Eye Spy (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)
Clark Gregg reprises his role as Coulson from the film series, starring alongside Ming-Na Wen, Brett Dalton, Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker, and Elizabeth Henstridge.
trainee Skye believes that extrasensory perception may be involved, but Coulson and Agent Melinda May doubt that such abilities exist.
[1] Marvel confirmed that the episode would star main cast members 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.
[1] Theatrical actress Pascale Armand got the role of Akela Amador a week after auditioning, and received the episode's script the night before traveling to Los Angeles.
It started to seep in just how big this show was while I was working on the set, when I went to Stockholm, Sweden and coming back home to [New York City].
[3]: 70 Replicas of the Sweden train and station were created in Los Angeles using a New York City subway car and digital set extensions.
[4]: 7:15, 9:33 [3]: 70 To create Amador's backscatter X-ray imagery, visual effects supervisor Mark Kolpack learned through research that people would look "white and doughy with no features", with clothing appearing as an outline or transparent.
[4]: 20:10 [3]: 72 Composer Bear McCreary called his expanded use of the orchestra in the episode "the real star of this score", and noted that when executive producer and writer Jeffrey Bell heard an early version of it, he compared it to the work of Bernard Hermann.
McCreary highlighted the opening and climactic action cues as striking the "perfect" balance between "contemporary instrumentation and traditional scoring".
The episode saw several variations of the series' main theme played, including triumphantly when "Ward blasts his way out of the building", with trumpets and French horns offering "soaring statements" of it; and in a "bouncy little statement", for which trumpet player Malcolm McNab used a broken harmon mute that "rattles and buzzes like nothing I've ever heard".
McCreary "stripped out all the guitars and percussion from the first version we heard and arranged it solely for con sord strings and a few woodwinds.
"[5] For the episode, McCreary composed a theme for the character of Akela Amador, a musical representation of her name with the notes arranged "so that the syllables in her name land with the right emphasis.
"Eye Spy" is a big step in the right direction, delving further into the history of these characters while laying groundwork for future stories.
doesn't need superheroes to be a captivating TV series, and making sure the human elements are developed is the best way to guarantee the show's success."
"[16] Will Salmon at SFX scored the episode 3.5 stars out of 5, feeling that "The 'agent gone bad' is a hackneyed trope, but this works, largely because of Pascale Armand's strong, understated performance" and praising the opening sequence as being "wonderfully eerie", comparing it positively to Doctor Who and The Avengers.
[17] Graeme Virtue at The Guardian praised the more focused, personal stakes of the episode, noting that "it's easier to cheer for scrappy underdogs than a huge, militarised Big Brother organisation like SHIELD", as well as Grant Ward's storyline, but criticized the episode's use of Bear McCreary's score, calling it "backgrounded".
"[20] Jim Steranko, known for his work on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., felt the episode "had an overall cohesion not previously in evidence", but criticized it as unambitious, noting that "stripping the Marvel concept to its visual minimum makes little sense".
