History Characters / AgentsOfShieldTeamCoulsonIntroducedInSeason1

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[[redirect:Characters/AgentsOfSHIELDTeamCoulson]]

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[[Characters/AgentsOfSHIELD Back to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Character Index]]

'''Warning: Major unmarked spoilers for ''Film/{{The Avengers|2012}}'', ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier'', and Seasons One and Two of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. below.'''

'''Only spoilers for the current season (three) will be marked.'''

Team Coulson Characters introduced in season 1.
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[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Phil Coulson]]
-->See [[Characters/{{MCUSHIELD}} S.H.I.E.L.D. Leadership]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Melinda May]]
!!''Melinda Qiaolian May''
[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/may_melinda_2627.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''"People believe what they want to believe to justify their actions."'']]
->'''Portrayed By''': Creator/MingNaWen
->'''Appearances''': ''[[Series/AgentsOfSHIELD Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.]]''

A highly experienced agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. who is an AcePilot and weapons expert. She is a member of Agent Coulson's team that is assembled to investigate strange events around the world and easily one of the strongest characters in the series. With Coulson now Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., May functions as his NumberTwo in the fight against HYDRA.
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* AbortedDeclarationOfLove: During her explanation of why she kept TAHITI a secret from Coulson, she almost let it slip that her feelings for Coulson might be deeper than it friendship.
-->'''May:''' I did it for you, to protect you! I ... You mean a lot to me. A lot.
* AcePilot: She serves as the pilot for the team, though a few team members are skeptical as to whether or not this is all Coulson has planned for her, given her fame within S.H.I.E.L.D.
* AffectionateNickname: Just as Fury called Coulson his one good eye, Coulson calls May his right hand after losing the other one.
* AlliterativeName: '''M'''elinda '''M'''ay.
* AlmightyJanitor: It's hinted she's a famous and very experienced agent who decided to step away from the field for a desk job, and now officially is just the pilot of the team's jet. She eventually moves out of this role, becoming Coulson's right-hand and an active field agent again.
* AntiHero: She's firmly on the side of good, but she occasionally does some less-than-heroic things, such as mercilessly beating up the imprisoned and combat-''in''capable Ian Quinn after he shoots Skye. To be fair, he ''did'' shoot Skye.
* ArrogantKungFuGuy: [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed, but there]]. May is not prone to bragging, but if you place her skills in doubt, [[PreAssKickingOneLiner she'll gladly tell you how badly you'll get your ass kicked before proceeding to do exactly that]].
* BadassBoast: To ''[[LadyOfWar Sif]]'', of all people, when the latter warns May about [[BrainwashedAndCrazy Ward]] not hesitating to kill her.
--> '''May''': He (Ward) won't kill me. He may try to kill me... but he won't.
* BadassFamily: Her mother is a RetiredBadass secret agent.
* BadassInANiceSuit:
** She wears a pantsuit in "Ragtag" when she's disguised as a businesswoman.
** Also in "Melinda" during the incident that earned her the nickname "The Cavalry".
* BadassTeacher: She takes responsibility for training Skye in the timeskip between Season 1 and 2. Judging from how many [[TookALevelInBadass levels in badass Skye takes]] in Season 2 (going from knowing exactly one move and not being able to reliably release the safety from her gun to taking down ten men with a mixture of martial arts and gunplay in one scene), it's pretty clear May's training is more effective than Ward's for Skye.
* BatmanGambit: Fury knew Coulson would want her on his team, so he got to her first, explained the details of Coulson's resurrection, and asked her to keep an eye on him in case he CameBackWrong. She came up with a list of team roles she'd need in case things went south, which Fury translated into the mission profile he gave to Coulson: a biologist for looking after his body, a mechanical engineer for the machine for looking after his mind, and a special forces operative for helping May physically take him down.
* BerserkButton:
** So far, the only things that have made her lose her cool is someone seriously injuring a member of Team Coulson and someone betraying them. Interestingly, she's not much angrier at Skye in episode 5 because she figured it might've been typical of Skye to do so, but when Ward does it? ''She explodes''.
** To a lesser degree, she doesn't like being called "The Cavalry."
** When anyone mentions her mission in Bahrain.
* BigDamnHeroes: She earned the name "the Cavalry" due to rescuing people right in the nick of time. She's done a lot of that so far in the series.
-->'''Fitz''': Is that the extraction team?\\
'''Ward''': No, it's the Cavalry.
* BlunderCorrectingImpulse: Played with; the team does fine, but May's frustration with serving as MissionControl and having no ability to influence the action as it happens leads her to return to combat in spite of her trauma and misgivings.
* BrokenAce: May is [[IceQueen cold and reserved]] because of trauma in the past (which is the reason she initially shunned field work), but she is still ''easily'' [[{{Badass}} the most formidable character in the series]]. She's smart, savvy, and [[ActionGirl destroys anyone short of superhuman (and even a few who are) in combat]].
* BrokenBird: The mission in Bahrain where she was forced to '''kill''' a gifted child whose powers drove her mad to save her agents transformed from a rule-breaking, fun-loving, kind woman into a stoic, cold and somewhat ruthless agent.
* CanonForeigner: She had no comic book counterpart before the show started.
* CanonImmigrant: The ''S.H.I.E.L.D.'' ongoing comic begins in December 2014.
* CuttingTheKnot: Will often take the direct brute force solution when others are discussing what to do.
** In "0-8-4", the team tries to figure out how to get into the lab with the doors sealed. May jumps into a S.H.I.E.L.D. SUV and rams it through the doors:
--->'''May:''' You guys talk a lot.
** In "FZZT", while Coulson and Ward are trying to figure out how to get the locked and barricaded barn doors open, May just kicks in the nearby regular door.
** In "Repairs", Coulson tries to calm down Hannah enough so she can trust him, but with the crowd getting more agitated, May shoots Hannah with the Night Night pistol.
** In "The Magical Place", Skye tries to shut down the machine Coulson is plugged into. May just unplugs it.
** In "Face My Enemy", Coulson and May have infiltrated an auction gala and meet a laser grid. Coulson says he's got it and prepares to go in ninja-style but May just casually crosses the beams, triggering the alarm, because "they already know we're here" (their cover has just been blown, so they're kind of in a hurry).
* DarkAndTroubledPast: Enough to not make her want to work on the field and want to work in a dark, boring office. There's a very good reason she doesn't want to be called The Cavalry.
* DeclarationOfProtection: In "Face My Enemy" she tells Coulson that she will take care of him even if the GH-325 takes over his mind like it did with Garret.
* DefrostingIceQueen: She is not a completely defrosted one. More like going from Arctic to "chilly." She freezes up again when she finds out Coulson kept secrets from her and that Skye knows what happened in Bahrain - because that little girl was an Inhuman like she is.
* DoesntLikeGuns: Not that she isn't willing to use one, but she doesn't like to carry them if she thinks it's unnecessary. This may simply be an extension of not wanting to be brought into combat. The one time it comes up, someone goes at her with a gun and she disarms him, steals it, and uses it. May later discusses this when Fitz is showing off the ICER guns, and she picks one up.
-->'''May:''' Never said I didn't like them. I said, [[ExactWords if I need a gun, I'll take one]].
* DoesNotLikeSpam: According to Coulson, she hates coffee. When Agent 33 impersonated her, she didn't know this and it gave her away.
* DoNotCallMePaul: Inverted. She's fine with being addressed by her given name, it's her old moniker of "the Cavalry" that she doesn't like to hear anymore.
* DrowningMySorrows: After her encounter with the Berserker Staff and post-action in "Girl in the Flower Dress", she reaches for alcohol.
* EasilyForgiven: Averted. Coulson was furious that he hid the truth about his resurrection from him and kepy him LockedOutOfTheLoop. He point blank told her she wasn't his friend anymore, although they eventually reconcile after awhile
* EmotionlessGirl: She's not big on expressions.
-->'''Skye:''' Which non-expression is this?
** Referring to Sif:
-->'''Melinda:''' She's not a lot of laughs, and when ''I'' say that...
* EmpoweredBadassNormal: The Asgardian Berserker Staff makes her effectively unstoppable, when she gets a hold of it.
* ExactWords:
** When questioned if Skye's presence on The Bus would help the team, she gave her professional opinion: "No." What she didn't tell Agent Hand was that she knew Skye would help them more off The Bus. She even tells Ward "don't assume the worst about me."
** She says that if she needs a gun, she'll take one, not that she doesn't like guns.
* ExpositoryHairstyleChange: Before Bahrain, her hair is curled. After, she loses the curls and ends up with straight hair.
* {{Expy}}: With her dress sense and DarkAndTroubledPast, she's basically the producers' way of putting ComicBook/BlackWidow in the show.
* FantasticRacism: She doesn't hate all gifted people just the Inhumans - the ones who were indirectly responsible for her tramutization in Bahrain.
* FriendsWithBenefits: "Friends" might be pushing it but the benefits are certainly there with her and Ward. It's a case of FireForgedFriends; since she and Ward both were affected by the Berserker Staff, they are the only ones who truly can help each other cope. Despite what she might think, he ''really'' respects her fighting skills. This obviously ends after Ward is exposed as a HYDRA agent, and he later taunts her about being upset he lied to her.
* GenerationXerox: It turns out her mother is an intelligence agent too, though not for S.H.I.E.L.D.
* HazyFeelTurn: To an extent she loses some of her UndyingLoyalty to Coulson because he kept her LockedOutOfTheLoop about the Theta Protocol (and that he saw Andrew behind her back) and takes a seat on "Real" S.H.I.E.L.D.'s board ostensibly to be Coulson's advocate, but Simmons and Coulson both give her an earful for joining them in the first place. She gets worse when she finds out that Skye knows what really happened in Bahrain.
* HellBentForLeather: Usually seen wearing a leather vest or jacket. When Skye impersonates her in "A Magical Place", she chooses a leather jacket for her costume.
* {{Hypocrite}}: She gets mad at Coulson for keeping her LockedOutOfTheLoop about certain things when he becomes Director, mainly the Theta Protocol and that he's been seeing her ex. Coulson is more than happy to remind her that she kept him LockedOutOfTheLoop regarding his resurrection.
* IDidWhatIHadToDo: She'll cite this trope when the team calls her out on some of more questionable actions like using an [=Icer=] on a scared gifted who was cornered by an angry mob and she joins Gonzales' S.H.I.E.L.D. as a way to protect Coulson's people....which the team ''really'' doesn't approve of.
* IceQueen: She and Skye tend to clash a lot as a result of her frigid demeanor.
* InscrutableOriental: She's a woman of few words, which is often {{lampshade}}d by Skye, a woman of many words.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: She is blunt and seemingly cold towards people, but she's obviously a very moral person who cares for her teammates.
* JustFollowingOrders: Her justification for keeping Coulson in the dark about his resurrection. This makes Coulson even more furious
* LadyOfWar: Being a veteran ActionGirl, she rarely or never falters in any mission obstacles and setbacks.
* TheLancer: Reluctantly stepped into this role because she can see that Coulson isn't what he used to be and is clearly the one in charge after him.
* LethalChef: According to her ex-husband Andrew.
--> '''May:''' You hungry? I can cook you something.\\
'''Andrew:''' I'm not that hungry.
* LivingLegend: "The Cavalry" is well known among S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.
--> '''Fitz-Simmons:''' ''[simultaneously]'' She's the Cavalry!\\
'''May:''' I told you never to call me that.
* MadeOfIron: At one point, May is thrown into a brick wall with enough momentum to shatter a normal human's spine. Despite being briefly knocked out and slightly battered, she just walks it off. She also dislocates and then relocates her wrist like it's nothing.
* MamaBear: When you've got the TeamMom and {{Badass}} tropes, this is bound to show up sooner or later. It turns up in "T.A.H.I.T.I.", when she beats Ian Quinn bloody for shooting Skye. Coulson interrupted her less than a minute in, so who knows how badly she'd have hurt him.
* MayDecemberRomance: PunnyName aside, if we go by actor ages May has almost 20 years on Ward.
* {{Meganekko}}: Part of her disguise as a businesswoman in "Ragtag" involves a pair of glasses.
* MemeticBadass: InUniverse. Students at S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy add twists to her personal legend as a way of pranking the incoming freshmen. It's gotten to the point where nobody remembers the real details any more, except for Coulson who was there.
* TheMentor: Season 2 sees her taking on this role for Skye and teaching her how to be a field agent. There are scenes of them sparring, sniping, and also lessons on how to stay in control of one's emotions. This becomes especially important when Skye develops Inhuman powers because every new Inhuman needs a mentor to guide them through the change. It was supposed to be her biological mother but instead it's the TeamMom.
* TheMole: Selected the team at Nick Fury's request to keep an eye on Coulson and deal with any complications that arose from his resurrection. She reported to Fury from the beginning until Fury's supposed death.
* MyGreatestFailure: The Bahrain mission made May a LivingLegend among S.H.I.E.L.D. agents but she still feels enormous guilt over having to kill a little Inhuman girl who was mind controlling and killing people.
* NotSoAboveItAll: In "The Well," she echoes Skye's assertion that Thor is "dreamy," and not simply handsome, and at the end of "Repairs," she pulls a prank on Fitz.
* NotSoStoic: Quinn shooting Skye got under her skin, which was lampshaded by Ward after the [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown epic beating]] that ensued.
* NumberTwo: She's the second "parent" for Team Coulson and Coulson himself calls her "my right hand" during "Laws of Nature".
* OneWomanArmy: Her nickname is "The Cavalry" which she earned after an impressive combat operation she completed alone in Bahrain. The leader of a strike team said that if Coulson's diplomacy failed, he would "send in the cavalry". May ended up saving ''them'' by herself. Ironically enough, while she is this trope through and through, this event is not an example because everyone was taken out by someone else but it ''looked'' as though she did it.
* PerpetualFrowner: Mostly because she's extremely peeved about being brought out of retirement and getting into combat situations she was promised would be avoided.
* TheQuietOne: She's not too talkative, to say the least. In "Face My Enemy", Skye remarks that she's said more words during a single undercover conversation than she has in a year.
* RaceLift: The character Melinda May was originally supposed to be a white woman named Althea Rice. However, when Ming-Na Wen gave an impressive audition, the character was rewritten as Asian-American.
* RedBaron: "The Cavalry", and she doesn't like being called that.
* ReluctantWarrior: She only joins the team after Coulson assures her she will only act as the team's pilot/wheelwoman. Otherwise she tries to avoid combat situations when she can.
* RetiredBadass: A former field agent so famous that Ward knows who she is just by seeing her, but she has no desire to do field work again. She brings herself out of retirement at the end of "The Asset", after sitting on the sidelines like she supposedly wanted.
* SarcasticDevotee: Much of what she says to Coulson in the early episodes is sarcasm, backtalk, or otherwise disrespectful but she left her desk job because he asked her to. In later episodes, though, she grows into his confidante.
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Fed up with Coulson refusing to trust her after finding out she spied on him for Fury and excluding her from team missions, Melinda takes off in "The Only Light in the Darkness". It saves her life, keeping Ward from outright executing her.
* SecretKeeper: In Season 2, May knows about Coulson's urgings to carve alien symbols because of the GH serum treatment, and helps him cope with it.
* SexyMentor: To Ward. He looks up to her as a more experienced and skilled operative, she sometimes gives him advice and they hooked up at the end of "The Well". "Repairs" implies that it wasn't their first night together. This goes out the window after Ward is exposed as a HYDRA agent.
* SheCleansUpNicely: As seen in the preview for "Face My Enemy", where she goes under cover with Coulson and dresses up for the occasion. Coulson certainly thought she looked nice.
* ShellShockedVeteran: Seems to have high-functioning Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the incident where she earned her hated nickname, which might be why she hates it.
* StealthHiBye: Manages to pull this on Tobias despite his ghost-like teleportation powers.
* TheStoic: She can dislocate her wrist, [[SlippedTheRopes slip the ropes]], knock someone out, and then reset her wrist without showing a hint of emotion. Even a completed Berserker Staff can't get more than a BattleCry out of her.
* SugarAndIcePersonality: She may be more of the ice than the sugar, but Coulson states that part of his reason for wanting May on the Bus is to return her back to the kind-hearted woman she used to be.
* {{Superdickery}}:
** That promo clip for "The Magical Place" of her telling Agent Hand that Skye's of no use on the plane? May did it so that Skye could do her part in the mission unhindered.
** Also, in "Yes Men", she's revealed to be TheMole for someone. Said someone happens to be Director Fury himself, who is unambiguously heroic (even considering all the details about Coulson's resurrection).
** The summary for "Face My Enemy" states that Coulson finds himself "attacked" by May. Come the episode, and the attacker turns out to be Agent 33 disguised as May, while May's participation in the episode is completely heroic.
* TeamMom: Designated as such by Skye when she compares an argument between her and Coulson as "mom and dad fighting." In "...Ye Who Enter Here", she has a dream where Coulson and May are acting as parents to a baby (obviously herself).
* ThePromise: Coulson makes her promise to kill him if he deteriorates to the point of becoming Garrett. She's not happy about it.
* ThereAreNoTherapists: Averted she was married to one - Andrew, but the mission in Bahrain traumatized her so much that he couldn't help her and the marriage ended in divorce.
* TooSpicyForYogSothoth: The Berserker Staff has no (noticeable) effect on her, since she hasn't repressed the trauma that drove her to her desk job. [[note]]Whether she's made any steps towards recovery is another matter, though it explains why she practices tai chi.[[/note]] However she is noticeably less stoic in battle then normal. She changes her facial expression.
* TownGirls: The (aggressive if stoic and calculated) Butch to Simmons's Femme and Skye's Neither.
* TranquilFury:
** Shown particularly in "The Well" where she uses two pieces of the Berserker Staff without visible effort when [[TheBigGuy Ward]] goes UnstoppableRage with just one. It's suggested that this is why she can handle the Berserker Staff; unlike Ward, whose rage is locked away, May and all her rage and darkness are one.
** In "Ragtag" we have this conversation between May and Skye:
--->'''May''': Yes, I'm furious. But I'm sure as hell not gonna waste it on a tantrum. I'm gonna mine it, save it... and when we find Ward, I'm gonna use every bit of it to take him down.\\
'''Skye''': Wish I knew how to use that [[FooFu hate-fu]].\\
'''May''': I'm usually up around 5:30.
** After Lance turns on the team only to get forgiven, Coulson points out that shooting May in the process was a ''really'' bad idea.
--->'''Lance:''' She's the type to hold a grudge?\\
'''Coulson:''' Savors it, actually.
* TwoFirstNames: Her surname is commonly used as a female given name.
* WhatTheHellHero:
** Fury told her about about Coulson's resurrection and ordered her to keep tabs on him in case he came back wrong but not let Coulson know about it. When Coulson found out, he was understandably pissed off and gave her the cold shoulder for quite a while afterward.
** In Season 2 Simmons and Coulson both give an earful for joining "Real" S.H.I.E.L.D." Skye is particulary offened that she'd trust Gonzales since his men tried to kill her.
* WomanScorned: She seems to enjoy beating up Ward a bit too much.
* WouldHurtAChild: PlayedForDrama. The infamous NoodleIncident in Bahrain that led to her being called The Cavalry happened when May was forced to go in alone to a building where S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel and local militiamen had fallen under the sway of a mentally disturbed Gifted child who had the ability to control minds and could leach off of other people's emotions. May was forced to shoot the little girl in order to save everyone in the building.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Grant Ward]]
-->See the [[Characters/AgentsOfSHIELDHYDRA HYDRA page]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Daisy "Skye" Johnson]]
!! ''ComicBook/DaisyJohnson / Skye''
%%Do not add a spoilered out "Quake" to the name title, as the SpoilerPolicy does not allow tagged spoilers above the description line.%%
[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/daisy_johnson_icon.png]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''"With great power comes.... a ton of weird crap you are not prepared to deal with."'']]
->'''Portrayed By''': Creator/ChloeBennet
->'''Appearances''': ''[[Series/AgentsOfSHIELD Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.]]''

