The new Avengers movie opened here last week, but I've been holding off, partly to avoid the crush and partly because this week's episode of S.H.I.E.L.D. will lead into the movie. Which of course makes me wonder how it will all tie together.
[Spoilers and wild speculation]We left off last week with Coulson surrendering to the "real" S.H.I.E.L.D. Since Gonzales stated that he had no intention of moving into Coulson's SSR base, I'm thinking Coulson will be brought to the helicarrier (if that's what it really is). Which of course brings to mind the biggest mystery so far: what was that ship carrying that Fury wanted it destroyed to keep it from falling into HYDRA's hands? Perhaps the typical stuff like weapons and equipment, even the Phase 2 Tesseract-based weapons as seen in the first Avengers movie. Or perhaps something more in line with Project Insight as seen in Winter Soldier. After all, Hill mentioned in "Nothing Personal" that Stark was "privatizing global security". What if Stark gave S.H.I.E.L.D. the software for a global security program (vague, yes, but I will elaborate) and Fury didn't want HYDRA to get hold of it.
Stretching it a little here, but what if during the showdown between Coulson and Gonzales, HYDRA gatecrashes the party. (They did, after all, manage to capture Deathlok together with one of the Inhumans in the previous episode). In the fracas, the two S.H.I.E.L.D.s join forces, but lose the ship and HYDRA gets the security program. Of course HYDRA won't be able to resist playing with any kind of Stark tech, and in the process, evolve the Ultron AI. And thus we arrive at the Avengers movie: HYDRA aims both Ultron and the Maximoff siblings at the Avengers, or Ultron breaks loose and takes the Maximoff siblings with him.
One totally unanswered question (for me, at least) is whether the Maximoffs are Inhumans (pointing to HYDRA having discovered how to transform them), or were their powers created by HYDRA themselves (perhaps using Loki's septre, as seen in the end credits scene in Winter Soldier).