herself to hope that maybe, somehow, he could be Coulson again.
And we saw that end badly.
If Sarge had somehow turned back into Coulson, all of that would have still mattered. It might have used the same shortcuts once he had turned (just accept that it’s really Coulson and go with it), but all that doubt and confusion still happened in a way that leads to the conclusion. But at least in May’s case it can’t happen here, nor can there be a parallel or contrast with how she acted last season because her lack of reaction wasn’t because of her own feelings. They cut this story off at the knees before it even began by losing the ability to put May through the emotional wringer again.
(Daisy doesn’t get her own section, but in some ways her quick acceptance (though in character) has the same problem for this arc as May’s non-acceptance. Daisy accepts him too quickly to have any story about that as a process. And if the resurrection had happened through Sarge, she would have had an arc that led into her possible quick acceptance once he was just Coulson again.)
Wrong times
In the spec fic quoted at the beginning, I talked about how the dynamics of bringing ‘Coulson’ back would be different from Fitz because the timing was different. This also encompassed the idea that Simmons and the team had very quickly figured out that they could have Fitz back; while, when Coulson died, they all expected that was it.
Following from the previous point, that time spent without Coulson did factor into how they were with Sarge, but seems to have been lost with Coulsoid. Coulson’s death in general seems to matter less with Coulsoid around. After the first episode or two, we don’t see Coulsoid process the fact that ‘he’ (for purposed of discussion) died, and then only a little; nor does he reflect on the hows and whys or the fallout of those choices. The year these people spent mourning him and missing him, seems not to matter now (which again, is something they really lost by taking May’s emotions out of play).
But s7 had it coming and going, because there’s a huge problem with how compressed the timeline of the season is. If you keep clock by how much time passes for the Zephyr itself, very little time happens between the premier and the finale. The only extended time (some of) the characters have is in 1983, but Coulsoid’s experience with that (and the time loops) did not seem to endear him to his new state of being. In fact, those are among the plainest instances where it really doesn’t seem like he’s okay with what it means for him to live like this.
And apart from that, there’s no time to have a character or a character dynamic start in one place and end in another, because they have no time to reflect and change. Which is why my view of Coulsoid didn’t get a lot of chances to change through the season. I went in with reservations about him but willing to be convinced; and I ended with reservations and unconvinced. It didn’t take the time to convince me, and the only places where I can imagine he thought about it between events we see, I can only see him becoming more dissatisfied.
Mr. Roboto
I won’t ignore the fact that one of my hang-ups with Coulsoid is that he’s a robot. While I have some interest in transhumanism, and I think it is a topic we’re going to bring closer and closer to reality within a matter of decades at most, I have hang-ups about robots in fiction. More specifically, I have issues with turning human characters into robots, especially if it wasn’t something they were seeking.
If someone like the very transhumanist Radcliffe chose to put his body into an artificial replacement; it is, importantly, his choice. He’s also spent time considering the implications. Living with them would likely be different, but he has thought about them and could have decided he at least thought he was cool with them.
If Coulson had decided at the end of s5 that he wasn’t ready to die and if that meant surviving as an LMD, then he would at least try it; again, it would be his choice. But Coulson didn’t want that, he was in fact against the idea of having his life prolonged by artificial means. So the story was already starting with a hill to climb before it cut itself off at the knees with choices around May.
Broadly, this as a concern continues the same themes I keep returning to: how do others view him like this, and how does he view himself? With the others I’ll even give it a head-start that they do see him as a person (most seem to, but I could have taken more hesitation even on that basic principle), whether or not they see him as Coulson; which is the acceptance that needed to be earned. I’m not convinced he sees himself as a person at any point through the season, which is a huge stumbling block for me thinking he can see himself as Phil Coulson, much less the same Phil Coulson who can take the place of the one we lost.
It also can be an issue for me, especially when it’s raised with him a few times, that he has such a different lifespan than he would. The thing with transhumanism, is that once you reach a stage like this, a person can’t really die. People can always bring them back in a new form, if this record of who they were is a full representation of them as a person. That’s why I think there’s a difference between a societal move towards transhumanism, and a single entity in that condition; especially one who wasn’t ‘made’ to live that long or even chose to have that kind of life. Enoch, for example, thinks like a Chronicom, in terms of centuries and millennia so he would expect to outlive us base mortals. And with him I still think that, if Fitz is the first mortal that he’s really bonded with, Enoch would have gained a very different perspective as Fitz grew and changed and died while Enoch stayed the same.