A civilian hacker who draws the attention of S.H.I.E.L.D. and is tracked down by Agent Coulson's team. Despite the objections of both his subordinates and superiors, Coulson makes her part of TheTeam. Went by the name Skye before discovering her birth name of Daisy Johnson.
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* ActionSurvivor: In season 1, she's not ''quite'' an ActionGirl, but she can survive against standard [[{{Mook}} mooks]] when the situation calls for it. This changes in season 2 wherein she's able to hold her own against Agent 33, who has much more combat experience than Skye does.
* {{Adorkable}}: Shows ''delight'' in talking to Mike about his powers, and is confirmed to have cosplayed in front of [[Film/IronMan Stark Tower]]. In the episode [[Recap/AgentsOfSHIELDS1E4EyeSpy "Eye Spy"]], Ward alleges that she [[SayingSoundEffectsOutLoud says "bang" when firing a gun]].
* AmbiguouslyBrown: Chloe Bennet is half-white and half-Chinese. As Skye is an orphan, her ethnic background was unclear. "Seeds" implied that her heritage is at least partially Chinese, like Chloe herself, as baby Skye was found in Hunan Province in China. Season 2 later on confirmed that her father is white and her mother is Chinese.
* AmbiguouslyHuman:
** Since she's been revealed to be a 0-8-4, she could conceivably be anything. She might not even be ''human.''
--->'''Skye:''' ''[jokingly]'' Like, what, you think I'm an alien?\\
'''Coulson:''' Well...\\
'''Skye:''' Hold on, are you saying that I'm an alien!?\\
'''Coulson:''' It's a theory.\\
'''Skye:''' No, a theory is what scientists use to prove things in nature, this is you telling me that I might be an alien! That's not something you just say like it's no big deal!\\
'''Coulson:''' I was trying not to rattle you.\\
'''Skye:''' Guess what? ''Epic'' fail!
** She's an Inhuman, which means that she's entirely human until exposure to Terrigen Mists... which happened in episode 2:10.
* AscendedFanboy: She's always {{Squee}}ing over superheroes, and then becomes a member of S.H.I.E.L.D. Then she gets her own superpowers. Then she becomes ''the leader of a superhero team''.
* TheAtoner: After being outed as TheMole for the Rising Tide, she works at regaining the team's trust. "FZZT" shows her listing them off: memorizing S.H.I.E.L.D. protocols, "yes sir, no sir" and wearing the bracelet.
* AudienceSurrogate: She's a superhero fan and the only main character who starts out as a civilian.
* BadVibrations: Whenever her Quake powers start to activate uncontrollably.
%%* BeautyBrainsAndBrawn: The Beauty to Simmons's Brains and May's Brawn.
* BeautyInversion: Averted. In the pilot, she's homeless (living in her van), yet she's perfectly clean, her hair and makeup is immaculate, and there's not so much as a wrinkle in her clothes. This is possibly justified by the fact she had a boyfriend who ''did'' have a place to stay at the time.
* BeautyIsNeverTarnished:
** Look at her picture: does she ''look'' homeless?
** Later {{Averted}} in "T.R.A.C.K.S." where she bleeds profusely after being shot in the stomach by Quinn. Subsequently Averted ''even harder'' in "T.A.H.I.T.I." as a direct result - she's unconscious, slowly dying in a hospital bed, with grayish skin and tubes sticking out of her, and generally does look like someone fighting for their life without much consideration for the aesthetics of the thing.
** Discussed after her transformation into an Inhuman. Raina is quite upset that Skye's appearance remains exactly the same, while she got stuck with a hideous and painful new body.
** Also {{Averted}} when her mother tries to kill her with her life draining power.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: She tried to get Mike to embrace his powers. He did. Just not in the way she expected. A season and a half later, she gets powers herself - and they freak her out. In "Girl in the Flower Dress", Coulson warns her that the truth about her parents may be worse than not knowing.
* BelligerentSexualTension: Definitely hinted at with Ward in their interrogation scene.
* BerserkButton: Go ahead, try to kill Director Coulson. She'll threaten to kill you without a second's hesitation. Even if you ''are'' her father.
* BodyHorror: Her first attempts to control her Quake powers simply redirect them onto her own body, resulting in ''dozens'' of hairline fractures in her arms.
* BrainwashedAndCrazy: [[spoiler:In "The Team", Hive infects her, turning her into his mole within S.H.I.E.L.D.]]
* BrokenPedestal: When Ward is revealed as a HYDRA mole, Skye loses her LoveInterest and her S.H.I.E.L.D. mentor in one go, something that clearly hits her very hard.
%%* BuffySpeak: One of the most prone to this in the main cast. Apparently she gets it from her dad....
* CanonForeigner: Subverted. Though [[NamesTheSame sharing her name]] with a minor ComicBook/WarMachine [[http://marvel.wikia.com/Skye_(Earth-616) character]], Skye was not introduced as having a counterpart in the comics. "What They Become" reveals she's a subversion; she's the MCU version of Daisy Johnson AKA Quake, daughter of Calvin L. Johnson AKA Calvin Zabo AKA Mr. Hyde, as confirmed by Word Of God.
* ChekhovsSkill: The first episode shows that she encrypts all of her computers with location-based keys. She uses this same encryption on the backup drive of The Bus' files.
* ColdSniper: After making her first kill with a sniper rifle, she's surprised to find her heart rate is perfectly steady.
* CovertPervert: It's implied in the stinger of "Eye Spy" that she used the x-ray glasses to see Ward naked.
* TheCracker: She isn't malicious, but she ''was'' deliberately causing trouble for an international security agency. Quinn even calls her a "black hat," which is the term for this in the hacker community.
* DarkAndTroubledPast:
** Enough to make her erase her identity at least once. As the episode "[[Recap/AgentsOfSHIELDS1E5GirlInTheFlowerDress Girl in the Flower Dress]]" reveals, so did S.H.I.E.L.D. at one point; the one document Skye was able to dig up from her past was a S.H.I.E.L.D.-redacted paper concerning her. It turns out that she was dropped off at the orphanage by a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. "Seeds" reveals that she's an 0-8-4. Some unidentified party (possibly her father and/or HYDRA) killed everyone connected to her in an attempt to get to her, including her family, her entire hometown, and her S.H.I.E.L.D. protection detail. The last surviving members unpersonned her and arranged for her to get randomly shuffled to a new foster home every few months in an apparently successful attempt to hide her.
** Clarified partway through Season Two. Her hometown was raided by a HYDRA team claiming to be S.H.I.E.L.D. and all the residents, including her mother, were taken and used for Whitehall's experimentation. The aftermath left the village dead and her father a madman bent on avenging his wife and recovering his daughter. Then clarified further in the season finale. The village actually survived HYDRA. Jaiyang's healing factor works by draining life force, and she forced Cal to feed the village to her to bring her back. Not only that, but she CameBackWrong and a FantasticRacist to boot. Cal's descent into darkness was driven by hers; he became a monster in order to be allowed to remain in her life.
* DeadpanSnarker:
** She's prone to quite a few one-liners when the situation calls for it.
** She's said "Hail HYDRA" sarcastically twice so far, and she tries to disguise the sarcasm the second time around, thinking it was Whitehall who was calling Bakshi's number (ItMakesSenseInContext).
* {{Deuteragonist}}: The second person driving most of the show's plot, after Coulson.
* EasilyForgiven: Played with. After the blow up in "Girl in the Flower Dress", Simmons was sympathetic to her from the beginning, Fitz has forgiven her by the start of the next episode, Coulson is midway (having imposed her RestrainingBolt punishment yet keeping her on board), Ward has not, and May (who didn't trust her in the first place) hasn't changed.
* EmbarrassingLastName: She chose the name Skye because she hated the name given to her by the orphanage, which is Mary Sue Poots. "Poot" is a slang word for farting.
* EmpoweredBadassNormal: She becomes the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Daisy Johnson AKA Quake, so she gets genuine superpowers in the form of vibration.
* EveryoneHasStandards: After joining S.H.I.E.L.D. as TheMole, she explicitly forbids the Rising Tide from hacking the organization, as seen in "Girl in the Flower Dress", and she breaks up with for doing just that. When she does hack S.H.I.E.L.D. in "The Hub", it's for a selfless reason, and she's upset to find out that there isn't an extraction plan for Ward and Fitz (what she doesn't know is that she and the rest of Coulson's team are being trusted to pick up Ward and Fitz themselves once the two have completed their mission).
* ExpositoryHairstyleChange: Between Seasons 2 and 3, her shoulder-length waves are cut short, right in time with her accepting her identity as an Inhuman (and re-taking her birth name)
* TheFace: Coulson says she has the potential to become this for his S.H.I.E.L.D. team; talking to people, building rapport, acquiring information without being scary, etc. As of season 3, she's the one making first contact with new inhumans like Joey.
* FosterKid:
** Part of the reason she seeks to fit in with the S.H.I.E.L.D. team; she wants a real family.
** Several of the families she stayed with wanted to keep her permanently but were under orders to keep her moving for her protection. Skye just thought ''none'' of them wanted her.
* {{Foil}}: To Ward. In the beginning, Skye was the one shown to have ulterior motives for joining S.H.I.E.L.D., but when her plans go awry, she undergoes some much needed CharacterDevelopment and sticks with S.H.I.E.L.D. until the bitter end. Meanwhile Ward is a true blue Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., but not really, since he's been playing the whole team right from episode 1. When his true colors are shown, he doesn't change allegiances like Skye, but sticks with HYDRA, until the end.
* {{Gainaxing}}: A rather memorable example as she runs around in a soaking wet low-cut dress in "The Asset".
* GenkiGirl: Whenever she meets a superhuman, she's all {{squee}}s.
* GroinAttack: She uses one against a random guy in the pilot and pretends Mike made her do it, causing the guy's friends to attack Mike. This allows her to escape.
* GuileHero: First demonstrates this in "The Asset" when she infiltrates Ian Quinn's party, then takes it UpToEleven in "The Magical Place" where she finds a way around the RestrainingBolt (and even uses the RestrainingBolt itself to her advantage at one point) and locates the place Coulson is being held without S.H.I.E.L.D.'s resources.
* GunFu: Displays a ''Film/JohnWick''-esque version of this during the shootout scene in "The Dirty Half Dozen" in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hReYNlIoIWE this clip]] where she single-handedly takes down ''nine'' HYDRA agents with no help from her superpowers.
* HalfHumanHybrid: Her mother was an [[ComicBook/TheInhumans Inhuman]]. Her father is human... [[AmbiguouslyHuman more or less]].
* HandHidingSleeves: She wears these when relaxing on [[CoolPlane The Bus]]. It's a combination of "quirky" and "cute", with a touch of "deceptive".
* IHaveManyNames: Skye, Mary Sue Poots, Daisy Johnson, Tremors...
* TheHerald: Based on her conversation with Mike, she saw herself as the one delivering the [[CallToAdventure call to adventure]] and inspiring him to fully embrace superheroing.
* HeroicRROD: The first method she tries to gain control of her Quake powers ends up with her using them on herself until she breaks her own arm.
* HumanoidAbomination: She's an 0-8-4 but as revealed in "Ragtag", there was more to the legend. Story goes that the village was attacked by monsters, and the monsters were the 0-8-4 (Skye)'s parents. Eventually it is revealed that she is an Inhuman, and so far all intents and purposes an ordinary human unless exposed to Terrigen Mists... which happens in ''What They Become''.
* IllGirl: After getting shot by Quinn in "T.R.A.C.K.S". She remains one throughout "T.A.H.I.T.I." (the team finding a cure for her provides the main plot of that episode) and is still bed-bound but slowly recovering in "Yes Men".
* ImpersonatingAnOfficer: A heroic example. In "The Magical Place", she poses as Agent May to get a lead from a businessman as to where Coulson was being held.
* InTheHood: Does this in the 2nd season in her transition to ActionGirl. She wears a gray hoodie.
* ItGetsEasier: Part of her character development. In the first season as she trains under May the point is made that she never has had to kill anyone and when she is forced to snipe an inhuman, leading to his assumed death, her reaction to this is shown. By season 2, she's shooting disabled opponents in battle without flinching.
* JackOfAllTrades: Her unrivalled hacking abilities make her an excellent asset to S.H.I.E.L.D., and she's also shown to be quite the GuileHero. With combat training from her superiors, she becomes combat-capable enough to the point that she's able to hold her own in the field.
* TheKnightsWhoSaySquee: She's a skilled hacker who turns into a giggling fangirl in the presence of metahumans.
* MadScientistsBeautifulDaughter: She's quite the looker, and her dad is Mr. Hyde, so there's that. There's also the fact that they don't get along, so the betrayal part comes prepackaged.
* MarriedToTheJob: Says so in "Heavy Is The Head".
-->'''Skye''': S.H.I.E.L.D. is my life.
* MasterApprenticeChain: Like Gordon before her and her own mother before Gordon, she has taken up the role of aiding new Inhumans through Transition.
* MeaningfulName:
** Her legal name is revealed to be MarySue, a FandomNod to the viewers who felt she received an unreasonable amount of CharacterShilling during the series.
** Her birth name, [[FloralThemeNaming Daisy, is fitting for someone with earthquake producing powers.]]
* MinoredInAsskicking: Mostly a GuileHero and hacker, but she's gotten some combat training from Ward and is particularly good at disarming enemies. Moving through season 2 and into season 3, this has become a major as she gains more skills and her Quake ability.
* MistakenAge: Due to being an orphan, she had her birth year wrong, and is actually a year or two older than she thought. The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who dropped her off might have done this intentionally in order to hide her, or they just genuinely made a mistake.
* TheMole: For the Rising Tide. It seems to be an open secret, at least between Ward, Coulson, and the higher brass. After being outed in "Girl in the Flower Dress" and forced to wear a WalkingTechbane bracelet for several episodes, there's been no indication she's still reporting to Rising Tide, at least until Season 2, when it's hinted that Rising Tide may be an ally of sorts to Nu S.H.I.E.L.D. in at least a couple of episodes.
* MoralityPet: For Ward, who claims his attachment to her is genuine. He exploits this as it allows him to beat the lie detector.
* MsFanservice: Provides the female eye candy in the main cast. Ward comments on her beauty under truth serum. She exploits this to make Ward squirm while she interrogates him. Towards the end of "The Asset", she's seen running around in a wet dress, and bare feet. She has an underwear scene in "Girl in the Flower Dress". Tapers off a bit after these instances, but comes back in Season 3, where she's taken to wearing a SpyCatsuit in the field and her first scene out of it is in a low-cut tank top.
* MythologyGag: Skye spends a lot of time wearing wrist-mounted devices, starting with the RestrainingBolt, then the heartbeat monitoring watch during her field training, then the various power suppressing gloves and such she gets to control her powers, and the nullifying cuffs she gets shackled with by Jaiyang. While at first subtle, it becomes pretty clear in hindsight these are a nod to her identity as Daisy Johnson, a character known for her arm gauntlets in the comics.
* NewMeat:
** Not only is she the most junior member of the team, as of "End of the Beginning" she is ''the'' single most junior member of S.H.I.E.L.D. Due to what happens in the following episode, she ends up keeping that distinction until Hunter decides to stop just being a mercenary on contract and fully joins up in the stinger for "One Door Closes", nearly a season later. When working in her primary strengths (hacking and data analysis), she doesn't make rookie mistakes, but she does tend to make them when working in the field which is an area she freely admits she needs more training in, especially after one of those rookie mistakes gets her shot.
** When she discovers that she is a Inhuman this trope happens a second time as she is the newest member of that group and says that she feels like "the new kid".
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: During the season 2 finale, when she knocks a Quinjet carrying a case of Terragen crystals off of a carrier, said crystals contaminates schools of fish, which end up being processed as fish oil caplets for human consumption.
* NotInThisForYourRevolution: Initially, Skye accepted to join S.H.I.E.L.D. to keep on the search for her parents. She fully commited to S.H.I.E.L.D. as time advanced.
* TheNotLoveInterest: To Coulson. As the naive newcomer she fulfills the stereotypical role of the LoveInterest for TheHero, but their relationship is firmly established as [[ParentalSubstitute substitute father-daughter]] within the first couple of episodes.
* NumberTwo: After breaking off his friendship with May, Coulson turns to Skye, who is the only member of his team that he truly picked himself and who looks up to him as a surrogate father, as his confidant. Starting in season 2, she shows frustration that he doesn't confide in her anymore.
* OldShame: [[InUniverse In-universe]] example. Skye was once one of the "sweaty cosplay girls" that hang around Stark Tower.
* OneWomanArmy: "[[Recap/AgentsOfSHIELDS2E19TheDirtyHalfDozen The Dirty Half Dozen]]" cements her status as this, when she singlehandedly kills ''ten'' HYDRA guards in a display of hand-to-hand (and gun) bad-assitude during an [[TheOner epic oner]], all ''without'' using her powers.
** Happens again in season 3.
* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname:
** At first there was nothing else known about her name other then Skye. S.H.I.E.L.D. unpersonned her as a child to hide her from whoever killed her family, her entire home town, and virtually every single member of the team sent to protect her.
** In "The Only Light in the Darkness" we find out what Skye's real name is... the name she was given in the orphanage, that is. It's Mary Sue Poots.
** "A Hen in the Wolf House" implies that she has a third name, which was given to her by her biological parents. It's revealed in "What They Become" to be Daisy.
* OrphansPlotTrinket: The little data drive she keeps stashed away, containing all the info she could gather on her parents' identities.
* PantyShot: Shows up in the promo for "The Asset", as she jumps out of a window and into a pool. The television broadcast cut to the next scene earlier to avoid it. Her underwear scene in "Girl in the Flower Dress" makes up for it.
* PersonOfMassDestruction: Her powers allow her to manipulate the vibrations of all matter. It's speculated that she could grow powerful enough to crack a continent. At present, she's at least powerful enough to flatten a large area around herself and make objects explode, and she has no real training in how to use her powers. While training with the Inhumans, she manages to shake an entire mountain, causing a small avalanche.
* PlayingGertrude: A mild example. Skye's official year of birth is 1989 and is later revealed to actually be 1988, thusly making her a few years older than the actress who plays her.
* PowerIncontinence: She has quite a hard time controlling her Quake powers, due to her not having any help understanding them like her parents were planning to do.
* RaceLift: Daisy Johnson is white in the comics, while Skye, her MCU counterpart, is half-Chinese.
* RecruitingTheCriminal: She's part of an anti-S.H.I.E.L.D. movement called "The Rising Tide" to reveal their cover-up of the world's superheroes, but is quickly caught by them and hired.
* RestrainingBolt: As of "Girl in the Flower Dress", she has been given a bracelet that will monitor her and restrict her use of electronics as well as other unnamed properties. Coulson disables it at the end of "The Magical Place".
* RunningGag: Anytime she attempts to imitate Fitz-Simmons's British accents, it's ''terrible'' and even she knows it. Though she's yet to attempt an imitation of Hunter, she does become the object of his scorn when she refers to him as ''{{Trainspotting}}'', suggesting that she can't even ''hear'' the differences between quite disparate British accents. (Which still doesn't explain why her impression of Fitz sounded Australian...)
* ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight: This is her biggest strength. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are bound by the rules and bureaucracy of the system, but Skye isn't an agent and thus often ignores the rules in the name of doing the right thing. This is also the reason that May lets Hand kick Skye off The Bus in "The Magical Place." She knows that Skye will work much better when she doesn't have a bunch of by-the-book S.H.I.E.L.D. agents looking over her shoulder.
* SecurityBlanket: Having lived in her van, she'll crawl into one of the Bus's vehicles when she feels a need for safety or solitude. She seems a little surprised when Coulson first finds her there.
* SheCleansUpNicely: When going undercover in "The Asset". She never looked nicer.
* SixthRanger: She's recruited from the Rising Tide during the pilot while the other members of the team are already S.H.I.E.L.D. agents working for Coulson, and has to be convinced to join them. However, this all happens in the pilot episode, unlike most examples of this trope.
* TheSpook: In the words of Coulson, "We know nothing about her. Do you know how often that happens? It never happens."
* SpyCatsuit: Starts wearing one in Season 3 when she goes on Inhuman extraction missions.
* StealthInsult: "Hail HYDRA." Spoken to Ward after revealing she had called the cops on him using her laptop.
* SuperHeroPackingHeat: Despite possessing vibration powers that could level a building, Daisy uses a gun. The gun is sometimes loaded with I.C.E.R.s, but it is a real gun, and Daisy is willing kill, if she thinks there is a very good reason.
* TeacherStudentRomance: As of midseason 3, all of her love interests have also been her teachers. Miles was her Rising Tide mentor, Grant Ward was her S.H.I.E.L.D supervising officer, and Lincoln helped her through the Inhuman transition.
* TechnoWizard: Managed to hack into S.H.I.E.L.D. databases, as well as gain some information about Centipede before they were able to. Oh, and did we mention she did this from a van that she was living in? The girl's impressive.
* TomatoInTheMirror: Much like [[Film/{{Thor}} Mjolnir]] and the device from [[Recap/AgentsOfSHIELDS1E2084 the second episode]], Skye is a 0-8-4. As a baby, many S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were mysteriously killed trying to protect her, forcing S.H.I.E.L.D. to put her into hiding to protect her.
%%* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: Tomboy to Simmons's girly girl.
* TookALevelInBadass:
** Ward begins her combat training at the start of "The Asset" and she uses it to effortlessly disarm Ian Quinn later on. The episode ends with voluntarily punching out a heavy bag.
** Her storyline in "The Magical Place" is all about this. She steals the car of a Centipede associate and ''crashes it'' with herself inside, just so she can get his roadside assistance to arrange a tow truck to take her to his address. While there, she uses his computer to call his office and pretends to be an LAPD officer, flawlessly coming up with a plausible explanation about why he needs to come home immediately. Once he arrives, she poses as Melinda and effortlessly bluffs him into giving up everything he knows about Centipede's property purchases, even tossing a couple of mooks along the way. This gives S.H.I.E.L.D. Coulson's location. Even [[TheStoic May]] seems impressed.
** By the end of "Nothing Personal", she has taken yet another level of badass during the entire episode. Calmly stalling for time against [[TheMole Ward]] and making him a well-known and wanted fugitive.
** As of the season 2 premiere, "Shadows", she's said to have undergone training from May between seasons and even joins her in the field being more than able to hold her own.
** Training with May is shown to ''really'' pay off when she holds her own against [[BrainwashedAndCrazy Agent 33]] in single combat.
** As of "What They Become", she has taken another level, after her Inhuman powers are activated. At the start of season 3, she's casually flipping cars and enemy mooks.
* TownGirls: The (seemingly plain yet technologically gifted) Neither to May's Butch and Simmons's Femme.
* UnfortunateNames:
** Play straight by the orphanage who named her MarySue [[AtrociousAlias Poots]].
** Averted by her birth name - she considers Daisy Johnson to be a pretty good name, and as of season 3, she's traded Skye for it.
* UngratefulBitch: Raina very subjectively refers Skye as this as a part of her NeverMyFault statement in "Aftershocks".
* {{Unperson}}:
** She can do this on request, and it's implied she did it to herself, hence why she's an unknown to S.H.I.E.L.D. It turns out that this is her reason for learning how to hack in the first place. Her parents themselves have been the subject of this, by S.H.I.E.L.D. no less, as was Skye herself shortly before being put into foster care.
** In "Providence," at Coulson's request, she does this for every member of Team Coulson so that they can more easily go off the radar.
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: She unknowingly brings a HYDRA agent to Providence by chatting on the phone with Ward, who had, in a bit of DramaticIrony, been with HYDRA all along.
* WeHelpTheHelpless: Coulson's lessons have sunk in pretty well by the second season.
-->'''Skye:''' He could hurt people!\\
'''Jiaying:''' Those people aren't my concern.\\
'''Skye:''' Well, they're mine. I'm a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.
* WhatTheHellHero: She doesn't like what she finds out about the mission in "The Hub", and she makes it perfectly clear to Coulson when he catches her hacking S.H.I.E.L.D. to learn the truth.
-->'''Coulson''': What did I tell you?\\
'''Skye''': You told me to trust the system, and the system sent Ward and Fitz in there to die.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Leopold Fitz]]
!!''Leopold Fitz''
[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fitz_leopold_472.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''"Are you mental? I did explain what I meant using the Queen's bloody English!"'']]
->'''Portrayed By''': Iain De Caestecker
->'''Appearances''': ''[[Series/AgentsOfSHIELD Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.]]''

A Level Five S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who is an expert engineer. He works alongside Jemma Simmons, with the two of them sharing a close friendship. He is a member of Agent Coulson's team that is assembled to investigate strange events around the world.
----
* ActionSurvivor: Fitz is increasingly becoming this as the episodes go on. For someone who has been the most vocally against being involved in any sort of dangerous adventure or combat, he has proven to be more capable than Simmons of holding his own during one. This is best illustrated in "The Hub" and "T.R.A.C.K.S." where he provides backup to Ward in the former episode and Skye in the latter episode.
* {{Adorkable}}: Acts about machines and physics the same way Simmons does about biological mysteries. He even named his robots after [[Disney/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs the seven dwarfs]].
* AfraidOfBlood: And guts and organs. Especially of cats and ''especially'' when left right next to his lunch.
* AllLoveIsUnrequited: Simmons apparently left the team in favour of a dangerous deep cover mission within HYDRA rather than deal with the fall-out of Fitz's DyingDeclarationOfLove. Fitz is bitterly hurt when he finds out, especially since he has to learn about it second hand from Coulson.
* AlwaysSomeoneBetter:
** Fitz begins to feel this way in regards to Ward after "FZZT". Berserker!Ward even uses it against him when he's raging at everyone in "The Well".
** From "Providence" onward, he begins to feel this way towards Triplett too: helped by the fact that Triplett, as well as being a total Badass and potential LoveInterest for Simmons, is clearly also very intelligent, meaning that Fitz can't even fall back on his role as TheSmartGuy around him.
* AllMenArePerverts: He and {{Freudian Slip}}s about Skye seem to go together hand-in-hand.
* AmbiguouslyBi: He doesn't ''exactly'' disagree when his projection of Simmons describes Mack as being attractive, since she's technically a part of his own imagination. It should also be noted that well over half of the HoYay entries are taken from Fitz's interactions with male cast members.
* ArmorPiercingQuestion: In Who You Really Are after Simmons discovers that Fitz kept Skye's powers a secret due to her FantasticRacism, she tries to say that it's different since Skye is her friend. He responds:
-->'''Fitz:''' Oh yeah, like ''I'' was your friend, and then ''I'' changed. How did you handle that?
* BadassBookworm: Explicitly averted, the first thing we learn about him and Simmons is that they're not combat capable. A major part of his CharacterDevelopment halfway through the season becomes his drive to ''become'' more of a BadassBookworm after coming to feel inadequate - which he does quite a bit in "The Hub."
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Poor Fitz falls victim to this a couple of times in ''major'' ways. After complaining that the true worth of his work is often overlooked by his superiors, he's finally recognised as a valuable asset by Garrett, who's about to recruit him to HYDRA by force if he has to. And after a whole season of wishing to be heroic on the level of Ward and Triplett, he's finally being called a hero by everyone after pulling a HeroicSacrifice to save Simmons, which leaves him brain damaged and in a coma.
* BeardOfSorrow: He's noticeably less than clean-shaven at the beginning of Season 2 due to his traumatic injuries and Simmons leaving.
* BerserkButton:
** Nothing freaks Fitz out faster than the thought of any harm coming to Simmons. Unfortunately for him, it's sort of an occupational hazard.
** From Season 2 onwards, the very presence of Ward sends him flying off the handle.
* BewareTheNiceOnes:
** Fitz displays a ruthless lack of concern for the lives of the Centipede soldiers after they kidnap Coulson. Jemma is noticeably disturbed.
** In "Nothing Personal" he has a rather violent reaction to finding out that Ward is HYDRA which surprises everyone in-universe.
** In "Ragtag," he uses the pocket EMP device to disable Garrett's mechanical bits, almost killing him. He then shouts at Garrett and says he doesn't feel any remorse and that Garrett deserves to die. As Fitz and Simmons are being carried away by HYDRA agents, Fitz says that he won't rest until every HYDRA agent is dead. Yikes.
** In "Making Friends & Influencing People," he cuts off the oxygen to Ward's cell, further twisting the knife by saying it's the only way he can make clear what Ward did to him thanks to his aphasia.
* BeyondTheImpossible: He's the first person in thousands of years to [[spoiler:bring someone back from the planet the Monolith connects to]], making him quite the person of interest to HYDRA. While this has been the goal of HYDRA for centuries, it had been treated as impossible by previous generations and been confused for "ritualistic blood sacrifice" by outsiders.
* BigBrotherInstinct:
** In "The Hub", when Ward tells Fitz to run to safety because Coulson told Ward to take care of him, Fitz refuses to leave and snaps back that Coulson told him to protect Ward too.
** There's a moment in "Repairs" when Simmons is about to round a blind corner while they're pursuing [[MonsterOfTheWeek Tobias]] along with Ward, and Fitz holds her back to check it out himself before letting her go on ahead.
** When he's the only one to work out that Skye has developed superpowers, despite his initial fear he fakes her blood test results and promises to protect her from the FantasticRacism of the rest of the team. When Skye's secret comes out, it turns out he was right to do so, as he's the only one arguing on her behalf.
* BigEater: Played with: He frequently complains of being hungry, especially in inappropriate circumstances like during a stake-out or a field mission, and even when trapped at the bottom of the ocean slowly running out of oxygen - but the fact that he never gets to eat anything on-screen is something of a subtle RunningGag. Ward mentions at one point that Fitz has a secret stash of candy under his bunk.
* BirdsOfAFeather: He and Simmons, as pointed out by ''everyone'', thus "Fitz-Simmons".
* BleedEmAndWeep: In "Turn, Turn, Turn" he has to struggle to bring himself to pick up a stray ''real'' gun that gets slid towards him in a fight, and after he uses it to shoot someone to save May, he starts crying and is clearly not happy about having had to do it.
* BondOneLiner: In "Ragtag", after using an [=EMP=] disguised as a joy buzzer to take out Garrett's life-support implants:
-->'''Fitz:''' Looks like the joke's on you.
* BraveScot: Averted, if not inverted, as he tends to be a LovableCoward at times and he's far more cautious and worried about problems compared to Simmons.
* BreakTheCutie: He really goes through the wringer.
** Season One: Between "Turn, Turn, Turn" and "Nothing Personal", every bad thing Fitz has imagined so far happens all at once: He and Simmons get separated during the destruction of S.H.I.E.L.D., he's threatened with AFateWorseThanDeath by HYDRA, he's forced to kill someone, Simmons meets someone else who's TheAce... ''then'' it turns out that Ward, whom he'd thought of as one of his closest friends and colleagues, has been a HYDRA infiltrator the whole time. Cue the HeroicBSOD. At the end of the season, he and Simmons are trapped in a container underwater, and his HeroicSacrifice to get the two of them out leaves him brain damaged and in a coma.
** Season Two: He's become aggressive towards Simmons, jealous of Koenig taking over his job as TheSmartGuy, and has difficulty expressing his feelings. And it turns out that he's been hallucinating Simmons the entire time, and his damage is to the extent that he's incapable of doing most of his original duties ''and doesn't even realize it''.
** SeasonThree: [[spoiler: Simmons is apparently dead, captured by The Monolith as soon as Fitz turned his back... with Fitz indirectly responsible for loosening the seal. He's gone on a solo mission to bring her back, no matter what. Then he breaks down in front of the Monolith when it doesn't take him.]]
* BrokenPedestal:
** His relationship with Ward in Season One was often something close to hero-worship, with Ward clearly representing the kind of person Fitz wished he could be himself. Needless to say, Fitz's reaction to Ward being revealed as a HYDRA mole is pretty brutal.
** His relationship with Simmons: in Season One he clearly adored everything about her; in Season 2, though it seems he's still in love with her, and definitely still respects her intellect, he eventually makes it clear to her in "What They Become" that he doesn't particularly like who she is now, and would rather not work with her in the future. It gets even worse in "Aftershocks" when he explicitly considers her the biggest threat on the team to Skye, due to her superpowers becoming apparent just as Simmons develops a bad case of FantasticRacism.
* ButtMonkey: Gets knocked out (or possessed, or kidnapped, or threatened, or shot at, or...) on a regular basis, is often the subject of pranks and snark from the others, has men regularly flirting with his LoveInterest, accidentally helps out the opposition a few times... the list goes on.
* CannotSpitItOut: Towards the end of the first season, he's ''painfully'' incapable of telling Simmons how he feels about her, or admitting it directly to anyone else ([[EveryoneCanSeeIt not that they need telling]]). He eventually {{Lampshades}} this in "The Beginning of the End", when he's ''still'' incapable of articulating exactly how he feels about her, [[HeroicSacrifice but realises that he can show her instead]]. It certainly gets the point across.
* CanonForeigner: He had no comic book counterpart before the show started.
* CanonImmigrant: The ''S.H.I.E.L.D.'' ongoing comic begins in December 2014.
* TheChewToy: Season 2 is a prime example of how the ButtMonkey becomes one of these: Fitz's frequent misfortunes are no longer meant to be remotely funny.
* TheCharmer: Despite suffering from a bad case of ThatCameOutWrong[=/=]CannotSpitItOut around women he cares for, he demonstrates a surprising ability to successfully turn on the charm when he needs to. In "The Hub", a middle-aged matron (who also happens to be an Eastern European mob boss) starts off wanting to kill him and, two scenes later, is affectionately referring to him as her "Little Bear". Usually contrasted with Ward or Simmons, who are both in their own special ways ''terrible'' at dealing with people.
* ChildProdigy: Implied in "Seeds". Fitz mentions that his mother never understood his science talk while he was growing up and he and Simmons are both noted to have been some of the youngest to have gotten into S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy, and must have had one [=PhD=] already "just to get through the door".
* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Becomes one after suffering brain damage in the Season One finale. As such, it's mostly PlayedForDrama. His most notable Cuckoolander characteristic has to be relationship with his imaginary version of Simmons after she leaves the team. He gets a little better after teaming up with [[CloudcuckoolandersMinder Mack]], from which point on this trope is occasionally PlayedForLaughs.
-->'''Mack''': Half of what this guy says is nonsense.
-->''Both he and Fitz chuckle''
* CowardlyLion: Basically Fitz's entire personality in a nutshell. [[MeaningfulName Hence the name "Leo"]].
* TheCutie: Unusually he actually becomes ''more'' of one as the series goes on, even though BreakTheCutie actually takes place first in his case. In Season 1 Simmons is the clear cutie of the duo, with Fitz the more cynical and sarcastic one, but Season 2 sees a gradual reversal of this dynamic, with Fitz the emerging as the more gentle and caring one who's willing to show loyalty to his friends over S.H.I.E.L.D. if forced to make the choice, and generally as one of the most sympathetic characters on the show after many of the other leads [[TookALevelInJerkass Take a Level in Jerkass]] following the mid-season finale.
* DeadpanSnarker: Usually at Ward or Simmons's expense, but Fitz is definitely known for firing off a good one-liner.
* TheDeterminator: [[spoiler: He's the only one in Coulson's team who refuses to give up rescuing Simmons from the Monolith, and because of that they're able to rescue her from the alien world she was trapped on.]]
* DidntWantAnAdventure: The main contrast between him and Simmons. It's implied that she wanted to join Coulson's team and he reluctantly went along with her.
* DisappearedDad: When asked about his immediately family in "Providence", he says his only relative is his mother. This was already hinted at in "Seeds", when it's implied that [[FriendlessBackground his mum was his only real companion]] before he met Simmons.
* DistressedDude: In one episode, him being held at knifepoint is enough motivation for Coulson to hand over control of the Bus to an enemy.
* DitzyGenius: He comes across as slightly scatter-brained, but he's good with technology.
* TheDividual: Fitz and Simmons spend so much time together that they're usually just referred to as "Fitz-Simmons."
** Season One changes this following the HYDRA uprising, Fitz's LoveEpiphany towards Simmons, and Simmons's growing closeness to Triplett and uncertainty about her dedication to the new S.H.I.E.L.D.
** In season 2, Fitz' brain damage and Simmons's sudden departure from the team leads him to hallucinate her presence as an extension of his subconscious in order to maintain this relationship. She tries to guide him on his way to recovery. When the real Simmons returns, this trope is defied; Simmons and Mack each note that Fitz's condition worsens in her presence, leading to more scenes of them apart while they actively avoid each other.
** By the end of season 2, they have re-connected to the point where Fitz can guess what her plan is and seamlessly help her with it without talking with her about it.
* DoggedNiceGuy: [[spoiler:After saving Simmons from the distant planet that the Monolith sent her to--literally ''throwing himself through the portal to physically pull her back to Earth''--he finds out about her relationship with Will Daniels... and proceeds to work on ways to reopen the portal so as to rescue Daniels as well, because [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy he just wants her to be happy]].]] Simmons actually yells at him for being so kind and supportive, when many men would be jealous and angry, especially after going to the extremes that Fitz went through on Simmons's behalf.
* DoNotCallMePaul:
** Subtly implied to feel this way. He is the last member of the main cast to have their first name mentioned in the show; [[note]] In Episode 12, and only because his full name was called for under the circumstances; comparatively, everyone else had been directly addressed by their first name at least a handful of times by Episode 6. [[/note]] later in the same episode during a friendly introduction he specifically (and somewhat awkwardly) asks to be called by his last name. Furthermore, while he calls Simmons either "Simmons" or "Jemma" more or less interchangeably, she ''rarely'' calls him "Leo".
** {{Averted}} in the comics, where he is usually addressed as "Leo", presumably to remind readers that despite originating in the [=MCU=], the 616 version of his character is part of a different canon entirely.
* DontYouDarePityMe: He's aware that the others have been walking on eggshells around since his brain damage, and he doesn't like it one bit.
* DudeWheresMyRespect: He's frequently frustrated when his talents go overlooked by the others, especially compared to Simmons and Skye, who are often praised for their abilities. Becomes a case of BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor when HYDRA consider him too valuable to execute along with the rest of the team, and instead plan to cripple him before forcibly recruiting him.
* DyingDeclarationOfLove: To Simmons, in a {{Zigzagged}} sort of way during "The Beginning of the End". He can't bring himself to say it, so instead he ''shows'' it via HeroicSacrifice. In the end he's not dead, but in a coma.
* TheEngineer: Technology is his specialty.
* EvenNerdsHaveStandards: He nicknames his custom-made drones after the Seven Dwarves yet he thinks that Simmons is nerdier than he is, because she enjoys doing schoolwork.
* EveryonesBabySister: The reactions of the other team members to his unspecified critical injuries in the Season One finale point to this attitude, probably because he's a non-combatant and relatively young to be a field agent. The fact that his [[UndyingLoyalty refusal to give up on Ward]] and [[EveryoneCanSeeIt unexpressed love for Simmons]] were both major contributing factors in what happened to him rack up the sympathy levels significantly, too.
* ExactWords: "I didn't solve this today." It's Mack who finally realizes he's trying to say he's solved it ''already'', but just can't remember how.
* FaceFramedInShadow: His face is ''constantly'' half-covered in shadowed lighting during season two, especially when he's alone, thinking dark thoughts or talking to the hallucination of Simmons - which is most of the time. The show is particularly fond of having him stand alone, staring into space with a half-shadowed face. It rather ominously reflects his fractured state of mind after the incident.
* FakeAmerican: In-universe, he briefly does this in "T.R.A.C.K.S." and is surprisingly good at it. [[GiftedlyBad Skye's Scottish accent, on the other hand...]] (which is why he went for the FakeAmerican act in the first place; ItMakesSenseInContext).
* FinishingEachOthersSentences: With Simmons, frequently. They also tend to talk over each other mid-sentence, supplying synonyms for what the other's saying, before ending on the same word.
** This gets a (doubly) grim reprise in the Season 2 premiere: Fitz now relies on Simmons to finish most of his sentences for him, having lost the ability to recall many vocabulary words. This is actually one of the few things that probably ''isn't'' wrong with him, since it's his own hallucination providing the "missing" words, but that's not exactly good news overall (not to mention that he isn't even saying them out loud).
** In "Fractured House" it gets even worse when the real Simmons can't finish his sentences anymore, leaving him completely lost.
* FriendlessBackground: Fitz implies that he came from one of these in "Seeds" when he emphasizes with a fellow lonely tech student.
* GadgeteerGenius: His whole schtick on the team is gadetry. In season three, for instance, he made a flash bang look like a splinter bomb and put them in a suitcase that mobsters couldn't open.
* GracefulInTheirElement: Fitz may be socially awkward and a bit of a coward, but put him in a lab or talk to him about technology and he'll leave you in the dust.
* GreenEyedMonster: Fitz reacts with visible irritation whenever anyone flirts with Simmons, or Simmons shows any interest in anyone else. Understandable given that Simmons seems to have a thing for muscular black men and Fitz is very much not either of those.
** Randolph compliments her several times in "The Well". Fitz overhears and does not look particularly happy.
** When, in "The Bridge", Simmons becomes flustered around Mike Peterson's... firmness. Though Fitz protests he's just embarrassed by her.
** In "End of the Beginning" he notices that Triplett and Simmons seem a little too mutually eager to hang out together at The Hub, though on that occasion he looks more hurt than annoyed. (It helped that he'd just accused her of being a little ''too'' happy that he wasn't going with her, something she never outright denied.) By "Providence" it's clear that he's developed a strong dislike of Triplett because of his new closeness with Simmons.
** In "Shadows", he's jealous of Koenig appearing to take over his role as TheSmartGuy due to Fitz still recovering from his brain damage.
** Averted in Season 3. See IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy below.
* GuileHero: Displays this trait most prominently in "The Hub", when he causes a blackout in the bar where he and Ward are being held hostage by people who were trying to watch a game on the television before they showed up. This was done just so he could then fix it and gain his captors' trust and help.
* GoodIsNotSoft:
