"Orientation" is the first and second episodes and two-part season premiere of the fifth season of the American television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Based on the Marvel Comics organization S.H.I.E.L.D., it follows Phil Coulson and his team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents as they are transported to a future in which the Earth has been destroyed. It is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and acknowledges the franchise's films. The first part was written by Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen and directed by Jesse Bochco, with the second part written by DJ Doyle, and directed by David Solomon.
Clark Gregg reprises his role as Coulson from the film series, starring alongside Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker, Elizabeth Henstridge, Henry Simmons, and Natalia Cordova-Buckley. This marks Cordova-Buckley's first appearance as a series regular, after recurring in previous seasons. A fifth season was ordered in March 2017, and filming began that July. Several new recurring guest stars were announced beginning in August, including Jeff Ward, Eve Harlow, and Pruitt Taylor Vince, who are all introduced in the episodes. The episodes serve as the beginning to the first "pod" of episodes for the season.
"Orientation" originally aired on ABC on December 1, 2017, and according to Nielsen Media Research, was watched by 4.27 million viewers within a week of its release. The episodes received very positive reviews from critics, with many generally highlighting the cast's performances, the introduction of new characters, and felt it was a promising start to the season. The futuristic space setting was especially praised for being "ambitious" and thematically different. "Orientation: Part 1" won a Hollywood Post Alliance Award for Outstanding Visual Effects - Television (Over 13 Episodes) at the 2018 Hollywood Post Alliance Awards, and was nominated for a Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode at the 16th Visual Effects Society Awards.
Plot Part one Enoch, an alien, leads a team of commandos to apprehend Phil Coulson and his team after they were framed for the attempted assassination of General Glenn Talbot. While Leo Fitz is left behind, the rest are taken to an unknown location. A white monolith transports them to an outpost in an unknown region of space, where a group of scavengers are under attack from aliens they call "roaches." One of the scavengers, Virgil, tries to explain their situation to Coulson, but is quickly knocked out by Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie. After they reunite with Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez and Jemma Simmons, Coulson finds an old postcard in Virgil's jacket. Virgil recognizes each of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents when he regains consciousness. As he begins to explain that he studied their history, he's suddenly killed by one of the roaches. While Daisy Johnson saves the team, Melinda May is injured and sees Deke Shaw, another scavenger. May attacks him but is overpowered. He ties her up and implants a device called a "metric" into her wrist.
The team finds May's jacket and realize the outpost appears to be a human colony. They find a computer, only to trigger an alarm that sends a team of Kree Reapers to their whereabouts. The Kree take Johnson, Coulson and Simmons to a prison, while Mack and Yo-Yo are tied up and tortured. Deke shows up at the prison with May, and convinces the Kree to let them hand over their prisoners to him. Deke tells them Virgil hired him to swap out the team's metrics so the Kree wouldn't notice them. With Virgil dead and the team unable to cover what he's owed, Deke attempts to leave, but May grabs one of Deke's gadgets he used against her earlier to pin him to a wall.
May and Simmons follow Deke's directions to a ship that could send a message to Fitz to rescue them, Johnson heads off to find Mack and Yo-Yo, and Coulson stays behind to get information out of Deke. Johnson frees Mack and the two set out to save Yo-Yo. Gradually, all of them come to realize that the monolith didn't take them into space, but to a future where the Earth has been destroyed, and the outpost is all that remains of humanity. Mack finds a message on the postcard reading "Working on it - Fitz".
Part two May and Simmons return to the outpost, where Deke offers to give implant metrics in their wrists so they can blend in. They're suddenly interrupted by Tess, another scavenger, and Deke tells her about Virgil's death. Deke leaves to find Daisy, Mack, and Yo-Yo once Tess offers to double what Virgil owed him, while Tess takes the rest of them to the Exchange, humanity's main living area on the outpost. The outpost, known as the "Lighthouse", was a survival bunker when the Earth was torn in half by a cataclysmic event. The Kree arrived to restore order, and destroyed the historical records to keep humanity focused on their future. Although the Kree often abuse their human subjects, they rely on the Kree for survival.
Tess takes Coulson to Virgil's apartment, where Coulson finds a notebook Virgil hid among the artifacts of the old world he collected. Tess' boss, Grill, confronts her about the ship May and Simmons took out earlier, and says she owes him double now that Virgil is gone. May and Simmons witness one of the Kree's human servants getting stabbed in a fight. The Kree take Simmons away when she looks after his wound rather than let him bleed out. Deke, Johnson, Mack and Yo-Yo meet up with Tess, Coulson and May in the Exchange after they dispose of the Reapers' bodies. Suspicious of Deke's motivations, Johnson follows him to his "gallery", where people pay to enter a Framework simulation to escape the brutal reality of life in the Lighthouse. Johnson passes out when she walks under Deke's transmitter, and finds herself in a simulation with Deke.
The Kree take Simmons to see Kasius, the overseer of the Lighthouse. Kasius orders his enforcer Sinara to begin a "renewal" among the humans. Back in the Exchange, Coulson, Mack and Yo-Yo steal a tablet from a Kree, and give it to Grill in exchange for implanting their metrics. The renewal begins while they are in Grill's shop. The Kree select a group of low earners, each of which will either have to be killed or kill another before the renewal ends. One scavenger sets out to kill Grill for not paying him earlier. Grill leaves Coulson, Mack and Yo-Yo behind as decoys while he goes into hiding. May tries to fight the scavenger off, only for Tess to grab the shotgun and kill him instead. Grill claims the team work for him when a Kree watch commander comes by to check on the renewal's end.
Kasius demands perfection from anyone who represents him, and has Sinara kill the servant that Simmons treated. Kasius places a device into Simmons' ear, causing her to lose her hearing and dim her sight. Meanwhile, Johnson confronts Deke about using the Framework. Deke reminds her that the Earth is gone and humanity is near extinction. Deke pauses a TV playing a news report about Johnson saving Los Angeles. He went into the Framework to confirm that Johnson was Quake, the person he believes tore the Earth apart. Later, Simmons becomes one of Kasius' servants, whose voice is the only one she can hear, and Kasius prepared for the arrival of some guests.
Production Development The series was renewed for a fifth season on May 11, 2017, moving to a Friday timeslot of 9:00 pm. In November 2017, Marvel announced that the season premiere of the season would be in two parts, titled "Orientation", with part one written by executive producers Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen and directed by Jesse Bochco, and part two written by DJ Doyle and directed by David Solomon. It serves as the beginning of the first pod of episodes for the season, which consisted of ten episodes.
Writing On how the episodes would tie into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Whedon stated that "We try to a little bit follow in the wake of the films as they plot new territory in the MCU. Last year that was magic, with Doctor Strange. We felt like Ghost Rider all of a sudden fit into our show in a way that we didn't necessarily feel like he would have before, tonally. And this is us expanding out even further into the world of space which they very much are living in now in the features. It's the great unknown, and we hadn't explored it yet." Whedon added that it's more about a thematic tie-in at this point than one story leading to another, stating "We try to make it feel like that the whole thing is moving in this swelling direction. We're not in space for no reason. We wouldn't have gone there if they hadn't. The overt ties were a necessity of starting out, but those have faded over time, basically because we have our own mythology."
Discussing the state of the main characters in these episodes, actor Clark Gregg said, "They're suddenly thrown into this world that they don't know anything about, that seems kind of savage... they're suddenly in a world that they don't run and they don't have those kind of powers and have great limitations and they're separated to a certain extent, so finding a way to reestablish themselves as a team is a big, big part of the beginning."
Casting
In October 2017, Marvel confirmed that principal cast members Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, Ming-Na Wen as Melinda May, Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson / Quake, Iain De Caestecker as Leo Fitz, Elizabeth Henstridge as Jemma Simmons and Henry Simmons as Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie. They are joined by Natalia Cordova-Buckley as Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez, who is promoted from her recurring role in the third and fourth seasons.
Jeff Ward was cast in a recurring role in August 2017, and was revealed in October to be portraying Deke Shaw, alongside other newcomers Eve Harlow as Tess and Pruitt Taylor Vince as Grill. In November 2017, Marvel confirmed that Ward would appear in part one, alongside Joel Stoffer as Enoch, Jordan Preston as driver, Peter Hulne as Jerry, John Wusah as young soldier, Deniz Akdeniz as Virgil, Nathin Butler as Jones and Derek Mears as captain. In part two, the guest cast include Ward, Harlow, Vince, Mears, Dominic Rains as Kasius, Florence Faivre as Sinara, Paul Duna as Reese, Kaleti Williams as Zev, James Babson as Holt, Tunisha Hubbard as Ava, Wes Armstrong as Rick and Jay Hunter as watch commander.
Design The episode introduces a new typeface logo and title card for the series. Jamie Lovett of ComicBook.com said, "Fans will know that these episodes are meant to be something special when the episode dispenses with the usual title card treatment and instead implements a logo fade-in". He compared this title card to that used for the episode "4,722 Hours".
Filming and visual effects Filming for the season began on July 20, 2017. Henstridge expressed how different filming her role was for this season stating, "She's always been so headstrong and kind of arrogant to a point where she feels like her brain is the best and who cares about anything else. So this is just a completely different realm for her and she hates every second of it. So it's brilliant and it was very frustrating to film because you just can't really do anything. You just have to be still. She has zero power and could be killed at any second." For the design of the "roaches", Whedon and Tancharoen took inspiration from the 1979 horror film Alien. The actors were shown what the creatures would like in the scene. Cordova-Buckley said "I'm terrified of them. It's kind of fun to now be in a show where the enemy is aliens, and all kinds. I love Ridley Scott's first Alien so it's really fun to be doing another world and all of us getting to do that together."
Marvel Cinematic Universe tie-ins