Which is tied in with why I think him accepting this life, and me thinking of him as Coulson are incompatible. Coulson so clearly did not want this that I don’t know how I can accept this as the same man. Especially if, even if he decides he’s okay with it for now, it probably won’t be that long until pieces of what link him to the life of Phil Coulson start being lost. As an echo, a memory, of Phil Coulson, yes. He’d probably make an excellent Chronicom, getting to live on and see all that history, but he wouldn’t be our Coulson, in fact he would have to accept that he isn’t. And I don’t want that for him, at least not like this.
PACS
Let’s review my history with the Paradox Avoiding Coulson Swap over the last couple seasons.
It started out as just a Coulson Swap, and in that phase my next assumption was that it had already happened. I figured that was the ‘get out the river Styx’ card they could play. Sometime in Tahiti, some group had come along, with at least a chance of curing him and had taken him away; and then it would be Coulson who came back when show returned to events (possibly with something wrong at first). I had a variety of ideas about how this could have played out with May there; from knowing everything and just downplaying things in case it didn’t work; to a full Swap, where she one day she woke up beside, or come back to, what she assumed was his dead body but was actually a construct; to her having been in on the decision to Swap him, knowingly had her memory altered (to be restored down the road), but not remembering it except maybe a little subconsciously.
As s6 shaped up to have that not be Sarge’s backstory, I gradually…put less stock in the Swap as necessary for resolution. I mean, I clearly assumed the season was leading to Coulson coming back, but they had Sarge there, and he had some Coulson in him, so maybe the seeds for resurrection didn’t need to have been planted before the season started.
But, Sarge’s timeline was strange, and the Chronicoms were already trying to figure out time travel, either of which put other routes to a Coulson return onto the table. It could have ended up being a full history rewrite of the past year for the characters, and this time they would save Coulson (if nothing else, they could put him in a stasis pod until they found a cure, possibly from the Chronicoms or Sarge’s ability to heal himself); or a modified Great Coulson Swap (it only got a standing acronym when I started to assume it would definitely happen) idea that was lurking in my brain. If this Sarge guy actually wasn’t the means to bring back Coulson directly, and they had to kill him…couldn’t they go back in time, chuck his body in Tahiti, scoop up Coulson and leave, no one at the time the wiser that things had changed?
This idea was only further refined and expanded by Coulsoid, never abandoned. They were no longer limited to having to make the Swap at Coulson’s presumed death, they could go any time from late s5 to his death. Coulsoid could fill in for him, he’d be able to play Coulson quite well obviously; and for at least a little while he would get to live as Phil Coulson, and then die as the man he wanted to believe himself to be. This was a perfect ending in my opinion. It gave us back Coulson, it gave Coulsoid a tragic but beautiful end, it could be handwaved as a means to restore May’s feelings. It would give a chance for Coulsoid to tell Coulson to live as deeply and as long as he could, so the last couple seasons did have an effect on Coulson’s arc too.
And then…they didn’t do it. But all the reasons I think it was the right ending for the characters remain. Also, the show didn’t make it impossible, so it’s always going to be in my mind that they could still do it. They have a time drive that the end reveals they can actually control; they have a magic healing machine which I’m betting can fix Coulson; they have Flint who can make them time rocks as needed; they have Coulsoid to be/play dead. They hadn’t fixed May’s emotions or shown any indication that Coulsoid has become fully integrated as Coulson with others and especially himself, he’s just kind of existing looking for a purpose that PACS would give him.
Which is also the one instance I think I can see him being at peace with going off and truly finding his own way in this new life. Being okay that he’s a robot with Coulson’s memories but a different person, rather than always questioning if he’s the same person and having to be bound to that. Because this way there is a real person who’s with the people they love.
Sarge 2
There is a small reason I’ve only recently put to words, as to why Sarge-to-Coulson could have worked for me but Coulsoid doesn’t. I’ve alluded to it through this, especially in the last part, but I need to put some focus on it. And that’s simply that they had already done Sarge before Coulsoid. It’s pretty basic, which is why I didn’t nail it down right away, but it’s maybe the biggest factor.
Again, I never expected s5 to be the end of Coulson. I saw them setting up in the s5 finale that Simmons could still find a last minute cure, and then things would gradually go back to normal. When we started seeing ‘Coulson’ in s6 previews I quickly went to the first iteration of Coulson Swap, because the way I saw it the show was always going to bring Coulson back. And if they wanted to do it as a plot arc through Sarge, okay that made some sense. Don’t make it too easy, earn your happy ending, I’m up for that.
And so s6 had a story to which the logical end point was having Coulson back. Whether it had used time travel or had him restored in Sarge, that was where the steps lead. There would be twists in it, there would be more pain; but it would get there, and be sweeter for it.
But it didn’t. If we look at it from far enough back, it looks similar; you get this twisted arc, and it ends with ‘Coulson’ brought back; but it’s not connected. Everything they went through with Sarge doesn’t count in Coulsoid; partly because Sarge is basically forgotten pretty early in the season. There are no consequences for Sarge having come in and disrupted their lives, except with May’s new condition, and she doesn’t care. As much as I do respect the decision to have Sarge fail, and fall to the non-Coulson side of himself; Coulsoid doesn’t represent the final victory of Coulson’s strength and love over that darkness, he just kind of shows up.
And as such, I end up feeling the contrivance to keep Clark Gregg on the show in two disconnected forms over two seasons. If one leads to the other (Sarge recovers his Coulson personality), or is the result of the other (in death Sarge gave them the ability to PACS; or if, say, Coulson had only been around in holo-form in s6 and then that somehow upgraded to full AI in s7) then you’re still only asking me to swallow one contrived reason he’s still here. With two separate instances that close together I was never able to get onboard.
Having the arcs connected, also makes it an arc; the build up in s6 connected to the resolution in s7. That doesn’t exist in what we got.
And second time they did it, I needed equal or greater emphasis from the characters that I should; and I didn’t get it.
Breaking the fourth wall
Speaking of how feeling the meta narrative makes the Coulsoid ending hard for me to swallow, I’m going to bring this up once again. Because the lack of reason to see him as the real Coulson continues until the last moment of the show. For me, that is a huge read flag that Coulsoid doesn’t exist to give a satisfying end to the Agents of SHIELD story.
He doesn’t exist because so we can see ‘Coulson’ getting a happy ending, or because he should be there as SHIELD comes back and hopefully sticks this time. He doesn’t exist to be in May’s happy ending. He doesn’t exist to fix something broken in Daisy’s story (that’s the closest to a reading of his role, but it has drawbacks and I won’t say that’s why he’s there). To me it reads very strongly that he exists to have a version of Coulson in play should the MCU at large ever want to use him and in a way that can be quickly summarized for non-AoS watchers. He’s an LMD, that’s a quick explanation. If he shows up with a wife, a posse of surrogate children, a life he’ll want to get back to, and a temporally confused reason for why he’s not dead; there’s no quick explanation for why he’s around.
It's why I will not shut up about what they did to Lola. Like Coulsoid himself, this is desecration without redemption. It could be cool, but it’s cool for the sake of cool, not the sake of character. And it’s flat wrong for the sake of character. Coulson loved Lola for what she was, what she represented to him, the part of him that she represented to others. The car we see at the end of the show is not Lola; and the driver isn’t Coulson. New-Lola could represent the new-Coulson/oid; and I suppose you could say it does this way if the point is that they’re not who they were. But it takes away the touchstone of the man he was, and doesn’t have another one there to show that in the really important ways he is.
I will never forgive the show for the choice not to have May in the passenger seat as they drove off into the sunset. At least, not if the point was for me to accept Coulsoid as ‘Coulson’ and this as a happy (or even acceptable) ending for the man Phil Coulson. If it was Lola, maybe they could have gotten away with it; it would symbolize Coulson restored rather than replaced. And I might believe that, now that he’s reunited with his car, he’ll find his way home. But in the final act we got, they show that he’s not even that attached to the Lola he had so much connection to, so why should I conclude that he’s that attached to any of the other things that Coulson cared about?
Conclusions?