** Fitz has spent the mid-season proving this without a doubt. He's a nice, fumbling, socially awkward guy, but he's also arrogant, proud, and if you kidnap his team leader, he will not only be glad to see you dead, he will also compete for the right to torture you for information-- and that says nothing for his surprising ability to hold his own in combat situations without being an outright badass like May, Ward, or Coulson.
** When he finds out they've been hiding Ward in the basement, he gives him a taste of the oxygen deprevation that gave him brain damage.
* {{Hallucinations}}: Simmons only exists to him as one, because she had left him when he woke up from his coma and saw he wasn't getting better at all.
* HandicappedBadass: Since his HeroicSacrifice, Fitz has had to deal with the aftereffects of minor brain damage. He has trouble organizing his thoughts, talks with a bit of a stutter, and his right hand is unusable. He is STILL the technical genius of the team and consistently goes past his limitations to prove his worth.
* TheHeart: He's grown into this role during Season 2; partly because he can't fill the Smart Guy role as well as he used to thanks to his injuries but largely because of the way he's formed relationships with the rest of the team. After the midseason shakeup, he's basically the only one openly on Skye's side; defending her to the others and giving her emotional support.
* HesBack: As of "The Things We Bury", he seems to have overcome the limitations brought about by his brain damage, at least as far as regaining his status as a GadgeteerGenius is concerned.
* HeroicBSOD:
** He briefly goes into this twice: after being involved in the HYDRA uprising at the Hub, and again after learning that Ward has been a HYDRA mole the entire time.
** It gets worse in season 2: as if brain damage wasn't bad enough, after Simmons left from worry that she was impeding his recovery, he's started talking to an imaginary version of her as his only way to cope with everything that's happened.
* HeroicSacrifice: Attempted in the first season finale, "Beginning of the End" where he gives the one breathing device to Simmons so she can swim to the surface, since his broken arm will make sure he can't make it. Averted when she just drags him up with her and Nick Fury rescues both of them. Though he doesn't escape unscathed: it's noted that he received brain damage from oxygen deprivation and is not seen again for the rest of the episode. The best Simmons can say to describe his condition is "alive."
* HiddenDepths:
** Although initially coming across as meek and fearful, though snarky, intelligent, and deeply loyal, Fitz's character is fleshed out in two important episodes. In "The Hub", he goes on a mission with Ward where he proves that he may not actively seek adventure like Simmons does but he's perfectly capable of handling himself during one, saving Ward's life not only once but ''twice''. In "The Magical Place", he couldn't care less how many Centipede soldiers they have to kill in order to get Coulson back, despite Simmons rightly pointing out that those are innocent men being controlled.
** Fitz later exploits this trope himself in "Ragtag", when it doesn't take much to convince Ward that the joy-buzzer he's carrying was just meant for a prank, and there's nothing suspicious about him reaching for it during a tense stand-off... except that it emits a powerful [=EMP=] that nearly kills Garrett on the spot.
* HollywoodHomely: {{Invoked}}, not through his appearance so much as the fact that he's the only lead character never to have anyone romantically interested in him, and having him unfavourably compared to Ward and Triplett on a regular basis due to their superior strength and physique (often, it's Fitz himself drawing the comparison, but not always). This is probably intentional, though, since Fitz is TheChewToy, and the universe often seems out to confirm his worst fears and insecurities at every turn. It's worth noting as well that Iain De Caestecker is at least as popular with the [[{{Fangirl}} Fangirls]][=/=]{{Fanboys}} as Brett Dalton or B J Britt, and if anything the character gets [[{{Shipping}} shipped]] harder than either of them by the {{Fandom}}.
* IAmNotLeftHanded: When Coulson orders him to reassemble and install a transceiver in under six minutes in "The Things We Bury", Fitz protests that he's only got one fully working hand due to his brain damage. Coulson then has him practicing non-stop during the early stages of the mission, which does one-handed, and is frustrated that he's unable to trim the time down enough. Finally, when Coulson asks how long the procedure will take him, Fitz replies that he's got it down to just over seven minutes... [[HesBack with his bad hand. With both, he'll be just fine.]]
* IllBoy: He ends Season One in a coma with suspected brain damage, providing a hook for Season Two and [[EveryonesBabySister significant angst for everyone else]], especially Simmons. Season Two still has him in this role, but shows him making a slow but sure recovery.
* ImaginaryFriend: After Simmons leaves the team, Fitz creates an imaginary version of her to both cope with the loss and to help him finish his own sentences. After Mack starts interacting with him, he seems to be aware that she's not actually there, and starts to phase the imaginary Simmons out.
* IntelligenceEqualsIsolation: Fitz bonds with Donnie over this in "Seeds". He didn't like being at S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy at first because he didn't have any friends and his well-meaning mother could never keep up with his technobabble.
* IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy: In Season 3, after learning of [[spoiler: Simmons' boyfriend Will who's still stranded on the alien planet,]] Fitz resolves to help her get him back, even if it means that his feelings for her remain unrequited.
* KnightInSourArmor: This is most highlightered by his relationship with Simmons, but Fitz, despite being a do-gooder, is much more cynical and ruthless than one would initially expect. It's seeming more and more like his cautious and cowardly behavior from previous episodes were a reflection of a deep knowledge of how dark the world can get, which makes him more resistant to BreakTheCutie than Jemma.
* LastNameBasis: Even on a show where last names are used as standard, more so than any of the other characters; see Embarrassing First Name, above.
* LivingLegend:
** In "Seeds", he and Simmons are both revealed to be this to the science and tech students at S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy.
** There's the fact that nearly ''everyone'' within S.H.I.E.L.D. - including Dr Stretian and Nick Fury - seems to know them by reputation even before they join Coulson's team, up to and including referring to them by their PortmanteauCoupleName. Only IneffectualLoner types like Ward and non-agents are ever surprised to discover they're [[TheDividual two people]]. [[invoked]]
* LovableCoward: Fitz and danger do not mix at all. He had to be strong armed by Simmons into accepting the field assignments, complains bitterly any time they're forced to leave the Bus, is squeamish about everything, can be seen clinging to pillars and hiding in corners when things get crazy, balks when faced with anything remotely actiony, etc. Yet he's always portrayed as cutesy and adorable about it, and he can swallow his fear enough to still pitch in when there's absolutely no other choice.
* MadnessMantra:
** His main method of communicating important information with everyone other than his hallucination of Simmons after suffering brain damage, as in his insistent repetitions of "I didn't solve this today!" in "Heavy is the Head". Unfortunately, most of Team Coulson write it off as self-pity at best, meaningless babble at worst; luckily, Mack proves adept at figuring him out.
** He briefly develops another one in "Aftershocks", due to his belief that he's hallucinating Skye's blood test results due to his stress over Trip's death: "There's something wrong with the data in my brain."
* MeaningfulName:
** A character named Leo who apparently [[EmbarrassingFirstName doesn't like to be called by his first name]] and reluctantly fulfills all the criteria of a CowardlyLion archetype? You don't say.
** "Fitz" as a prefix to a surname used to indicate an illegitimate son, often of a man of high status; Fitz several times mentions that [[DisappearedDad his mother raised him alone]]. This may be {{Foreshadowing}} something, or it could be that the writers based his family history on the name's meaning as an in-joke.
* {{Megane}}: When he and Simmons go undercover in "The Singularity". It helps that he's a nerd in a nice suit.
* MenCantKeepHouse: {{Discussed}} when Fitz sees Donnie's dorm room at S.H.I.E.L.D. academy, and comments that his old room looked exactly the same... except there was more laundry on the floor. {{Averted}} in that whenever his bunk on the Bus is shown, it's as tidy as anyone else's, implying that he grew out of this trope at some point; not to mention that it's usually ''him'' complaining that Simmons is the one messing up his (their) "pristine" lab space. He also excuses his flat refusal to enter Skye's bunk because "she's a slob, she leaves... lady things everywhere."
* MoralityChain: {{Downplayed}}, but "The Magical Place" implies that Simmons might be this to him, as Fitz sees absolutely nothing wrong with the deaths of any and all Centipede soldiers standing between them and Coulson (or in general) after Coulson gets kidnapped. It is Jemma who points out to him that they are being mind-controlled and can't help their actions and even then Fitz doesn't care.
* NecessarilyEvil: When Coulson was kidnapped he didn't care how many Centipede soldiers had to die to rescue him. When Skye was gut shot he agreed that the proposed methods of treatment sounded "diabolic" but that "you can't argue with the results."
* TheNicknamer: The first MCU character to say the word "Inhuman," in reference to Skye's impossibly fast heartbeat after becoming Quake.
* NonActionGuy: It's made very clear that he has no skills whatsoever with bullets or fists. Lampshaded when he laments not having learned kung-fu to prepare for the job. In "FZZT," this becomes a minor issue for him, hinting that he feels inadequate surrounded by the badass actions of people like Ward all the time.
* ObfuscatingDisability: When promising to act as Skye's SecretKeeper following his realisation that she's developed superpowers, he's able to successfully convince Simmons and May that nothing is wrong by using his usually total honesty, his acknowledged clumsiness, and the fact that he's been suffering from an apparent relapse in his mental health. Despite being two of the people who ought to be most attuned to him lying to them and that there's an atmosphere of almost total distrust around the base, they both accept what he says implicitly.
* OlderThanTheyLook: Gets teased for this when they visit the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy in "Seeds", when Skye and Simmons tease him for still being believable as a student despite being in his mid-twenties. Fitz counters that he'll still look good when they're "jealous, wrinkly old hags".
* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: {{Averted}}; he's an engineering and tech specialist who has a decent working knowledge of other disciplines, but it's very clear what his role in the team is and what his limitations are in areas like computer sciences and life sciences.
* PluckyComicRelief:
** Though everyone gets a certain amount of this, largely due to the [=MCU=] being a WorldOfSnark, Fitz fills this role most consistently due to his status as the ButtMonkey of the main cast. Often involves a FunnyBackgroundEvent, but he gets a fair bit of deliberate [[DeadpanSnarker snarking]] in as well.
** "FZZT" shows him attempting to fulfill this role InUniverse: while he and Simmons are desperately (and unsuccessfully) searching for the cure to the Chitauri virus she's been infected with, he makes a few jokes and tries to get her to smile. It even sort of works.
* ProudToBeAGeek: In addition to his unabashed geeking over all things related to engineering, he's shown to be a fan of ''Series/DoctorWho'' and ''{{VideoGame/Minecraft}}''. He's also revealed as the owner of the Grumpy Cat mug that finds its way into Playground Base in Season 2.
* PutOnABus:
** He's absent for the latter half of "The Beginning of the End" due to suffering severe oxygen deprivation as a result of his HeroicSacrifice to save Simmons. It's implied that he's in a coma and has suspected brain damage, but he's never seen on-screen again after Fury and Simmons pull him out of the ocean. This means he misses the final VFormationTeamShot of the season, leaving something of a CliffHanger as to whether this trope will stay in effect for Season 2.
** Ultimately {{Inverted}}, after a fashion: Fitz makes a partial recovery and re-joins the Team, but Simmons gets Put On A Bus for real; the version of her seen in the Season 2 premiere is revealed to be [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness Fitz's hallucination of her after she leaves]].
* RedOniBlueOni: Red to Simmons's blue, sometimes they're even ColourCodedForYourConvenience. Though interestingly, while he has the emotionalness and {{hot blooded}}ness of the Red Oni, he tends to be the cautious and worried one of the duo.
* RunningGag:
** His love of monkeys. This is apparently a bit of ActorSharedBackground[=/=]ThrowItIn from Iain De Caestecker.
** He has a tendency to get knocked out by someone every time he turns around. Simmons and Coulson even lampshade the latter in "Yes Men".
** No matter how dire the situation, Fitz can be relied upon to [[BigEater complain that he's hungry]], though he barely ever gets to eat, [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodSandwich even if the food is right there]].
** Fitz [[GreenEyedMonster does not like it]] when Simmons flirts with someone else or gets hit on, and his obvious annoyance forms a FunnyBackgroundEvent right up until he acknowledges how he feels about her and it stops being PlayedForLaughs.
* SavvyGuyEnergeticGirl: A {{Downplayed}} example with Simmons. It's clear Fitz's [[DidntWantAnAdventure only reason for joining the team]] was so that they could keep working together after Simmons decided to become a field agent, and he's openly apprehensive about going on missions, at least to begin with.
* ScreamsLikeALittleGirl: When falling victim to his own forgotten prank in "Repairs". It makes a particularly amusing contrast to his usual level-headedness when faced with a real crisis.
* SecretKeeper: He takes it upon himself to keep Skye's becoming an Inhuman from the rest of the team until they've calmed down from the event that caused it.
* ShipTease: Initially he's attracted to Skye, but from "FZZT" onward he experiences something of a drawn-out LoveEpiphany with regards to his formerly [[PlatonicLifePartners platonic]] relationship with Simmons.
* SkilledButNaive: The status of both him and Simmons when they join the team. Of everyone on the Bus, they are the least acclimated to the hardships of life and battle.
* StupidSexyFlanders: He's resigned to his hallucination of Simmons having a crush on Mack, and openly admits this probably means he agrees with her assessments of the latter's attractiveness.
* TantrumThrowing: Has an occasional tendency to do severe damage to the surfaces of lab tables when he's really, really upset.
* TheSmartGuy: Shares the role with Simmons because they're TheDividual. He specializes on the technological side of things.
* TheSoCalledCoward: After his CharacterDevelopment in "The Hub", he's more akin to this. His "cowardice" being more a matter of his opinions than his actions.
* TechnicalPacifist: He has no problems with firing [=ICERs=] at people, the prospect of helping torture someone, or trying to fight back with fisticuffs to defend himself, but if he has to ''kill'' someone, he balks at it.
* TeenGenius: He and Simmons were both mentioned to have been this back when they were at the Academy.
* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: Considering how things ended for him in Season One, Season Two begins with things not looking too bad for Fitz. He may have some pretty severe nominal aphasia, a touch of paranoia, and be on a string of medications, but since he could have been left brain-dead he got pretty lucky: He's still a capable engineer and Simmons is constantly by his side to reassure and encourage him. Except Simmons left months ago after deciding that her presence was hindering his recovery, but her absence only caused him to disconnect from reality completely, and now he's [[ImaginaryFriend hallucinating her and unable to work. What Fitz (and the audience) sees as frustrating but gradual recovery, the rest of Team Coulson recognises as a rapid descent into madness. However, in the second episode of Season Two, he shows that he's aware "Simmons" isn't really there despite the hallucination continuing to talk to him, and he's able to come up with a solution to stop Creel, but he needs Mack to essentially help translate his own ramblings to himself first]].
* ThrowingOffTheDisability: After Coulson describes him as too damaged to ever return to work in the Season 2 premiere, he does a pretty good job of demonstrating he's still valuable to the team in the following episodes, provided Mack can provide the missing words brought on by his aphasia and Hunter can do the physical work he's no longer able to since losing some of the mobility in his hands. Of course, Coulson's gloomy prognosis probably didn't take into account how much Fitz's psychological distress over Simmons leaving was holding back other aspects of his recovery.
* TookALevelInBadass:
** His CharacterArc in "The Hub" is about adding the 'badass' part to his BadassBookworm credentials.
** He goes up another level in "Laws of Nature" where he outsmarts mobsters and then escapes from them with his objective in hand.
* TookALevelInJerkass:
** He handles the events of "Turn, Turn, Turn" worst of all, and ever since then he's been [[BreakTheCutie generally less sociable and pleasant]].
** Season Two builds on this following the incident that leaves him brain-damaged. He's completely socially withdrawn, except from his hallucination of Simmons, to whom he's frequently irritable and unkind. He also shows a few more violent tendencies which were only hinted at in Season Two, though he limits himself to [[TantrumThrowing inanimate objects]] and Ward.
* TrademarkFavoriteFood: The very specific sandwich that [[ThroughHisStomach Simmons makes for him]] in "The Hub". His relationship with it has mutated into something of a CargoShip among the fanbase (and the cast themselves, if the "behind the scenes" photo showing Fitz and the sandwich happily reunited is anything to go by).
* TranquilFury: Fitz doesn't seem quite as furious as his teammates when it's his turn to rake Ward over the coals, but what he does to him... ''[[LaserGuidedKarma ain't that a kick in the head!]]''
* UndyingLoyalty:
** To Coulson. When the others begin to think he's acting erratically after HYDRA's return he tells the others to zip it.
** To Ward. Even after he's revealed to be TheMole, Fitz is the only person on the team who's still convinced that Ward must have a good reason for what he's done. After Ward tries to kill him and Simmons, this goes away.
** To Skye. When Simmons develops her bout of FantasticRacism and everyone else is wary of Skye's new powers, he's the only one who doesn't hesitate to be on her side 100%. He's her SecretKeeper for an episode or two, he stands up for her in arguments about her - he knows what it's like to suddenly be "different", and he refuses to treat her as he was treated.
* WideEyedIdealist: Just as Simmons seems ready to abandon this role towards the end of the season, Fitz takes it up, insisting that no-one is inherently evil, and that Ward must have genuinely cared for them. An unusual case in that this trope comes into effect ''after'' BreakTheCutie has comprehensively taken place for his character.
* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Seems to have a genuine fear of dead things and the possible diseases they can carry.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Jemma Simmons]]
!!''Dr. Jemma Simmons''
[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/simmons_jemma_1505.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''"I can't be a part of your bad-girl shenanigans! I like following the rules and doing what's expected of me! It makes me feel nice."'']]
->'''Portrayed By''': Creator/ElizabethHenstridge
->'''Appearances''': ''[[Series/AgentsOfSHIELD Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.]]''

