The second 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., follows Phil Coulson and his team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and allies as they attempt to rebuild the organization after it was revealed to have been infiltrated by Hydra in the film Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). The season is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and acknowledges the continuity of the franchise's films and other television series. It was produced by ABC Studios, Marvel Television, and Mutant Enemy Productions, with Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jeffrey Bell serving as showrunners.

Clark Gregg reprises his role as Coulson from the film series, starring alongside the returning series regulars Ming-Na Wen, Brett Dalton, Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker, and Elizabeth Henstridge. They are joined by Nick Blood and Adrianne Palicki. A second season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was ordered in May 2014, and production began in Culver City, California that July. Some episodes directly crossover with the television series Agent Carter and the film Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), while the Inhumans were introduced to set up the planned film of the same name and connect to the film Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). Glenn Hetrick designed prosthetics for the Inhuman characters. Several actors reprise their MCU roles in the season for guest appearances.

The season aired on ABC from September 23, 2014, to May 12, 2015, and consists of 22 episodes. The season premiere was watched by 5.98 million people, less than half the viewing total for the first season premiere, which was watched by 12.12 million people, and overall the season had lower but much more consistent viewership than the previous season. It also received a much more positive critical response than the first season. The series was renewed for a third season in May 2015.

Episodes

Cast and characters

Main Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson Ming-Na Wen as Melinda May Brett Dalton as Grant Ward Chloe Bennet as Skye / Daisy Johnson Iain De Caestecker as Leo Fitz Elizabeth Henstridge as Jemma Simmons Nick Blood as Lance Hunter Adrianne Palicki as Bobbi Morse

Recurring

B. J. Britt as Antoine Triplett Reed Diamond as Werner Reinhardt / Daniel Whitehall Henry Simmons as Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie Patton Oswalt as Billy and Sam Koenig Adrian Pasdar as Glenn Talbot Simon Kassianides as Sunil Bakshi Kyle MacLachlan as Calvin Johnson Ruth Negga as Raina Maya Stojan as Kara Palamas / Agent 33 Dichen Lachman as Jiaying Jamie Harris as Gordon Christine Adams as Anne Weaver Edward James Olmos as Robert Gonzales Luke Mitchell as Lincoln Campbell

Notable guests

Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter Neal McDonough as Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan Kenneth Choi as Jim Morita Dylan Minnette as Donnie Gill Tim DeKay as Christian Ward Henry Goodman as List Jaimie Alexander as Sif J. August Richards as Mike Peterson / Deathlok Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill

Production

Development In March 2014, executive producer Jeffrey Bell stated at the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. PaleyFest panel that the writers are able to read the screenplays for upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films to know where the universe is heading, which allowed them to form a plan for the show through the end of a third season. On May 8, 2014, the series was renewed for a second season of 22 episodes.

Writing In July 2014, Clark Gregg stated that the season resumes months after the end of season one, and "the monumental nature of [rebuilding S.H.I.E.L.D.] is made very clear almost immediately, because you realize everyone—US government, US military and other wise—wants to arrest us. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s illegal. We have very few resources. Everything we're going to do involves dealing with, still, finding out who's Hydra and who's not amongst our friends. To rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D., we're going to need some old friends to prove themselves, some new friends, and we're going to have to do it in a way that's very back alley, old school."

In September 2014, talking about whether the ending of the season would also be a satisfying end to the series, Bell said "we're not thinking of it as a series finale as much as a season finale ... I think we have some momentum coming in [to season 2] and I think we pick up on it. I'm optimistic that we can keep the plane in the air a little longer." He also talked about whether the themes of family and connectedness from the first season would be re-explored in the second, saying "What we always look for are the human elements in the big story. That's what television does well, it makes you care about people, and whether it's literal family or anytime you have a team of people working together, it takes on some sort of family metaphor." Bell reiterated the idea of family following the end of the season, saying "In many ways, the whole metaphor at the heart of the show is family—you've got Coulson and May and then a bunch of younger people, and it allows us to play out different dynamics; literally, this season, we had Skye's biological parents versus her surrogate parents. And at the same time, we had Skye growing up. We had her going from a slightly sulky hacker season one to training to become an agent to becoming our first full-fledged superhero and so as we grow up, we separate from our parents... In our minds, her mom wasn't a villain so much; she was an antagonist, but if you look at why she feels the way she does, Jiaying really earned that position." Discussing the reveal that Skye is actually Daisy Johnson, Maurissa Tancharoen explained thatJohnson is a character that we always liked. We always knew there was a potential to evolve Skye into something else. It took a little bit of time, but we were happy when we were able to land on Daisy Johnson, and actually have that work in our mythology. But as with everything that we do on the show, we pull from the properties, and we do our own spin to it. So we are kind of merging a few concepts and storylines. We've spent a season and a half with Skye. We've seen her evolve as a person, we've grown to like her as a person, we've seen her evolve as an agent. And now, finally bringing her to her origin story—I think there's just a lot more emotional weight to it, because you already know her as just Skye, and now she will have this ability that she may not understand, that she may not want ... We're going to focus on Skye, and how that affects the people around her, and how the relationships may shift. Because we've seen through the course of our series so far; we've spoken about how S.H.I.E.L.D. treats gifteds or views them, and they're categorized, things like that. What does that mean when one of your own is now considered someone with an ability? How do you categorize her?Whedon elaborated that "We're going to walk her through the steps of discovering what this really means, and coming to terms with it. All that stuff is really interesting to us, and in television, because we have time to explore, we can take her origin on all sorts of different paths." Additionally, Whedon talked about how the character would be referred to on the show after the reveal, saying, "She's still Skye, because she thinks she's Skye. I think her dad thinks she's Daisy, and we'll see if she ever gets to the point where she believes that that's something that she would want to call herself. But right now, she has her own identity."