I think writing it down has given me some clarity why any of the s6 options for bringing Coulson back would have worked for me better than what we got in Coulsoid. After s6, it sort of narrowed to one option that the narrative had earned, which is why I became so focused on PACS exclusively in s7. Especially when s7 wasn’t as good by a long shot, and didn’t do the work to earn its own resolution.
I don’t know if I made the point very well for anyone else, but I feel more secure with myself. I didn’t want it to be just that he was a robot, that didn’t feel right. Because I do believe that memory and experience are what defines a person over a physical, even biological, form. I won’t deny that that’s part of it; but even if it was just that, it’s at least as much on the execution as my personal biases.
So my conscience can be clear when I go back to writing my epilog-what-epilog s7-PACS story, and my s6 Sarge-to-Coulson resurrection option. Will we ever see either of them finished? Who knows, but those are the endings I choose which embrace post-s5 canon. Far from the only ideas I have, but the two that were a little awkward to look at in contrast with each other.
Basically, I continue to reject your reality and substitute my own. In mine, Philinda happy endings are almost a guarantee.
(Maybe I’ll do a separate ramble comparing and contrasting the Coulsoid question with a couple other twin/replacement stories I have thoughts on. How does it stack up against a Doctor Who regeneration? Is it better or worse than the Journey’s End ending on DW? Considering how rushed that was, it’s not a great sign that I’m even asking. It’s definitely not as good as Farscape…why does this show keep inviting me to compare it negatively to Farscape?)
Multiplicity
An Agents of SHIELD season 7 consideration, focused on ‘Coulson’s’ character arc
If you haven’t read my
tori_reviews of Agents of SHIELD s7, some of this would make more sense if you did. But there is one term I must define at the beginning, since it’s very heavily used through this reflection.Coulsoid: my way or referring to the Coulson-android of AoS season 7. It makes it a hell of a lot easier than trying to define which Coulson I’m referring to at any given moment. Coulson means Coulson-through-season-5; Sarge is not-Coulson in s6; Coulsoid is kind-of-Coulson in s7.
Sometimes I question myself why I find it so much harder accept Agents of SHIELD ending with the Couloid ending we got than I was prepared to accept it if Sarge was turned back into Coulson in s6.
To quote myself in my pre-s7 spec fic
Daisy asks [May] if it's so different to accept the robot from what happened to Fitz; Simmons quickly brings up Sarge, Mack simply points to it being a robot, and Elena defends that May's had to deal with the grief much longer; all four of them are right.
And…I stand by that. At least, it covers most of the bases of why it’s harder to accept in character. I would however add a collection of meta-textual problems, even though with those we can’t know if they would be better handled in a different outcome. Plus, a lot of the reasons play off each other, so it becomes hard for me to shake them out or try and mentally make peace with one specific reason. But I’ll try and keep this as ordered as possible.
So I present to you…some number of reasons why this ending didn’t work for me (in general, and as compared to s6 options).
Why should I?
At its core, this is the biggest problem. It isn’t necessarily the most foundational one; as you can tell from the spec fic, I always had some issues with the prospect of Coulsoid, and always wanted it to lead us to an ending with proper Coulson. But I also know myself, and I know s7 could have given me a story that answered why I should accept him, and I likely would have. I might have still been angling for the preferred real Coulson to be brought back, but I wouldn’t feel cheated by what we got.
The more time passes, the angrier I get at season 7. It was not good. It had some good moments, even a few good episodes, but it is not good. The season is conceptually bad, being pulled in too many different directions, trying to cover too many bases in too little time, that it ends up ripping itself apart. Nothing is earned in s7; so in that way, of course Coulsoid isn’t earned.
None of the characters have a proper arc in s7, which is why I always meant to do a breakdown character by character of why it fails (this is kind of the first of those, also kind of not). And Coulsoid’s attitude towards his new existence tends to be whatever suits the episode. But as I saw it, whatever suits the episode tends to be reasons why he would no longer see himself as Coulson or even quite human. Even in the last episodes, his attitude is whatever suits the episode, it’s just that at that point it happened to suit the episode that he be okay with it; otherwise we might notice that the show had a crappy resolution where several of the main characters are never going to get a happy ending.
There’s no arc there to show me Coulsoid still being Coulson; I suppose by implication the season is that arc, but it doesn’t flow. We don’t go through a process of Coulsoid deciding for himself that he’s still the same man and he doesn’t mind that he’s different now. Or demonstrating that being both of those things is even possible, seeing as Coulson was so unwilling to be anything but the same man that he died for it (I went on a rant about that mid-season). They could have shown that he learned better than that, but they didn’t; I’m pretty sure they don’t know he needed to.
So why should I accept him as Coulson? If he doesn’t accept himself as Coulson, why should I?
May
This is not a full breakdown of my issues with May’s story in s7; we don’t have a week and a half for me to go on that rant, but I have to cover elements of it that concern Coulson/oid before I go any further. The show shot itself in the foot from the first episode (maybe second) by eliminating the possibility of using May to guide the audience (hell, Coulsoid himself) through the process of accepting Coulsoid as Coulson.
May and Daisy are the people closest to Coulson, I don’t think many would disagree with that. And, although probably in character (it’s basically what I used in the spec fic), Daisy accepts him very quickly. This is likely how the writers wanted the audience at large to feel, to just accept it and go with it. He has the same memories, the same feelings, the same personality; so he’s Coulson, it’s basically the same thing as Fitz.
But by removing May’s ability to have an emotional reaction to his presence, she also can’t show acceptance (quickly or slowly) of him as the same man. She starts off not caring, and she ends up not really caring, because she can’t care. And because the story doesn’t fix her emotions, how am I supposed to see any of it as acceptance? She will never love him if she can’t feel love. She will never be done grieving him because she can’t grieve. She’ll never be angry or hurt or sad or happy that he’s there, because she literally can’t be any of those things.
This is what I mean by shooting themselves in the foot through their choices with May’s story (non-story though it largely is). Because Daisy accepts him so quickly, literally the most important person to convince becomes May, and they took away any chance of doing that. Which was a stupid move. It would be okay for them to delay it by first putting things through an arc that restored May and then moved on to whether she accepts Coulsoid, but we don’t get any work on her recovering her ability to feel. Which hurts Coulsoid’s story and ruins May’s.
Sarge 1
Sarge is kind of his own point, because in character I think he is an issue and the emotional fallout to it was never dealt with. But in the question at the heart if this ramble, why I still think I could have accepted restored Coulson-from-Sarge but don’t accept Coulsoid, sometimes I need to stop and directly contrast one with the other. So I’ll bring it in and out of focus a couple times.
A big one of those is May. Throughout s6 we saw her emotional journey regarding what Sarge was. It has missteps but it follows a general path. Her rejecting him on sight, because he couldn’t be Coulson. Her hatred of him for daring to walk around with Coulson’s face, because that’s desecrating his memory and something akin to sacrilege in her mind. Her starting to realize there could be something of Coulson inside him, and questioning whether they can or should try to draw it out, or if they must write it off as coincidence. Her allowing herself to hope that maybe, somehow, he could be Coulson again.
And we saw that end badly.
If Sarge had somehow turned back into Coulson, all of that would have still mattered. It might have used the same shortcuts once he had turned (just accept that it’s really Coulson and go with it), but all that doubt and confusion still happened in a way that leads to the conclusion. But at least in May’s case it can’t happen here, nor can there be a parallel or contrast with how she acted last season because her lack of reaction wasn’t because of her own feelings. They cut this story off at the knees before it even began by losing the ability to put May through the emotional wringer again.
(Daisy doesn’t get her own section, but in some ways her quick acceptance (though in character) has the same problem for this arc as May’s non-acceptance. Daisy accepts him too quickly to have any story about that as a process. And if the resurrection had happened through Sarge, she would have had an arc that led into her possible quick acceptance once he was just Coulson again.)
Wrong times
In the spec fic quoted at the beginning, I talked about how the dynamics of bringing ‘Coulson’ back would be different from Fitz because the timing was different. This also encompassed the idea that Simmons and the team had very quickly figured out that they could have Fitz back; while, when Coulson died, they all expected that was it.
Following from the previous point, that time spent without Coulson did factor into how they were with Sarge, but seems to have been lost with Coulsoid. Coulson’s death in general seems to matter less with Coulsoid around. After the first episode or two, we don’t see Coulsoid process the fact that ‘he’ (for purposed of discussion) died, and then only a little; nor does he reflect on the hows and whys or the fallout of those choices. The year these people spent mourning him and missing him, seems not to matter now (which again, is something they really lost by taking May’s emotions out of play).