A Level Five S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who specializes in biology and chemistry. She works alongside Leo Fitz, with the two of them sharing a close friendship. She is a member of Agent Coulson's team that is assembled to investigate strange events around the world.
----
* ActionSurvivor:
** She's becoming one in Season 2. Though far from a fully-fledged ActionGirl, she seems to be making a deliberate effort to become stronger and faster, even if it's just to ensure that she can evade her potential captors within HYDRA until her extraction team arrives. It comes in handy in "A Hen in the Wolf House".
** She later skirts the line between ActionGirl and ActionSurvivor. While she's still the least combat capable female on the team, she proves her skill in "The Dirty Half Dozen," where she's not afraid to jump into active combat situations and even shoots a few HYDRA soldiers on her own. And then she's able to overpower and kill Bakshi.
** She gets ''another'' such experience in Season 3, where it is revealed that the monolith teleported her to some kind of alien world after absorbing her, where she has been surviving alone ever since. She is seen on the run from something unknown, but having become well versed in the terrain after months of being stuck - including knowing to cover a cut with mud to mask the scent of blood.
* AdmiringTheAbomination: She's inappropriately excited to learn that Centipede has managed to keep its super-soldiers from exploding.
* {{Adorkable}}: Especially when it comes to biological mysteries. See NightmareFetishist below.
* AgentScully: In "The Well", she doubts any magical elements in their investigation and prefers to look for scientific reasoning instead. This is pretty heavily shown when the explanation she choses is that the Berserker staff causes the release of anger-causing chemicals in the brain... [[MathematiciansAnswer which just means that the staff causes anger, the exact problem she wanted to solve in the first place]].
* AllLovingHero: She's the only one on the Bus with any sympathy for the Centipede soldiers. Then she plays Rochambeau with Fitz over which one of them gets to torture the prisoner, so this trope is downplayed.
* BadassBookworm: Explicitly averted, the first thing we learn about her and Fitz is that they're not combat-capable. Her first level in badass was in T.R.A.C.K.S., when she does what most of Steve Rogers' training platoon didn't have the cojones to do and jumps on a grenade to save Skye and Fitz's lives. Granted, it wasn't a lethal grenade, but she didn't know that, and neither did Steve. The Season One finale sees her [[TookALevelInBadass taking another level in badass]], when she refuses to let Fitz pull a HeroicSacrifice to save her life, and instead manages to save them both.
* BadBadActing: As a result of being a BadLiar.
** On a couple of occasions she attempts to overcome her inability to lie convincingly by deciding what she's going to say beforehand. Needless to say, it backfires, and she ends up either speaking completely tonelessly or over-doing the emotional delivery.
** {{Averted}} in Season Two: While she still believes she can't handle telling direct lies, she's become ''very'' good at evasively delivering half-truths and ExactWords as part of her role as Coulson's ReverseMole within HYDRA.
* BadLiar: A RunningGag. Nearly every episode starting with "The Hub" has at least one incident.
** When Agent Sitwell catches her helping Skye get into the Hub's database in "The Hub", her hilariously inept attempt at deceiving him starts with trying to convince him she's looking for a bathroom, heads on through an amazingly bad attempt at flirting/seduction, and ends with shooting him with the Night-Night gun because she talked to Skye over the earpiece right in front of him. All the while, Skye pleads with her to ''stop talking''.
** In "T.R.A.C.K.S.", she tries to compensate with an overly-elaborate backstory which fools [[CreatorCameo Stan Lee]].
** In "Turn, Turn, Turn," Triplett lampshades it, saying that if they're ever interrogated she should just let him talk.
** In Season Two, Skye calls her lying skills "a horror show". In truth, she's gotten ''much'' better during the hiatus, because Coulson assigned her to be S.H.I.E.L.D.'s ReverseMole inside HYDRA.
** By "One Door Closes" any thought that she is still this is destroyed. When Bobbi and Mack are revealed to be moles, Bobbi visits Jemma, unaware that she was aware. Simmons is able to trick Bobbi into holding two objects that knock her out. To reiterate, she sold a professional spy and one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s best agents on a deception, and both the audience and said agent ''never saw it coming!''
%%* BeautyBrainsAndBrawn: The Brains to Skye's Beauty and May's Brawn.
* BeautyIsNeverTarnished:
** When infected with a rapid-acting fatal virus in "FZZT", she becomes increasingly pale and ill-looking, but far from unattractive for it, especially compared to the other sufferers shown early in the episode, who are shown to be ''haggard'' by the equivalent stage of infection.
** Happens again in "Beginning of the End": despite having apparently hit her head hard enough to knock her out for several hours when the medical pod fell into the ocean, she has nothing more to show for it than a slight cut on her forehead.
** It gets {{averted}} in "Laws of Nature", where her appearance makes it clear that the DeathWorld she's been transported to via the Monolith hasn't been kind to her. Her clothing is ragged, her hair is a mess, she's covered in dirt and grime, and there's a sizable cut on her forehead that she's forced to clean with nothing but a smear of mud.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: When Ward is transferred to his brother's custody, she promises to kill him if they meet again. In "The Dirty Half Dozen" she tries to make good on that promise with the most horrific method available... and almost succeeds.
* BirdsOfAFeather: Her and Fitz, as everyone never fails to notice, thus "Fitz-Simmons".
* BondOneLiner: A non-fatal example, when Raina gets arrested at the end of "The Magical Place".
-->'''Simmons:''' I bet there's no flower dresses where she's going.
* BreakTheCutie:
** Downplayed, but since she's the most naive and idealistic member of the team to begin with, it's pretty inevitable that bad events clearly hit her hard. Becomes a plot point after the "Uprising" ReTool arc. Simmons is so disillusioned by HYDRA's takeover of S.H.I.E.L.D. that she openly admits she doesn't even know why she's staying with TheTeam any more. Season 2 begins with the revelation that she's left S.H.I.E.L.D. entirely after deciding that she's unable to help Fitz's recovery. When she came back, she told Mack that she already knew her presence made Fitz worse.
** It gets even worse in "Aftershocks", when Trip's death hits her so hard that she develops a reactionary [[FantasticRacism hatred]] towards ''anyone'' with superpowers, and goes so far as to say that she's partly to blame due to spending her career trying to research and harness said powers rather than just wipe them out. Basically everything she's ever stood for up until this point, and every relationship she's developed within S.H.I.E.L.D., has been turned on its head.
** In Season 3 she's left with severe PTSD after spending months being hunted on an alien world, completely alone.
* CanonForeigner: She had no comic book counterpart before the show started.
* CanonImmigrant: The ''S.H.I.E.L.D.'' ongoing comic begins in December 2014
* ChildProdigy: She was seventeen when she joined S.H.I.E.L.D. academy, which she did ''after'' getting two [=PhD=]s.
* TheCutie: Lovely and adorkable woman who doesn't hold a grudge. Unless you're Ward, in which case she's completely willing to kill. Following Trip's death, [[BreakTheCutie she's completely lost this trait and has become very bitter and business-like.]]
* DeepCoverAgent: As Coulson's ReverseMole inside HYDRA in Season 2 but she's only halfway to establishing a true deep cover identity: Coulson notes that while she's no longer in contact with anyone from S.H.I.E.L.D. other than him, she has yet to make any friends within HYDRA.
* DitzyGenius: She's undeniably brilliant with biotechnology, but is ''hopeless'' at trying to [[BadLiar conceal her motivations from others]], and [[FailedASpotCheck can never remember to perform a simple spot-check]] before she starts talking in front of someone who shouldn't be listening.
* TheDividual: Fitz and Simmons spend so much time together that they're usually just referred to as "Fitz-Simmons".
** The latter half of Season One sees Fitz-Simmons dealing with the fallout from the HYDRA uprising, Fitz's LoveEpiphany towards Simmons, and Simmons's growing closeness to Triplett and uncertainty about her dedication to the new S.H.I.E.L.D.
** In season 2, Fitz' brain damage and Simmons's sudden departure from the team leads him to hallucinate her presence as an extension of his subconscious in order to maintain this relationship. She tries to guide him on his way to recovery. When the real Simmons returns, this trope is defied; Simmons and Mack each note that Fitz's condition worsens in her presence, leading to more scenes of them apart while they actively avoid each other.
** By the end of season 2 they have reconnected to the point where she can start a plan that requires Fitz's assistance, without telling him that she even has a plan, because she knows he will pick up her train of thought without words.
* EatingTheEyeCandy: In "The Bridge", Mike's physique has Simmons fumbling her way through several cringe-worthy sentences. She also insists on taking Mike's measurements by hand despite Fitz pointing out that they have a machine that could do that.
* EveryonesBabySister: Her near-fatal viral contamination in "FZZT" reveals this attitude among the other team members, most surprisingly [[TheStoic May]] and [[IceQueen Ward]]. This is probably due to her non-combatant status and relative youth as far as field agents go: even May is noticeably distressed at her condition, saying "She's only a kid."
* FakeDefector: In "Afterlife", she pretends to betray Team Coulson for the "real" S.H.I.E.L.D. and be clueless about how to open the MacGuffin while sending Fitz away with the real deal and his favorite sandwich.
* FantasticRacism: Trip's death causes her to turn hard on people with superpowers, right when Skye has developed her own.
* FinishingEachOthersSentences: She and Fitz. They also frequently tend to talk over each other mid-sentence, saying the same thing synonymously before ending on the same word. During Fitz's field mission in "The Hub" she starts trying to do this with Skye instead, less successfully.
* ForScience: Her cover story inside HYDRA is that her loyalty is to science and that as long as HYDRA allows her to perform the experiments she wants, then they can count on her.
* GainingTheWillToKill: In season 2, she threatens to ''kill'' Ward. Later in the same season, she advocates killing Raina - and possibly the other Inhumans as well - rather than bringing them in for study. Then, towards the end of the season, she attempts to murder Ward, despite his nominally working with them, and is utterly unfazed by accidentally having killed Bakshi instead.
* GenkiGirl: She is the most energetic and upbeat member of the team, second only to Skye.
* GracefulInTheirElement: Simmons may be a terrible liar, lousy fighter, and a horrible flirt, but place her in a lab or talk to her about biology and she definitely shows how she earned her place on the Bus.
* {{Hallucinations}}: The subject of them, rather than the one suffering from them: her only presence in several episodes of Season 2 is Fitz's prolonged hallucination of her. The real Simmons left months ago after deciding that her presence was harming his recovery.
* HasAType: Seems to be very attracted to physically fit black men, much to Fitz's chagrin. (See EatingTheEyeCandy, above.) Amusingly, even Fitz's hallucination of her makes appreciative comments about Mack. In S2, Simmons can also be seen appreciatively eyeing Agent May's ex-husband (played by Blair Underwood).
* HeelRealization: "Real S.H.I.E.L.D." seems to have made her realize how much of a jerk she's been acting to Fitz and what damage her FantasticRacism really could do.
* HeroicSacrifice: Jemma seems very prone to these. In "FZZT", she throws herself off the Bus to prevent an alien viral infection from blowing her up and taking the team down with her. In "T.R.A.C.K.S.", she throws herself on a man with a dendrotoxin grenade (in the heat of the moment she assumed it was lethal) to save Fitz and Skye.
* HeroicSuicide: She attempts this by jumping out of the cargo bay in "FZZT" when she believes a viral infection might cause her to die ''and'' take out the Bus. Fortunately, an [[InsistentTerminology antiserum]] had been successfully synthesized, and Ward is able to parachute after her and [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome cure her mid-air]].
* HeWhoFightsMonsters: Jemma's hatred for Grant Ward is so intense that she tries to disintegrate him while his back is turned.
* HotScientist: In true Marvel tradition, the woman with two [=PHD=]'s in hard to pronounce fields is also attractive.
* HopeBringer: She takes it upon herself to be the sole source of hope on the Monolith Planet. Will had long since given up on ever going home before she showed up.
* HumbleHero:
** PlayedStraight on the only two occasions in Season One where she does something [[TookALevelInBadass legitimately]] [[BadassBookworm badass]]: She either never mentions it again (as when she jumps on a grenade to save Fitz and Skye in "T.R.A.C.K.S.") or refuses to accept that what she did was heroic (when Fury commends her for saving Fitz's life in "The Beginning of the End", she will only answer that "It was the other way around", even though both are technically true). Contrast with Fitz and Skye, who are both shown to be at least mildly impressed whenever they TookALevelInBadass.
** Usually {{Averted}} in that she's very much aware of how brilliant she is at biochemistry, and while not usually arrogant about it, isn't afraid to state the facts of the matter. However, she does berate herself when her shortcomings as TheMedic are revealed by her inability to outright save Skye's life in "T.A.H.I.T.I.", despite the fact that she's not a medical doctor and acquitted herself very well under the circumstances.
* {{Hypocrite}}: She begins to develop FantasticRacism towards people with superpowers in Season 2, but claims that she could never feel that way towards Skye, because they're friends., even though she abandonded Fitz when he started to change for the worse. Fitz quickly calls her out on the DoubleStandard.
* IAmVeryBritish: Compared to the more [[UsefulNotes/BritishAccents Glaswegian-sounding]] Fitz, Simmons usually has a RP accent that's similar to Creator/KeiraKnightley, except when her Yorkshire accent shows through (Henstridge was born in [[OopNorth Sheffield]]). Becomes less pronounced as the series goes on, and Henstridge's natural accent now seems to be more or less the character's as well.
* IllGirl: In "FZZT" while infected with the Chitauri virus.
* ImaginaryFriend: After she leaves the team, Fitz creates an imaginary version of her to both cope with the loss and to help him finish his own sentences. After Mack starts interacting with him, he seems to be aware that she's not actually there, and starts to phase the imaginary Simmons out.
* InnocentlyInsensitive: Has a tendency to come across as hurtful when she's trying to be nice.
** Specifically, her remark to Coulson about his fitness level "for a man of your age" makes him feel old.
** Her attempt to reassure Fitz that "I'm not saying ''you're'' weak, I'm saying ''all men'' are weak" after he's mind-controlled by Lorelei - which carries a much worse implication that she completely misses because ItMakesSenseInContext (to her, anyway).
** Her treatment of Fitz in Season 2, she can't help treating him like old self, and it just hurts the brain-damaged Fitz even more.
** Though she doesn't know it, her treatment of Skye in "Aftershocks": she heatedly defends her new FantasticRacism to Skye, arguing that superpowers are an epidemic and should be wiped out, right as Skye realises that she herself has just developed superpowers. Coming from one of her best friends within S.H.I.E.L.D., it was just about the last thing Skye needed to hear right then.
* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: After Trip dies she gets more ruthless, upping the stopping power of the [=ICERs=] despite potential side effects and taking a more hard-line approach to stopping them. When Coulson teams up with Ward for a mission to raid a HYDRA base, she brings along a splinter bomb to kill him, though she ends up getting Bashki when he takes the bullet for Ward.
* TheKnightsWhoSaySquee:
** In Season 2, she's practically giddy with excitement at the fact that she's holding an order signed by Peggy Carter herself, and can't stop gushing to May about how awesome it is that S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded by a British woman.
** In the episode where she first meets Bobbi, she can't stop telling everyone (including Bobbi herself) how awesome she thinks she is.
* LivingLegend:
** In "Seeds", she and Fitz are both revealed to be this to the science and tech students at S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy.
** There's also the fact that ''everyone'' within S.H.I.E.L.D. - including Dr Stretian and Nick Fury - seems to know them by reputation even before they join Coulson's team. Stretian is shown to be concerned to learn about them joining since he knows they're not combat capable, and Fury knows them at least well enough to realise they'll help Coulson modify the plane's interior in their spare time if he doesn't put a stop to it.
* MadScientist: Just a bit. When Skye wonders how long an Asgardian has been living on Earth, Simmons suggests cutting him open to find out. Skye then suggests the much simpler option of asking him.
* MasterOfTheMixedMessage: It's pretty obvious from the beginning that Simmons is in love with Fitz - they're BirdsOfAFeather and EveryoneCanSeeIt. Heck, she ''smothers'' him in kisses when he finally gets the nerve to tell her how he feels about her. Except that she never thought of him that way, and it was such a shock that she had to go away for a while to clear her head, but she still really does care about him, but just as a friend. [[BlatantLies Probably. How would she know, since she's never thought about it?]] Though she doesn't like seeing him happy with someone else, even though it's [[AmbiguouslyBi probably]] platonic. She tells Bobbi that she's ''definitely'' not interested in him that way, and then Bobbi tells her that she's putting out as many as ''ten'' signals that say she's lying. Not that it matters, because he kept secrets from her and she hates him now.Then she gets scared and she still desperately wants him to hold her hand, and when it looks like they're going to be separated for another indefinite period she signs her note to him "Love, Jemma x". As if poor Fitz didn't have a hard enough time keeping his sense of reality in check...
* MasterPoisoner: Given her specialty in biology and chemistry, she's the go-to for creating poisons, knock out chemicals, or other drugs.
* MeaningfulName: "Jemma" echoes "Gemini", the star sign symbolised by twins, as she's one-half of TheDividual, along with Fitz (whose own first name, Leo, is also that of an astrological sign).
* TheMedic: Out of the whole team she has the most medical experience, which she likely picked up during her biology studies. Though it should be noted that she is ''not'' a medical doctor, just that she knows slightly advanced first aid. When Skye is shot and almost dies, Simmons identifies a hyperbaric chamber that would keep her alive temporarily, but still stresses that she ''will'' die if not taken to a hospital.
* {{Meganekko}}: Part of her disguise as Coulson's "daughter" in "T.R.A.C.K.S." is a pair of glasses.
* TheMole: In "Making Friends & Influencing People", it's briefly made to look as though she may have been a HYDRA mole all along. Then, it's revealed that she's actually Coulson's ReverseMole inside HYDRA.
* MomentKiller: Can be a Type 3 at times, which fits in with her occasional social awkwardness. Is particularly guilty of this where Fitz is involved, managing to inadvertently derail any attempt he makes to discuss his feelings with her. She's also done this at least once to Ward: when he imitates her bad impression of him as an attempted ice-breaker, she ends up correcting it, which leaves him looking confused.
* MoralityChain: {{Downplayed}}, and even mildly PlayedForLaughs on occasion: Fitz (and sometimes Skye) have to remind her now and again that it's inappropriate to get over-excited about the opposition's success because it advances her own interests, or to discuss dissecting someone who is in fact still alive.
* NerdsLoveToughSchoolwork: Fitz admits that she's probably cleverer than he is, ''technically'', "but only because she loves homework more than ''life itself''."
* NiceGirl: By far the sweetest character on the show, though that's been slipping in the second season.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Season 2 opens after Simmons has left, believing that her presence was somehow harming Fitz's chances of recovery. In reality, her absence breaks the last connection with reality he has, to the point where he ''doesn't even know'' that she's gone and hallucinates her presence, or his recovery is actually declining alarmingly.
* NightmareFetishist:
** Every time she encounters something weird, gooey, and dripping, she coos and squees over it like a little kid that just got a new stuffed toy.
--->'''Simmons:''' Oh wow, it's actually dripping! Fun!
** In the second episode, this extends to being excited about being in a place with lots of dangerously venomous snakes around, which alarms Fitz.
** Her well-meaning attempts to explain to others (especially Skye or [[LovableCoward Fitz]]) that something potentially deadly is in fact adorable and fascinating often just makes them more nervous.
** Toyed with in "FZZT" where she's excitedly detailing to Coulson how a deadly virus spreads as the latter realizes that she's infected. As she rambles on, Coulson quietly quarantines her.
* NoSocialSkills: {{Downplayed}} when compared to the more pure example provided by Ward, but it's increasingly clear that although she genuinely likes most people, she has very little idea of how [[NightmareFetishist weird]] she occasionally comes across as in conversation. Fitz seems to provide a buffer to some of her more awkward attempts to express herself, and she gets noticeably worse during his absence in "The Hub".
* ObliviousToLove: As Fitz's feelings for her grow more and more obvious to him and to others, Simmons seems to be more and more clueless that he feels more than friendship for her.
* OmnidisciplinaryScientist:
** Played with; Like Fitz she is a specialist (though different iterations of the character are in slightly different fields: biochemistry in the show, xenobiology in the comics), and has a good working knowledge of other areas, but very clearly defined limitations outside of what she's specifically trained in.
** She acts as TheMedic purely on the basis that she has a Ph.D. in biology, despite most of what she says about her previous work indicating that she's never actually studied human anatomy or medical science, and in fact May seems to have more experience of treating injuries sustained in the field. It's {{Justified}} in that she's just good enough at what she does to get by in advanced first aid; she certainly doesn't have the calm response in a medical crisis that an M.D. would, and is shown on occasion to be near to tears if she's forced to work on critically injured patients.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness:
** Jemma is undoubtedly one of the nicest people on Coulson's team, and she probably wouldn't hurt a fly. That's why her firm declaration that she would kill Ward should he ever return is so disturbing.
** In the second half of Season Two, she rants that the various horrible things that have happened recently are all her fault for wanting to study aliens and superhumans when she should have been trying to eradicate them, and advocates a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later policy.
* PrecisionFStrike: Two in "4,722 Hours".
** First, almost as soon as she's trapped on the alien world, she asks, "Where the hell am I?"
** Later, after ''finally'' picking up some good food on the alien world, she triumphantly shouts, "You're dinner, bitch!"
* ProudToBeAGeek: In addition to her open fascination with all things biology and chemistry, she makes fannish references to ''Literature/HarryPotter'' and ''Series/DoctorWho'', and apparently plays ''{{VideoGame/Minecraft}}''.
* PutOnABus: The ''real'' Simmons is long gone by the Season 2 premiere, having left S.H.I.E.L.D. in the belief that her presence was harming Fitz's chances of recovery; the version the audience sees is just [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness Fitz's hallucination of her, demonstrating that her plan did not work at all.]]
* RedOniBlueOni: Blue to Fitz's red, sometimes they're even ColourCodedForYourConvenience. Though interestingly, while she has the StiffUpperLip and even-temperedness of the Blue Oni, she tends to be the one of the duo who's adventurous and most excited about new things.
* ReverseMole: She's no longer on Team Coulson in Season 2, but the third episode reveals that's because she's infiltrated HYDRA on Coulson's orders.
* RunningGag:
** Simmons is a very BadLiar, which makes undercover work nearly impossible. This becomes significant in Season 2, where she's perfect as Coulson's ReverseMole because HYDRA are well aware she can't even beat a lie detector.
** In social interactions generally she often comes across as slightly... ''odd''. A combination of her InnocentlyInsensitive and NightmareFetishist comments often manage to insult, offend, or just freak out the person she's talking to. Chances are about fifty-fifty whether she spots it herself and tries to undo the damage, or if Fitz or Skye have to jump in and stop her talking.
** Her [[HasAType noticeable appreciation of physically fit black men]], usually conducted so that [[GreenEyedMonster Fitz]] can't help but notice it. In Season 2, even Fitz's hallucination of her gets in on the act.
* SavvyGuyEnergeticGirl: A {{Downplayed}} example with her and Fitz. She's the one who wanted to be a field agent and is happy to deal with hazardous materials as part of her work; Fitz DidntWantAnAdventure and is more cautious about what aspects of the work he voluntarily gets involved in.
* ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight: She may have flubbed it up, but in "The Hub" Skye has no problem talking Simmons into helping her to hack S.H.I.E.L.D. for information on Fitz and Ward's mission when she plays off Simmons's concern for "their boys", which far outweighs her concern for following the rules.
* SheCleansUpNicely:
** When disguised as Coulson's estranged "daughter" in "T.R.A.C.K.S.". Who'd have thought she'd look so good [[Film/ThorTheDarkWorld wearing lady clothes]]? Jane Foster would probably feel upstaged at that point.
** Downplayed in "The Singularity". Her disguise there is not ''quite'' as feminine as the one from "T.R.A.C.K.S.", but she still looks pretty snazzy, especially with that chic [[HellBentForLeather red leather jacket]].
* ShipTease:
** She becomes the focus of a LoveTriangle with Fitz and Triplett towards the end of Season One, though it's not quite clear to what extent she returns either of their feelings. However, she does respond quite positively to Fitz's DyingDeclarationOfLove in the Season One finale.
** She's also quite prone to EatingTheEyeCandy whenever Mike Peterson's around, and attracted the romantic advances of [[DirtyOldMan Prof. Randolph.]]
* SkilledButNaive: The status of both her and Fitz when they join the team. Of everyone on the Bus, they are the least acclimated to the hardships of life and battle.
* TheSmartGuy: Shares this role with Fitz because they're TheDividual. She focuses on biological issues TheTeam encounters. In the words of Coulson, she has two Ph.Ds in fields he can't pronounce.
* StupidSexyFlanders: Bobbi appeals to Simmons very much, particularly once she starts beating down people.
* TeenGenius: She and Fitz were both mentioned to have been this back when they were at the Academy.
* ThroughHisStomach:
** You know the sandwich Fitz was looking forward to eating in "The Hub"? She made it for him and was very eager to hear if he liked it.
** In "Nothing Personal", her solution to cheer up Coulson, Fitz and Triplett after their discovery that the rest of the team have gone missing is to make pancakes.
* TookALevelInBadass: Though still probably the least combat-capable of the team by the end of Season One, she does get a couple of moments:
** In "T.R.A.C.K.S." she doesn't hesitate to jump on a live grenade to save Fitz and Skye (her only comment before doing so being "[[MajorInjuryUnderreaction Oh bloody hell!]]"). Luckily it's only a dendrotoxin grenade that knocks her out for a few hours, but none of them knew that at the time.
** In "The Beginning of the End" she refuses to allow Fitz to pull a HeroicSacrifice to save her life, and instead of swimming to safety by herself like he wanted, drags him along with her.
** She takes another major one during her absence between "The Beginning of the End" and "Making Friends and Influencing People". The latter reveals that she's the ReverseMole for Coulson within HYDRA. It's unclear whether she volunteered for the role or was offered it, but she carries it off much better than she would have done in Season One.
** In "A Fractured House," Simmons explicitly and boldly tells Ward that if she ever sees him again, she'll kill him herself. Again, ''[[NiceGirl Simmons]]'' tells ''[[OneManArmy Ward]]'' that she will kill him without a hint of hesitation.
** "Laws of Nature" shows she can give Survivorman a run for his money. [[spoiler: She survived months, by herself, on alien planet, with nothing but the clothes on her back, while something was chasing her.]]
* TookALevelInJerkass: More subtly than Fitz perhaps, but in Season Two she's less pleasant than in Season One, partly due to losing her status as the resident WideEyedIdealist of the team.
** Particularly, her framing of her HYDRA lab partner to save herself (even though he wasn't an innocent bystander), her near-constant verbal sparring with Mack, and her inability to deal maturely with the increasing messiness of her relationship with Fitz, generally make her less [[TheCutie unambiguously sympathetic]] than in the first season.
** There's also the fact that she [[GainingTheWillToKill threatened to kill Ward]], but it's easy to see how her actions on that occasion could be entirely justified.
** Then she develops FantasticRacism just as Skye becomes a superhuman herself.
** Episodes in the second half of Season 2 continues, as she develops new ICErs, that are more powerful but also risk permanent damage.
%%* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: Girly girl to Skye's tomboy. Now with, Bobbi Morse, after she was found out by HYDRA and re-joined the team.
* TownGirls: The (lovely, idealistic and adorkable) Femme to May's Butch and Skye's Neither.
* TheUnfavorite: The ''S.H.I.E.L.D.'' comics give her a brother and sister to whom her father compares her unfavourably.
* WalkingSpoiler: ''Every'' trope associated with her role in Season 2 has been thoroughly spoiler tagged for this reason. Between her being Fitz's hallucination for much of her screen-time and promos indicating that the ''real'' Simmons defected to HYDRA when she's truly Coulson's ReverseMole, it's almost impossible to discuss her character with someone who hasn't seen the new season yet.
* WhatTheHellHero:
** In "FZZT", Coulson rakes her and Ward over the coals for jumping off the Bus during the climax.
-->'''Coulson''': Don't get me wrong -- I'm happy you're both alive, truly, and I realize you were trying to save the team -- but what you did today? That was not your call. Just getting you out of the water -- do you have any idea what a pain it is dealing with the Moroccan office? Don't you ever pull a stunt like that again! We'd hate to lose you, Jemma.
** She comes in for one of these courtesy of Skye and Trip in "Heavy is the Head": they're ''not'' happy with her for leaving Fitz and the rest of the team. They have to rethink that line of thinking in "Making Friends and Influencing People" when they realize that she didn't in fact just leave them, and Fitz, because she wanted to but to [[ReverseMole infiltrate HYDRA. At that point they get it - they just don't know if she's going to survive it, considering she's such a bad liar.]].
* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes:
** Despite her total fearlessness when in close proximity to insects, reptiles, rodents, dead bodies, and carriers of infectious disease, in "Providence" she's anxious at the prospect of there being [[BearsAreBadNews bears]] ''anywhere'' within scanning range.
** After nearly falling to her death in "FZZT", she mentions an increased fear of heights once or twice, which becomes a minor difficulty in "The Well". It doesn't really come up much later because she was making a conscious effort to avoid letting it develop into a full-blown phobia.
* WideEyedIdealist:
** Simmons likes following the rules. It makes her feel nice!
** Later {{Averted}}: Simmons becomes massively disillusioned with S.H.I.E.L.D. following the "Uprising" arc, and after learning of Ward's betrayal, she's ready to accept that some people are inherently evil, while Fitz is the one arguing that no-one is simply a bad person for no reason. It gets worse after the incident in the Kree city, after which she becomes the one to push hardest for just putting superhumans down.
* WomenAreWiser: {{Subverted}}. Simmons often hints that she ''thinks'' this (especially of herself in relation to Fitz), but while it's sometimes true (even he's forced to admit she's probably the more intelligent of the pair), he's more capable of adapting quickly to tasks outside of his comfort zone, and is generally better at dealing with people who aren't helpful allies.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Antoine "Trip" Triplett]]
!!''Antoine "Trip" Triplett''
[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/triplett_antoine_5248.jpg]]
->'''Portrayed by''': Creator/BJBritt
->'''Appearances''': ''[[Series/AgentsOfSHIELD Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.]]'' (Introduced in ''[[Recap/AgentsOfSHIELDS1E14TAHITI Episode 14: "T.A.H.I.T.I."]])