In December 2014, Jed Whedon explained the benefits of introducing a society of superhuman characters in the Inhumans, saying "One of the things that, early on was very important to us last season was, there were so few people in the Cinematic Universe who had powers. Really, only two humans had powers, Captain America and the Hulk. We had to be very responsible—we didn't want to dive into this show and have a new one every week, and have it feel like we disregarded everything that they spent so much money and time building in the films. Along those same lines, the origin of a power is always a complex thing—Marvel cares about it feeling grounded, it feeling scientific at some level. Even on Thor, he says, 'In our world, magic and science are the same thing.' So this is a way for us to sort of open up our world. It's a way to introduce, into the MCU, the idea that people can be born with a power. They don't have to be engineered in a lab, they don't need to have some freak accident with a vat of acid. They can be born with this. That's sort of a gamechanger, not just on our show, but in the cinematic universe".

After the season finale, Bell talked about Coulson losing his arm, saying that "he paid a price—that was important to us. You don't mess with the forces of nature without getting bitten, and the fact that he literally saved everyone on the ship by that crystal not shattering was a wonderful, heroic thing and showed you that at heart, Coulson is a heroic man whose actions back up his words." Bell also talked about the cliffhanger involving Simmons being absorbed by a Kree monolith: "When we first started talking about the Monolith, we knew that it needed to present a threat and we needed to demonstrate some of that threat and the promise of more story... It's easy to kill a character for shock value or whatever, and we did have a number of deaths this season, but ... we prefer to leave you with something to talk about, to walk away with. This is something that came up in the room, we talked about what it meant ... The idea of getting Fitz and Simmons—who had been one person—to become two whole people, come back together, agree to go on a date, and then have this happen, felt beautifully poetic".

Casting

All principal cast members from the first season (Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, Ming-Na Wen as Melinda May, Brett Dalton as Grant Ward, Chloe Bennet as Skye, Iain De Caestecker as Leo Fitz, and Elizabeth Henstridge as Jemma Simmons) returned for the second season, and were joined by Nick Blood as Lance Hunter. In December 2014, main character Skye was revealed to be a version of Daisy Johnson. With the episode "Aftershocks", Adrianne Palicki, who portrays Bobbi Morse, was upgraded to a principal cast member. Also returning from earlier in the series are Christine Adams as Anne Weaver, Jaimie Alexander as Sif, B. J. Britt as Antoine Triplett, Imelda Corcoran as Goodman, Dylan Minnette as Donnie Gill, Ruth Negga as Raina, Patton Oswalt as Sam and Billy Koenig, Adrian Pasdar as Glenn Talbot, J. August Richards as Mike Peterson / Deathlok, and Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill.

At San Diego Comic-Con in July 2014, Reed Diamond was announced as portraying Daniel Whitehall. In August, Kyle MacLachlan was cast as Skye's father, in a recurring role. Initially referred to as "The Doctor", his character was revealed to be Calvin Zabo in December 2014. In "Making Friends and Influencing People", the character of Kara Palamas / Agent 33 was introduced, portrayed by Maya Stojan. She is also portrayed by other cast members, including Ming-Na Wen and Chloe Bennet, when she takes on the appearance of their characters. On October 1, 2014, Tim DeKay was cast as Senator Christian Ward, the older brother of principal character Grant Ward, who had previously appeared as a teenager through flashbacks in "The Well". In January 2015, Edward James Olmos was cast as Robert Gonzales, a leader of the "Real S.H.I.E.L.D." group. Mark Allan Stewart makes several appearances as another "Real S.H.I.E.L.D." leader, Agent Oliver. Other recurring guests include Jamie Harris as Gordon, Simon Kassianides as Sunil Bakshi, Dichen Lachman as Jiaying, Luke Mitchell as Lincoln Campbell, and Henry Simmons as Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie.