13. “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)
Accompanied by some voice-over about how the world has changed since the Avengers appeared, the pilot starts with Michael Peterson out with his son, Ace. When an explosion goes off in a nearby building, Mike scales it using his superhuman abilities, rescuing a woman trapped on the top floor before jumping out and landing unharmed. After a mission in Paris, Level 6 S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Grant Ward is debriefed by Maria Hill. Toward the end, Agent Coulson steps out of the shadows, welcoming Ward to Level 7 before recruiting him to his new team, comprised of Agent Simmons, Agent Fitz, and Agent May.
Skye, a member of the hacker group called the Rising Tide, meets with Mike and warns him that S.H.I.E.L.D. would be after him. Skye later gets arrested by the organization, who convinces her to help them find Mike so that they can help him. Mike visits the woman he saved, who is actually the doctor who gave him his abilities via a serum called Centipede.
The team realizes that Centipede is increasingly unstable and could cause Mike to explode. They try to figure out a way to stop him without killing him, leading to a confrontation with him in Grand Central Station. Coulson is able to talk to Mike long enough for Ward to use a tranquilizer weapon developed by Fitz to incapacitate him. The episode ends with Coulson offering Skye a spot on the team as the two fly off in L.O.L.A, his flying Corvette.
Directed by Joss Whedon, the pilot sets up the premise well and gives a pretty good look at what a typical episode would look like early on. While it doesn’t answer how Coulson is back, it does set up the mystery of his resurrection by having certain characters drop ominous hints about what really happened. Although the series changed a lot since then, and the episode comes before it hit its stride, it earns a spot on the list mainly for being the episode that introduced us and re-introduced us, in Coulson’s case, to the characters that we would be following on the 7-year journey.