This short takes place after the Battle of New York in The Avengers.

A couple, Bennie (Jesse Bradford) and Claire (Lizzy Caplan), argues in a car just before they are about to embark on a crime spree. One of the weapons used by the Chitauri fell into their laps, and Bennie has managed to operate it. Agent Sitwell (Maximiliano Hernández) is assigned by Agent Blake (Titus Welliver) to recover the weapon and neutralize the couple.

They are holed up in a motel in Florida. Sitwell manages to lure Bennie into his room, but he shouts a warning to Claire. Sitwell doesn’t understand how they got the weapon to work when all of the other Chitauri weapons that were still on Earth stopped functioning once the portal was closed. Instead of sending them to jail, he hires them to be a part of SHIELD.

This provides a bridge between The Avengers and the television show Agents of SHIELD. Despite how Item 47 wrapped up the story, neither Bennie nor Claire will appear in that series. Titus Welliver had not yet been cast as Harry Bosch and appeared in a few episodes of the series along with Maximiliano Hernández. It sets up SHIELD as a repository of alien technology that they will be trying to reverse-engineer for use by SHIELD.

I had questions about the destruction of New York City after what takes place in The Avengers, but none of them were about the weaponry lying around. Item 47 answers a question that had not been asked. When I think of the aftermath of a disaster, I think of the people and those who lost family members or their places to live and work.

Still, it’s a decent short that builds up a little more about SHIELD in advance of the television series and connects it to the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. Agent Blake laments the loss of Agent Coulson while running Sitwell’s nose in the fact that he only advanced because Agent Coulson was killed. There are some intense feelings between SHIELD agents, although those of us who have seen the entire series know there is more behind Sitwell than meets the eye.