Fans of comic book shows and movies have learned to analyze every frame for Easter eggs and clues to what might be next, but some fans are taking that analysis to social media as well. Fans of “Agents of SHIELD” have taken one photo shared by VFX supervisor Mark Kolpack and found what looks like the upcoming episode titles within it.

Mark Kolpack shares a photo with Gabriel Luna

Mark Kolpack is very involved with the fandom on social media, frequently sharing what behind the scenes information he can with fans. He’s very careful to avoid spoiling anything for the audience or sharing anything that would get him in trouble.

When Gabriel Luna, who starred as Ghost Rider Robbie Reyes earlier in the season, payed a visit to his office though, Kolpack shared a photo that got plenty of tongues wagging.

While some fans wondered if this meant Ghost Rider would return sooner than expected this season, others decided to work out the zoom tools in their photo programs to find out just what else was in Kolpack’s office. What they found was a list of episode titles on the whiteboard behind him.

The first two, “Broken Promises” and “The Patriot,” have already been revealed as the titles for episodes nine and ten, so the fans might be on to something.

Episodes 11-14

The additional titles revealed on the whiteboard include, in order, “Wake Up,” “Hot Potato Soup,” “BOOM,” and “The Man Behind the Shield.”

Something like “Wake Up” or “The Man Behind the Shield” seems pretty well in line with how the writers title the episodes for the show already, and with the first two episodes matching up to what ABC has already released, it’s no wonder fans think the titles are accurate, but are they?

Could any of these titles be placeholders?

Sometimes, genre shows with very involved fans don’t use the actual episode titles in the production process. A great example here is “LOST,” where showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse would use increasingly outlandish titles during production and even codenames to keep fans in the dark about just what was coming up.

Movies frequently film under working titles to throw people off as well so fans don’t flock to the set.

This could be the case where “BOOM” indicates heavy use of explosives in an episode, or possible a(nother) huge game changer for the series. “Hot Potato Soup” also seems like an odd choice for an episode title and might mean something else altogether.

Of course, they could still all be episode titles as well. A few words of a phrase isn’t really enough to give audience members an idea about what the episode will entail, so we don’t know just yet.

‘The Man Behind the Shield’

The one title out of the batch that seems to point toward the audience getting a whole lot of backstory is the one for episode 14.

Called “The Man Behind the Shield,” we can likely expect to get a lot more information about one of the men on the show, but which one?

Considering Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) has been the face of SHIELD for the audience since he appeared in “Iron Man,” his backstory seems a likely candidate, but with new director Mace (Jason O’Mara) in the mix, we could see more of him on the way, even if he’s already going to be the centerpiece of “The Patriot.” We can’t forget Fitz (Iain de Caestecker) either who actually designed Coulson’s electronic shield, or Radcliffe (John Hannah), who designed Life Model Decoys to act as shields for the people in the organization based on old research. We also can’t rule Mack (Henry Simmons) out, who was ready to leave SHIELD behind on more than one occasion, but has become one of the backbones of Coulson’s team.

That’s a lot of possibilities.

We won’t have confirmation of any episode titles or their subjects until ABC releases more information about upcoming “Agents of SHIELD” storylines. The Marvel series kicks off its Life Model Decoy arc beginning January 10 at 10 PM on ABC.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED