Marvel's Agents of SHIELD - Filming Locations: Bahrain

The Southern California locations where Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is filmed.

Episode 17, of Season 2 ("Melinda")

This episode consists mostly of a lengthy flashback to seven years ago, set in
the small, Middle Eastern, island country of Bahrain, showing us exactly how
Melinda May got the nickname "The Cavalry".

Turns out it's a sad tale.

Coulson & May go to Bahrain after a its government pins down
a superpowered woman, Eva Belyakov, and her survival seems at stake.

However, when they get there, the woman isn't the victim they expect,
and instead turns out to have a kind of vampire-like ability to feed on the
pain of others, and to mind-control those around her into similar leaches.

Because a child is at risk (Katia, the woman's young daughter), Melinda May goes in alone
to try to rescue her. When she is confronted by the girls mother (and a host
of brainwashed bystanders) May is forced to kill her.

But it turns out that the mother wasn't really responsible for all the horror.
She was just being manipulated by her daughter, Katia.

The young girl May came to rescue is the actual superpowered menace,
her mother only exposed her to Terrigen Mist to bring on
her Inhuman evolution - which didn't work out so well...

Ultimately, May is forced to shoot Katia, after she
kills a number of bystanders and threatens to kill May.

But the guilt of having to kill a young girl still haunts her.

These Bahrain scenes were shot at the Blue Sky movie ranch,
at 20000 Blue Cloud Road, in Santa Clarita, CA,
which is off the 28800 block of Bouquet Canyon Road.

Santa Clarita is about 40 miles northwest of downtown L.A.,
and its hills are filled with movie ranches, ranging from tiny
ones to large, historic ranches such as Melody Ranch.

(Here is a Google StreetView of the entrance gates to Blue Cloud Ranch.)

Here are two photos of the sets from the Blue Cloud Ranch website:

In fact, Blue Cloud Ranch is only six miles north of Disney's own giant Golden Oak Ranch,
where "S.H.I.E.L.D." has filmed many of its scenes in the past two years.

(Of course, that's six miles as the crow flies. If you actually drive the winding
mountain roads between the two ranches, it's at a good 10-mile drive.)

Blue Cloud Ranch offers a number of sets that filmmakers can rent, but these scenes appear
to have been shot on their "Third World Country" sets, a block of mostly-concrete buildings
that can be dressed to look like a number of foreign / Middle Eastern locations.
Some of their other sets are built to resemble the ruins of a combat zone.

The photos on this page are stills from "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."
(which you can buy here) and are copyright ABC/Disney/Marvel.