A Level Six S.H.I.E.L.D. agent working with Agent Garrett since Ward's promotion. He and Garrett assist Coulson's team in several missions during the hunt for the Clairvoyant. Trip soon joined the team on a permanent basis after HYDRA's continued existence was exposed.
----
* TheAce: Aside from being a bonafide {{badass}}, he's smart enough to understand every word that Fitz says. He can also fly a plane and anything else Coulson needs him to do.
* AlwaysSomeoneBetter: Fitz is starting to see him as this due to his closeness with Simmons and his status as TheAce.
* BadassBeard: He's got an awesome beard.
* BadassFamily: His grandfather is a Howling Commando!
* BaldOfAwesome: He's bald and he's awesome.
* BigBrotherInstinct: Seems to have inherited Ward's attitude towards [=FitzSimmons=] in this regard. When the gun turret in "Providence" starts firing into the group, Triplett can be seen covering Simmons's retreat and then pulling Fitz out of the way before diving for cover himself.
* CanonForeigner: Unlike many other major recurring characters on the show (particularly S.H.I.E.L.D. agents), but like the main cast members, Triplett has no comic book counterpart.
* {{Catchphrase}}: His all-purpose "Damn!".
** Also according to his team "Come on gurl!"
* CulturedBadass: Much to Fitz' consternation.
-->'''Triplett:'''...but I'm telling you, he's chasing the white whale.\\
'''Fitz:''' Okay, have you even read ''Literature/MobyDick''?\\
'''Triplett:''' Yeah, have you?\\
''[beat]''\\
'''Fitz:''' That's not the point.
* CynicismCatalyst: His death turns him into one for half the cast. Simmons's FantasticRacism comes due to blaming superpowers and the pursuit/study of them for causing Trip's death, Skye is shown to blame herself immensely which likely contributes towards her PowerIncontinence, and Mack and Bobbi consider his death (as well as Mack's brainwashing) the final straw that causes them to turn against Coulson's leadership that leads to 'real' S.H.I.E.L.D. shutting him down. As noted the episode following, they're going to laugh a lot less without him.
* DeadpanSnarker: Snarks to Ward about the Bus being tricked out and how he'll probably find the brig "between the Jacuzzi and the Squash Court". He and Fitz, who also employs this trope a lot, trade insults more or less every time they talk to one another. It helps that they share a LoveInterest.
* DeadPartner: His partner in Garret's team was Damon Rowe, who was killed by Ian Quinn's men thanks to information provided by the Clairvoyant. Triplett had to tell Rowe's six year old son about his father's death and wants to kill the Clairvoyant for it.
* DyingMomentOfAwesome: Downplayed, but it's there. Upon hearing that Coulson and Skye were in the alien city, he immediately jumps back into the city, WITHOUT the hazmat suit he had on earlier. He proceeds to find and disarm the four bombs that he and Fitz-Simmons just set up, when earlier, they had to SPLIT UP for them to make it out with "ten minutes to spare". Finally, he makes it into the room where Skye and Raina are in just before it's sealed, though this proves to be fatal for him. He does manage to break the Diviner before he gets TakenForGranite, thus preventing a widespread catastrophe.
* FakeGuestStar: He appears in all but one episode in the final run of Season One, has as much screen-time as the leads and is a full member of Coulson's team (essentially replacing Ward) by the end, but is still billed as a guest star. This is still the case in Season Two, despite the popular belief that he'd be promoted to lead cast and the fact that he appears in every episode. Justified as he barely makes it to the halfway point of Season Two before carking it.
* FamousAncestor: His grandfather is one of the [[Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger Howling Commandos]]. Quite possibly where he gets his CulturedBadass from. We never did find out which one, though. [[note]] The {{Fandom}} assumes it's Gabe Jones because he was the only established African-American Commando at the time the fact was revealed and Trip uses "General Jones" as an alias in one episode. [[/note]]
* GoodCounterpart: For Ward; he joins Team Coulson as the replacement [[TheBigGuy Big Guy]] while Ward turns out to be HYDRA. Also, both of them worked under Garrett, but Triplett is a loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.
* TheGoodGuysAlwaysWin: Espouses this belief in "The Only Light in the Darkness". His grandfather kicked HYDRA's ass back in the day and he's going to do the same thing now.
* HeroicSacrifice: Had Trip not shattered the crystal, the Terrigen Mists would have spread much farther, triggering widespread mutations and chaos.
* HiddenDepths: Fitz repeatedly makes the mistake of treating Trip like DumbMuscle and is continuously flustered whenever he tries to explain something only for Trip to already know it, or even show him up.
* IAintGotTimeToBleed: One of the team's more combat-effective members. Despite still recovering from a life threatening wound, Tripp manages to run around and disarm four remote bombs before they detonate and kill everyone in the Underground city.
* TheKnightsWhoSaySquee: Like Coulson, he's very enthusiastic about his grandfather's old S.H.I.E.L.D. gear.
* LiterallyShatteredLives: After he dies, his body crumbles to pieces almost immediately due to the effects of Skye's new earthquake powers on his petrified remains, presumably so there's no way for fans to speculate that HesJustHiding or for the writers to back out and claim [[OnlyMostlyDead he got better.]]
* TheMedic: He has medical training, which is why he stays aboard The Bus to assist Simmons in treating Skye rather than accompanying the other field agents into the Guest House.
* MexicanStandoff: Has one with Hand and several of her agents after HYDRA came out of hiding within S.HI.E.L.D. and making Triplett and Jemma believe she was a HYDRA plant, which in-turn makes Hand state that he was now the 7th person she could trust.
* NiceGuy: A genuinely good and kindhearted man, Trip never let any of the evils he saw in the world shake his belief in good. He's also pretty much the one person in S.H.I.E.L.D. who everyone - from Coulson, to May, to even ''Hunter'' - seems to like and get along with; even Fitz couldn't dislike him despite his insecurities. Highlighted by his death - everyone on the team is heavily demoralised and upset by it, and tempers flare in response to interpersonal conflicts coming to the fore.
* NotSoStoic: All stocism is dropped once he drags out his grandfather's S.H.I.E.L.D. kit. See TheKnightsWhoSaySquee above.
* TheParagon: As explained by May after his death, Coulson sees in Trip all the qualities on which he feels S.H.I.E.L.D. should be built on.
* RomanticFalseLead: He seems to be this for Simmons, since their implied mutual attraction is never really explored further than how it impacts Fitz and Simmons's relationship, and is usually shown from [[GreenEyedMonster Fitz's]] point of view. So far his part in the LoveTriangle that got set up in Season One has not even been mentioned again, since the whole Fitz-Simmons arc took a different direction in Season Two. The LoveTriangle involving the three of them gets one last minor nod before Trip dies in Episode 2.10, but overall that seems to ''confirm'' the use of this trope.
* SacrificialLion: True to form, he's built up as a major yet secondary character for the best part of a season, then becomes the first member of Team Coulson to die in the Season 2 mid-season finale.
* SenselessSacrifice: Trip spin-kicks the crystal, shattering it, in hopes of freeing Skye from the stone covering her. It fails, and he's hit by some of the Diviner shards, which turn him to stone, thinking Skye died as well. [[SubvertedTrope Not so senseless is his HeroicSacrifice detailed above]].
* ShipTease: He had quite a few scenes with Simmons, particularly in Season 1, that hint that they may become involved, causing Fitz to go all GreenEyedMonster whenever the three of them are together.
%%** Has some with Skye in season two when he becomes her new partner.
* SixthRanger: Technically seventh, but he's the first new character to join Team Coulson after the initial six are introduced in the pilot. And his joining coincides with Ward's exposure as a HYDRA infiltrator, so Triplett is the sixth of six good guys on the team.
* SoulBrotha: "I bring the noise and the funk wherever I go."
* TheStoic: While he's cool headed and reserved, he's more personable then other standard agents. [[NotSoStoic He even snaps once]] he sees his mentor having turned traitor. In "Nothing Personal", even when unemployed, disavowed, and hunted by various intelligence agencies, Trip considers their stay at a hotel a vacation until he gets his next set of orders.
* TakenForGranite: He dies by being turned to stone after part of the Diviner crystal becomes lodged in his chest while he tries to free Skye from its influence.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Lola]]
-->See the [[Characters/MarvelCinematicUniverse main page]]
[[/folder]]
----