But s7 had it coming and going, because there’s a huge problem with how compressed the timeline of the season is. If you keep clock by how much time passes for the Zephyr itself, very little time happens between the premier and the finale. The only extended time (some of) the characters have is in 1983, but Coulsoid’s experience with that (and the time loops) did not seem to endear him to his new state of being. In fact, those are among the plainest instances where it really doesn’t seem like he’s okay with what it means for him to live like this.
And apart from that, there’s no time to have a character or a character dynamic start in one place and end in another, because they have no time to reflect and change. Which is why my view of Coulsoid didn’t get a lot of chances to change through the season. I went in with reservations about him but willing to be convinced; and I ended with reservations and unconvinced. It didn’t take the time to convince me, and the only places where I can imagine he thought about it between events we see, I can only see him becoming more dissatisfied.
Mr. Roboto
I won’t ignore the fact that one of my hang-ups with Coulsoid is that he’s a robot. While I have some interest in transhumanism, and I think it is a topic we’re going to bring closer and closer to reality within a matter of decades at most, I have hang-ups about robots in fiction. More specifically, I have issues with turning human characters into robots, especially if it wasn’t something they were seeking.
If someone like the very transhumanist Radcliffe chose to put his body into an artificial replacement; it is, importantly, his choice. He’s also spent time considering the implications. Living with them would likely be different, but he has thought about them and could have decided he at least thought he was cool with them.
If Coulson had decided at the end of s5 that he wasn’t ready to die and if that meant surviving as an LMD, then he would at least try it; again, it would be his choice. But Coulson didn’t want that, he was in fact against the idea of having his life prolonged by artificial means. So the story was already starting with a hill to climb before it cut itself off at the knees with choices around May.
Broadly, this as a concern continues the same themes I keep returning to: how do others view him like this, and how does he view himself? With the others I’ll even give it a head-start that they do see him as a person (most seem to, but I could have taken more hesitation even on that basic principle), whether or not they see him as Coulson; which is the acceptance that needed to be earned. I’m not convinced he sees himself as a person at any point through the season, which is a huge stumbling block for me thinking he can see himself as Phil Coulson, much less the same Phil Coulson who can take the place of the one we lost.
It also can be an issue for me, especially when it’s raised with him a few times, that he has such a different lifespan than he would. The thing with transhumanism, is that once you reach a stage like this, a person can’t really die. People can always bring them back in a new form, if this record of who they were is a full representation of them as a person. That’s why I think there’s a difference between a societal move towards transhumanism, and a single entity in that condition; especially one who wasn’t ‘made’ to live that long or even chose to have that kind of life. Enoch, for example, thinks like a Chronicom, in terms of centuries and millennia so he would expect to outlive us base mortals. And with him I still think that, if Fitz is the first mortal that he’s really bonded with, Enoch would have gained a very different perspective as Fitz grew and changed and died while Enoch stayed the same.
Which is tied in with why I think him accepting this life, and me thinking of him as Coulson are incompatible. Coulson so clearly did not want this that I don’t know how I can accept this as the same man. Especially if, even if he decides he’s okay with it for now, it probably won’t be that long until pieces of what link him to the life of Phil Coulson start being lost. As an echo, a memory, of Phil Coulson, yes. He’d probably make an excellent Chronicom, getting to live on and see all that history, but he wouldn’t be our Coulson, in fact he would have to accept that he isn’t. And I don’t want that for him, at least not like this.
PACS
Let’s review my history with the Paradox Avoiding Coulson Swap over the last couple seasons.
It started out as just a Coulson Swap, and in that phase my next assumption was that it had already happened. I figured that was the ‘get out the river Styx’ card they could play. Sometime in Tahiti, some group had come along, with at least a chance of curing him and had taken him away; and then it would be Coulson who came back when show returned to events (possibly with something wrong at first). I had a variety of ideas about how this could have played out with May there; from knowing everything and just downplaying things in case it didn’t work; to a full Swap, where she one day she woke up beside, or come back to, what she assumed was his dead body but was actually a construct; to her having been in on the decision to Swap him, knowingly had her memory altered (to be restored down the road), but not remembering it except maybe a little subconsciously.
