It would make sense for the weapons not to be poisoned - the Sand Snakes were trying to capture Myrcella, not kill her. With poisoned weapons, even a tiny accidental scratch during the fight could prove lethal to the target of the entire exercise.

"She had a chance to say "no". She didn't take it. That makes it not rape."

Yeah, Betty is the victim of a decade-spanning crime, and that has left her profoundly damaged.

speculation/rumors about inhumans as mutants in the comics:

Either he dies, or he turns into a dirty gene-freak and has to reconsider his loyalties in the eyes of his fellow agents.

Why would that responsibility fall to them? There are legitimate government institutions out there. Coulson could give his information to them, and get out of the way of the government officials, police, intelligence agents, the military, etc. Coulson and all the "agents" are just private citizens, they have no legal…

That's one of the storylines I mean when I say the show asks the easy questions instead of the real ones.

If the show didn't exist, the movie wouldn't be any different. Not one tiny bit.

I agree that the Avengers don't have any public authority; it's a sticking point with most superhero stories. But when you do a show about a spy agency disbanded in the wake of monumental failure, the real questions about authority shouldn't be just brushed aside in favor of questions that are easier to answer.

I just wish some of the show's supposed good guys would turn to each other and say "shit, I forget, we're not with the government anymore, let's call the authorities in and get out of the way". I know that at that point there wouldn't be a show anymore, but that's just an illustration of how badly the the show is set…

I'm not sure it's deliberate, to be honest. The show's writing in general, and its handling of these moral issues, hasn't really impressed me at any point during its run.

Yeah, SHIELD doesn't have any right or authority to make demands of the village-dwellers, or anyone. They're literally a bunch of random citizens; they have no governmental sanction, no mandate, no police powers, nothing.

What did Talbot do to grant SHIELD a public mandate? Did the governments that originally provided legitimacy to SHIELD re-instate its mandate after the events of Winter Soldier?

So why exactly do Coulson and his cronies think they have the right to make any demands from the village-dwellers? SHIELD lost its public mandate; its "agents" have no more authority to act as police or intelligence force than any other random person. They're the Emperor Norton of intelligence agencies.

We really don't.

Yeah, this struck me as going to the level of willful misinterpretation. She's an assassin who's had a bit of a moral awakening - of course she thinks of herself as a monster because of that, and not because of her inability to have children.

Black Widow and Hawkeye, in the jet, during the final fight. They shoot at the alien jet-skis, and every single of their hundreds of missed shots is a bullet going through a building full of people.

Then they watched The Avengers, where they shoot armor-shredding big-ass machine guns at buildings full of people.

I feel like the show has made it clear that the Vikings are pretty abhorrent in some aspects. Any more would be belaboring the point.

The Vikings are in Paris to steal, kill, and rape. So, yeah, I didn't feel we were supposed to see the reveal of Ragnar's scheme as purely awesome. I always remember that with Ragnar's military successes come a lot of mutilation, murder, and rape.