Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 1 (Spoilers, obviously, and for Captain America 2)

Confession: Instead of working on Operation ARGUS like I should have been over the last couple of weeks, I've been mega-binging on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and its awesome season wrap-up. (And I haven't even seen Captain America 2 yet to get the rest of the story, maybe this coming weekend if it's still in the theater)

Anyway, I'm hoping a little chatting about it will work this out of my system so I can get back to Argus and Lois Lane's investigation.

At the moment, I'm totally wrapped up in figuring out Grant Ward. I've even been going back to earlier episodes and skimming for Ward scenes to see them in light of his betrayal. At first I was totally P.O.'d about his betrayal, then started thinking "okay, he got the shaft and made some bad decisions" but now, I'm actually starting to think that Coulson's team really doesn't have much room to criticize him. After all, Ward's motivation for siding with Hydra was that he was helping his mentor find a way to stay alive. Sure, he ended up doing a lot of bad stuff because of it, but what have we seen Coulson and his team do? In order to save Skye, a girl they'd known less than a year, with a miracle cure, Coulson disobeys orders by absconding with a prisoner, FitzSimmons review and hack into classified files beyond their pay grade, they break into a secret facility, kill 2 S.H.I.E.L.D. guards, and end up blowing the whole facility sky-high (true, accidentally). Then, Coulson refuses to share said miracle cure with other scientists so that other agents (like Ward's former S.O.!) can benefit from it.

If I was Ward, I'd be a little bit ticked off about that double standard.

Then later on the plane with Victoria Hand, yeah, he shot the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, but only after Victoria Hand practically ordered Ward to shoot an unarmed, bound prisoner without any due process, and certainly sounded like she didn't think he would have a problem doing it. Um, not exactly sounding like S.H.I.E.L.D. was on any better moral ground at that moment than Hydra. Especially from Ward's perspective, since I don't think he really ever paid much attention to Hydra's end goals. Hydra was just a means to an end - saving Garrett.

And of course, after seeing how Garrett was about to be treated in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, I don't think Ward would have been able to expect any sympathy from his teammates if he revealed his actual background.

So I'm pretty much coming to the conclusion that I'm not entirely sure I would have made much of a different choice in Ward's position.

I'm hoping some of this will work it's way into Season 2. Of course, there's already a full buffet of possibilities - Skye's history as an 0-8-4 will clearly be a major thread ; Coulson's "promotion" ; all those scary folks from the Fridge still on the loose ; their dubious status with the U.S. government ; whatever state Hydra is in (like I said, haven't seen the movie, so while I'm partially spoiled I know I don't have the whole story yet) ; Fitz's recovery which I'm guessing could be rough ... and that's just off the top of my head.

Like I said. Super-binging right now and not many people to help get it out of my system. Eeep!

It's a difficult one to discuss if you haven't seen The Winter Soldier, there's a lot more info there about Hydra's intentions and past activities etc., which are so repulsive that it makes it VERY difficult to feel much sympathy to Ward.

I agree that the rationale for everyone favouring Skye isn't very well developed - but of course it could be some sort of power related to her weird origin.

I suspect that Ward will return and possibly on the side of the angels - Joss Whedon has a habit of turning his villains around into anti-heroes, e.g. Spike, the serial killer in Dollhouse, etc. - but he might just come back as a villain instead.

They've given him too much backstory to just leave him as a villain (I think he's the only character they filmed any flashbacks for!), so I'm about 99% sure there'll be some kind of redemption story in the next season for him. But considering the "warm" welcome he had among fans as a revealed villain, I don't think it'll be right away. Maybe he gets broken out by Raina and pulled back into Centipede again, or whatever Raina's up to. It would make good use of the point they made of Ward releasing her.

As for trying to rescue Skye, I think that was just a combination of Coulson being really dedicated to his people, and the fact that she wasn't really trained so they felt like she shouldn't have been in the middle of all that in the first place. May does tell Ward that Coulson would do the same for any of them.