As s6 shaped up to have that not be Sarge’s backstory, I gradually…put less stock in the Swap as necessary for resolution. I mean, I clearly assumed the season was leading to Coulson coming back, but they had Sarge there, and he had some Coulson in him, so maybe the seeds for resurrection didn’t need to have been planted before the season started.
But, Sarge’s timeline was strange, and the Chronicoms were already trying to figure out time travel, either of which put other routes to a Coulson return onto the table. It could have ended up being a full history rewrite of the past year for the characters, and this time they would save Coulson (if nothing else, they could put him in a stasis pod until they found a cure, possibly from the Chronicoms or Sarge’s ability to heal himself); or a modified Great Coulson Swap (it only got a standing acronym when I started to assume it would definitely happen) idea that was lurking in my brain. If this Sarge guy actually wasn’t the means to bring back Coulson directly, and they had to kill him…couldn’t they go back in time, chuck his body in Tahiti, scoop up Coulson and leave, no one at the time the wiser that things had changed?
This idea was only further refined and expanded by Coulsoid, never abandoned. They were no longer limited to having to make the Swap at Coulson’s presumed death, they could go any time from late s5 to his death. Coulsoid could fill in for him, he’d be able to play Coulson quite well obviously; and for at least a little while he would get to live as Phil Coulson, and then die as the man he wanted to believe himself to be. This was a perfect ending in my opinion. It gave us back Coulson, it gave Coulsoid a tragic but beautiful end, it could be handwaved as a means to restore May’s feelings. It would give a chance for Coulsoid to tell Coulson to live as deeply and as long as he could, so the last couple seasons did have an effect on Coulson’s arc too.
And then…they didn’t do it. But all the reasons I think it was the right ending for the characters remain. Also, the show didn’t make it impossible, so it’s always going to be in my mind that they could still do it. They have a time drive that the end reveals they can actually control; they have a magic healing machine which I’m betting can fix Coulson; they have Flint who can make them time rocks as needed; they have Coulsoid to be/play dead. They hadn’t fixed May’s emotions or shown any indication that Coulsoid has become fully integrated as Coulson with others and especially himself, he’s just kind of existing looking for a purpose that PACS would give him.
Which is also the one instance I think I can see him being at peace with going off and truly finding his own way in this new life. Being okay that he’s a robot with Coulson’s memories but a different person, rather than always questioning if he’s the same person and having to be bound to that. Because this way there is a real person who’s with the people they love.
Sarge 2
There is a small reason I’ve only recently put to words, as to why Sarge-to-Coulson could have worked for me but Coulsoid doesn’t. I’ve alluded to it through this, especially in the last part, but I need to put some focus on it. And that’s simply that they had already done Sarge before Coulsoid. It’s pretty basic, which is why I didn’t nail it down right away, but it’s maybe the biggest factor.
Again, I never expected s5 to be the end of Coulson. I saw them setting up in the s5 finale that Simmons could still find a last minute cure, and then things would gradually go back to normal. When we started seeing ‘Coulson’ in s6 previews I quickly went to the first iteration of Coulson Swap, because the way I saw it the show was always going to bring Coulson back. And if they wanted to do it as a plot arc through Sarge, okay that made some sense. Don’t make it too easy, earn your happy ending, I’m up for that.
And so s6 had a story to which the logical end point was having Coulson back. Whether it had used time travel or had him restored in Sarge, that was where the steps lead. There would be twists in it, there would be more pain; but it would get there, and be sweeter for it.
But it didn’t. If we look at it from far enough back, it looks similar; you get this twisted arc, and it ends with ‘Coulson’ brought back; but it’s not connected. Everything they went through with Sarge doesn’t count in Coulsoid; partly because Sarge is basically forgotten pretty early in the season. There are no consequences for Sarge having come in and disrupted their lives, except with May’s new condition, and she doesn’t care. As much as I do respect the decision to have Sarge fail, and fall to the non-Coulson side of himself; Coulsoid doesn’t represent the final victory of Coulson’s strength and love over that darkness, he just kind of shows up.
And as such, I end up feeling the contrivance to keep Clark Gregg on the show in two disconnected forms over two seasons. If one leads to the other (Sarge recovers his Coulson personality), or is the result of the other (in death Sarge gave them the ability to PACS; or if, say, Coulson had only been around in holo-form in s6 and then that somehow upgraded to full AI in s7) then you’re still only asking me to swallow one contrived reason he’s still here. With two separate instances that close together I was never able to get onboard.
Having the arcs connected, also makes it an arc; the build up in s6 connected to the resolution in s7. That doesn’t exist in what we got.
And second time they did it, I needed equal or greater emphasis from the characters that I should; and I didn’t get it.
Breaking the fourth wall
Speaking of how feeling the meta narrative makes the Coulsoid ending hard for me to swallow, I’m going to bring this up once again. Because the lack of reason to see him as the real Coulson continues until the last moment of the show. For me, that is a huge read flag that Coulsoid doesn’t exist to give a satisfying end to the Agents of SHIELD story.
He doesn’t exist because so we can see ‘Coulson’ getting a happy ending, or because he should be there as SHIELD comes back and hopefully sticks this time. He doesn’t exist to be in May’s happy ending. He doesn’t exist to fix something broken in Daisy’s story (that’s the closest to a reading of his role, but it has drawbacks and I won’t say that’s why he’s there). To me it reads very strongly that he exists to have a version of Coulson in play should the MCU at large ever want to use him and in a way that can be quickly summarized for non-AoS watchers. He’s an LMD, that’s a quick explanation. If he shows up with a wife, a posse of surrogate children, a life he’ll want to get back to, and a temporally confused reason for why he’s not dead; there’s no quick explanation for why he’s around.
It's why I will not shut up about what they did to Lola. Like Coulsoid himself, this is desecration without redemption. It could be cool, but it’s cool for the sake of cool, not the sake of character. And it’s flat wrong for the sake of character. Coulson loved Lola for what she was, what she represented to him, the part of him that she represented to others. The car we see at the end of the show is not Lola; and the driver isn’t Coulson. New-Lola could represent the new-Coulson/oid; and I suppose you could say it does this way if the point is that they’re not who they were. But it takes away the touchstone of the man he was, and doesn’t have another one there to show that in the really important ways he is.
I will never forgive the show for the choice not to have May in the passenger seat as they drove off into the sunset. At least, not if the point was for me to accept Coulsoid as ‘Coulson’ and this as a happy (or even acceptable) ending for the man Phil Coulson. If it was Lola, maybe they could have gotten away with it; it would symbolize Coulson restored rather than replaced. And I might believe that, now that he’s reunited with his car, he’ll find his way home. But in the final act we got, they show that he’s not even that attached to the Lola he had so much connection to, so why should I conclude that he’s that attached to any of the other things that Coulson cared about?
Conclusions?
I think writing it down has given me some clarity why any of the s6 options for bringing Coulson back would have worked for me better than what we got in Coulsoid. After s6, it sort of narrowed to one option that the narrative had earned, which is why I became so focused on PACS exclusively in s7. Especially when s7 wasn’t as good by a long shot, and didn’t do the work to earn its own resolution.
I don’t know if I made the point very well for anyone else, but I feel more secure with myself. I didn’t want it to be just that he was a robot, that didn’t feel right. Because I do believe that memory and experience are what defines a person over a physical, even biological, form. I won’t deny that that’s part of it; but even if it was just that, it’s at least as much on the execution as my personal biases.
So my conscience can be clear when I go back to writing my epilog-what-epilog s7-PACS story, and my s6 Sarge-to-Coulson resurrection option. Will we ever see either of them finished? Who knows, but those are the endings I choose which embrace post-s5 canon. Far from the only ideas I have, but the two that were a little awkward to look at in contrast with each other.
Basically, I continue to reject your reality and substitute my own. In mine, Philinda happy endings are almost a guarantee.
(Maybe I’ll do a separate ramble comparing and contrasting the Coulsoid question with a couple other twin/replacement stories I have thoughts on. How does it stack up against a Doctor Who regeneration? Is it better or worse than the Journey’s End ending on DW? Considering how rushed that was, it’s not a great sign that I’m even asking. It’s definitely not as good as Farscape…why does this show keep inviting me to compare it negatively to Farscape?)