!!''Phillip J. "Phil" Coulson''
[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/coulson_philip_j__6037.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''"[[SeenItAll This isn't my first rodeo]], [[Film/IronMan1 Mr. Stark]]."'']]
->'''Portrayed By''': Creator/ClarkGregg
->'''Marvel Cinematic Universe Appearances''': ''Film/IronMan1 | Film/IronMan2 | Film/{{Thor}} | Film/{{The Avengers|2012}} | Film/MarvelOneShots | Series/AgentsOfSHIELD''
->'''Other appearances''': ''WesternAnimation/{{Ultimate Spider-Man}}'' (voiced by Gregg) | ''[[VideoGame/LEGOAdaptationGame LEGO Marvel Super Heroes]]'' (voiced by Gregg) | [[Franchise/MarvelUniverse 616-Marvel Comics Universe]] (''Battle Scars'' miniseries, ongoing ''{{Deadpool}}'' comic series, current incarnation of ''ComicBook/SecretAvengers'') | ''ComicBook/UltimateMarvel'' (as of ''ComicBook/CataclysmTheUltimatesLastStand'') | ''VideoGame/MarvelAvengersAlliance'' | ''ComicBook/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'' | ''Anime/MarvelDiskWarsTheAvengers''

->''"With everything that's happening, the things that are about to come to light, people might just need a little old-fashioned."''

An agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Nick Fury's right-hand-man. He was first introduced trying to debrief Stark of his captivity by the Ten Rings, and later assisting him in pursuing the Iron Monger and curing his poisoning. Some time later, he was assigned with excavating Mjolnir, and bumped heads with Thor and his new human companions. Those efforts paid off in recruiting the Norse god to the Avengers, and once assembled he remained a major figure in escorting the heroes.

During the events of Loki's raid on the Helicarrier, Coulson was mortally wounded in an attempt to attack him. He was reported as dead to the Avengers and most of S.H.I.E.L.D., who promised to honor his memory and stop Loki for him. However, only those Level 7 and above knew what really happened to Coulson, and soon after these events he was given a new job in assembling a team to investigate strange events and rogue supers around the world.

After the events of ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier'' and ''[[Series/AgentsOfSHIELD Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.]]'''s first season he steps up to become the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., tasked with rebuilding the agency after the internal HYDRA threat tore it apart.

* AccidentalMisnaming: In season 3, Skye starts going by Daisy, but he keeps forgetting.
-->'''Coulson:''' Hard to get used to, huh?\\
'''Hunter:''' No.\\
'''Mack:''' No, just you.
* ActionSurvivor: Agent Coulson seems like an average government agent with no outstanding abilities shown so far beyond basic {{Badass Normal}}cy, yet he's managed to survive attacks from both [[Film/IronMan1 Iron Monger]] and [[{{Film/Thor}} The Destroyer]] practically unscathed. Also, [[IKnowKarate he knows kung fu]].
* {{Adorkable}}: On the job, deadpan and stoic. Off the job, a goofy teddy bear of a man who collects superhero trading cards and squees over antique spy gear.
* AffectionateNickname: Fury calls him "my one good eye" when lamenting his "death".
* AnArmAndALeg: Loses his left hand in the season 2 finale.
* ArcWords: Whenever his recovery in Tahiti comes up he says, "It's a magical place." This was implied to be connected to the DarkSecret related to his resurrection. After finding out the truth behind "Tahiti", when Agent Sitwell asks how Tahiti was, he simply says, "It sucked." Afterwards, he doesn't say anything about Tahiti when it's brought up.
* ArtisticLicensePhysics: His mechanical hand is used in impossible ways throughout Season 3. Attached where it is (below the elbow), the most it should be able to do is give him a strong grip, but it has been shown to allow him to lift a full-grown man by the neck with just the one hand, punch chunks out a brick wall, and [[spoiler:effortlessly crush Ward's chest]]. All of these feats would require additional mechanical strength from the elbow and/or shoulder, which the hand does not provide.
* AscendedExtra: Originally an [[Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse MCU]]-only side character, possibly for comic relief. Creator/ClarkGregg took the role mostly as a favor to Jon Favreau, but the character proved to be popular[[note]]and Gregg found that he enjoyed playing Coulson so much that he is the only actor to portray the character in all media bar the comics and ''VideoGame/SuperHeroSquadOnline''[[/note]] that Coulson became an [[CanonImmigrant official part]] of [[Franchise/MarvelUniverse the comics]], [[WesternAnimation/UltimateSpiderMan Peter Parker's principal]], and the lead character in a TV serial in the MCU, to Fury's successor as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., and in Fury's opinion, one of the Avengers in his own right.
* AscendedFanboy: From a devoted S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and a fan of Fury and Rogers to Fury's successor!
* AscendedMeme: "Coulson Lives" is sometimes seen hidden in episodes of the Creator/StanLee-sponsored ''WebAnimation/BadDays'' cartoon, then Coulson himself does in Episode 12. Then when ''Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'''s teaser was revealed, Marvel announced tweeting said slogan would unlock a longer trailer.
* BadassAdorable: There's a huge contrast between how much of a badass Coulson is and how NICE and lovable his personality is.
* BadassBoast: When meeting [[SoftSpokenSadist Raina]], she, [[BitchInSheepsClothing rather deceivingly politely]], states that she hasn't had the pleasure of meeting him. His response? "Lucky for you."
* BadassInANiceSuit: The man can dress as well as he can kick ass when needed. His closet on the bus is nothing but dark suits and dress shirts.
* BackFromTheDead: In "The Magical Place" it's revealed he wasn't dead for eight seconds, he was dead for ''days'', but Director Nick Fury did everything possible, no matter how ethically abhorrent, to bring him back.

** Don't ever betray Coulson's trust. ''Ever''. Whereas Skye, who had simply hidden something from him, got off with a scolding and having to wear an electronic bracelet for the next six episodes, he points a gun at May and breaks off their friendship after finding out she was reporting on him to someone (who turned out to be [[BigGood Director Fury]], but he was still hurt by the revelation that May would report on him to anyone). They later make up and Coulson forgives her for spying on him.
** When Ward is finally in custody, after receiving a well deserved beat down from May, Coulson seems pleased that Melinda [[LamePun may]] have broken his larynx and flat out tells him that he's going to '''invent''' new ways of ruining the young man's life.
** Don't jeopardize your own well-being. He explodes at Ward and Simmons in "FZZT" for jumping out of the cargo bay in midair. He considers especially Simmons to be irreplaceable.
* BewareTheNiceOnes:
** On the surface, he's a pleasant man overall, but he's not called Fury's "one good eye" for no reason. Heaven help you if you betray him.
--->'''Coulson:''' You have a secret, Skye, and one chance to come out with it--that's now!--or I'm done with you.
** Coulson's confrontation with Skye is ''nothing'' compared to when he finds out May is acting as a mole for Fury, to keep tabs on him if he CameBackWrong. He's angry enough to point a gun, not an [=ICER=], at her (although at the time he thought she was working for the Clairvoyant). Afterwards, he breaks off their friendship (though they make up not long after).
** May got off easy compared to Ward; spying for Director Fury is ''nothing'' compared to being a mole for HYDRA.
** His plan to take down HYDRA in Season Two is both ingenious and ruthless: use a high-ranking HYDRA agent that they captured as a pawn by convincing him that there's a faction of the organization that is plotting against each the rest. This convinces HYDRA leadership to kill each other to prevent a coup, so S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Army can take down the leaderless grunts with ease.
* {{BFG}}:
** He loves these. He uses one (a prototype reverse engineered from [[Film/{{Thor}} the Destroyer]]) in ''The Avengers'' and several times in ''Ultimate Spider-Man''.
--->'''Coulson:''' ''[points a prototype gun at Loki]'' Even I don't know what it does. ''[activates it]'' Do you wanna find out?
** The Destroyer gun makes a return in "Beginning of the End".
--->'''Coulson:''' ''[activates gun]'' I know what it does.
* BigGood: His new position as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. marks him as this.
* BreakTheCutie: Coulson's faith in S.H.I.E.L.D. is tested '''repeatedly''' throughout the series: the truth and circumstances about his resurrection are kept hidden from him by both his superiors and his close friend. S.H.I.E.L.D. itself no longer exists due to HYDRA's infiltration. However that faith is ultimately rewarded as Fury picks him to be the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and to rebuild it.
* BreakoutCharacter: He started out as a random suit, but around ''Iron Man 2'' and ''Thor'', his current characterization began to emerge. Once his popularity reached its peak in ''The Avengers'', he then received his own show. To top it all off, he has been promoted to the position of BigGood in that show: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.
* CameBackWrong: His revival is implied to have missed or changed some things, such as finding his muscle memory doesn't quite work the same when he can't field-strip a pistol. May assures him it's just ResurrectionSickness. "The Magical Place" reveals that he was dead for days and required extensive surgery and memory manipulation to get him back to normal, which apparently missed a few spots. Furthermore, the GH serum used to bring him back, distilled from an alien's blood, had severe psychological side-effects which Coulson seems to have mostly avoided, though the stinger to "Beginning of the End" shows him writing out alien script on a wall.
* CanonImmigrant:
** Finally made his debut to the main Franchise/MarvelUniverse on the miniseries ''Battle Scars''. He isn't revealed as Coulson until issue #6. He later shows up in the {{Deadpool}} ongoing series and his TV team is now going to get their own title within the main Franchise/MarvelUniverse.
** He's also Peter Parker's school principal in ''{{WesternAnimation/Ultimate Spider-Man}}'', voiced by Gregg.
** He's a full-fledged NPC in ''VideoGame/MarvelAvengersAlliance'' as of Season 2.
** In addition to being Fury's go-to guy, he's the voice of MissionControl (read: hints on how to not die) in [[VideoGame/LEGOAdaptationGame LEGO Marvel Super Heroes]] (again voiced by Gregg), and is an unlockable character.
* TheChainsOfCommanding: When he becomes the new director of S.H.I.E.L.D he's the one to make the though decisions regarding saving the importance of the mission of the saftey of his people. And because he's TheSpyMaster he now has to keep people LockedOutOfTheLoop since there is some stuff they don't need to know for security reasons.
* CharacterTics:
** Whenever Coulson is talking, he has a tendency to keep his [[BadassArmfold arms folded]]. Sometimes even when he isn't talking.
** When anyone mentions "Tahiti," he automatically responds, "It's a magical place." As of "Yes Men", he's broken that compulsion.
* TheChessmaster:
** Rewatch ''Iron Man 2'', ''Thor'', and the shorts starring him. It becomes apparent that he knows exactly how people are going to react, but feigns ignorance to confirm it and make them think they had a choice. Nick Fury is the same, but Coulson augments it by managing to seem remarkably inoffensive to those who don't know any better.
** In "0-8-4", he was able to pin down that Reyes was gonna turn on them and used that to motivate the team into working together. He also may know about Skye being TheMole for the Rising Tide, when Fury asked him whether Skye could be trusted in TheStinger.
** He reaches entire new heights in "Aftershocks", killing ''the entire remaining leadership of HYDRA'' in just a few hours, thanks to playing Bakshi like a champ.
* CloudCuckoolandersMinder: Though he was joking when he said it, "Super Nanny" is an apt description of his relationship with the Avengers, or at least with Tony Stark.
* TheComicallySerious: He's quite snarky and sarcastic, but you'd ''never'' pick up on that from his demeanor.
* CoolCar: He gets one [[ICallItVera named "Lola"]] in ''Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'' Don't touch her. It's revealed to be capable of flight by the end of the first episode and later on it's revealed to have a pair of machine guns hidden behind the headlightss.
%%* CoolShades:
* DeathFakedForYou: According to Coulson, Fury faked his death on board the Helicarrier to help motivate the Avengers. Coulson claims that he "died" for forty seconds; Hill corrects him to eight, but mentions that he keeps extending the time each time he re-tells it. The truth is that he really was dead and it was for ''days'' but Director Fury "moved heaven and earth" to revive him.
* DefiantToTheEnd:
** Even when mortally wounded by Loki, [[LastBreathBullet Coulson refuses to let the son of a Frost Giant talk him down]].
--->'''Coulson:''' '''[[{{BFG}} [BOOM]]]''' ...so that's what it does.
** He still has this in the series, as shown when The Clairvoyant has him facing down a firing squad and is trying to recruit him.
--->'''Coulson:''' I would die before serving HYDRA, you sick son of a bitch.
* DespairEventHorizon: What had really happened to him after he died; he lost the will to live. It took that memory of Tahiti to pull him back.
* DisneyDeath: While seemingly killed by Loki, the knowledge that he survived was kept secret to all but Level 7 agents.
* DontExplainTheJoke: It seems Coulson likes hanging lampshades on his jokes. In he pilot, he makes a dramatic statement while stepping out of the shadows, then apologizes for it and says he thinks a bulb's burned out (which ended up making up for his surviving his fateful encounter with Loki being spoiled before the series was even broadcast). In episode 8, he puns on the fact that they have to dig for an artifact, then ''immediately'' points it out.
-->'''Coulson:''' See what I did there?
* DorkKnight:
** He's what happens if your stuffy and uptight math teacher decides to go out and become a secret agent.
** [[Recap/AgentsOfSHIELDS1E18Providence Providence]] establishes he's also a gamer.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment:
** In ''Film/{{Iron Man 1}}'', we don't see much of him in the first few scenes he pops up, but he's very polite about setting up an appointment with Stark and Pepper. Later on, when Pepper hurriedly brings him along to arrest Stane, he and he stands very cool and collected while deploying a secret agent gadget (ok, a bomb) to break the door lock.
** In case you missed that, his first appearance in ''Film/{{Iron Man 2}}'' is warning Stark that if he tries to leave that he'll "taze [him] and watch Supernanny" while Stark drools into the carpet.
** In case you missed ''that'', in ''Film/{{Thor}}'', he hands Jane Foster's crew a blank check while taking her notes.
** In the unlikely event that viewers missed ''The Avengers'', his first scene in ''Agents'' is him EmergingFromTheShadows, saying something dramatic[[note]]"Welcome to Level 7"; ItMakesSenseInContext[[/note]], and then saying that the corner he just left was really dark and saying that he couldn't help himself. It probably needs a new bulb.
* TheEveryman: Despite Coulson being called "the most recognizable face in the Marvel Cinematic Universe", he is depicted as an "Everyman" in a universe full of superheroes – "the glue that binds" the characters together. In ''Film/{{Thor}}'', Coulson complains that Tony Stark "never tells [him] anything." In an interview with WNBC, Gregg explained his portrayal of the character as 'just a guy grumbling about his job'.
-->'''Clark Gregg''': ''"He's the guy who's tasked - a very disciplined guy in my opinion who possesses secrets that would turn your hair white - but at the same time he's tasked with handling these kind of diva superheroes, you know? Oh, really, Asgard? Dude, just get in the car."''
* {{Fanboy}}: Of ComicBook/CaptainAmerica. He even has the trading cards. Also, [[ThatCameOutWrong he watched Rogers while he was sleeping]].... we-we mean, he was.... he was present, while [[HumanPopsicle Rogers was unconcscious.... from the... ice]].
* AFatherToHisMen: Coulson cares a great deal for his team and would do anything to protect them, even if it means going into the field alongside them. Skye in particular seems to look to him as a ParentalSubstitute.
* FearlessFool: It takes a particularly special kind of badass to go up against an Asgardian single-handedly, even if he was wielding an experimental weapon based on alien technology.
** He does it again on ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'' by attempting to take on Garrett and a group of Centipede-fueled soldiers on his own. It doesn't go so well, but he gets back up and tries again.
* FingerFirearms: He clams to have a laser finger in his artifical hand. Is this the truth or a bluff? Sorry, that's classified.
* FlatWhat: In "Nothing Personal" after finding out he was responsible for Project T.A.H.I.T.I. all along.
* GoodIsNotSoft:
** Coulson is one of the friendliest characters in the [[MarvelCinematicUniverse MCU]], but there is a stone-cold ruthlessness hiding behind his grin. Whereas Whitehall and The Doctor crack the normally unflappable Raina with threats of violence, Coulson can have her tearfully begging for her life by just staring at her.
** Coulson tells Bobbi Morse that he believes S.H.I.E.L.D. exists to protect the innocent and that potential threats should kept out of everyone's hands and not stored away to be studied and turned even more dangerous. He also adamantly states that he doesn't believe in acceptable losses. Yet later, when Mack becomes seemingly possessed and non-lethal approaches prove useless, Coulson unhesitatingly orders lethal action be taken and that Mack be sealed away.
* GoodIsOldFashioned:
** This is exactly what Coulson believes that the world needs right now in ''Avengers''. The TV series continues this theme, with Coulson commenting to Reyes that "with the world changing so fast around us, we need some anchors to the past". The room they're talking in is filled with such things as a first-edition walkie-talkie wristwatch in perfect working order.
** His belief seems to be proven in the field when the team uses Trips' grandfather's Howling Commando spy gadgets to assist them in taking down Centipede to great effect against vastly superior tech.
* GoodScarsEvilScars:
** Has a vertical scar on his chest from when [[Film/TheAvengers2012 Loki stabbed him through the chest.]]
** As of the second-season finale of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Phil can add... er, subtract, his left hand, thanks to quick thinking from Mack saving Coulson from petrifying due to exposure to Diviner metal.
* GuileHero: Coulson is incredibly adept at throwing opponents off kilter with his deadpan affability. If it wasn't for the fact that he is a truly friendly person who tries to see the best in everyone, he'd be a ManipulativeBastard on par with Nick Fury.
* TheHeart:
** Fury considers him to be this to S.H.I.E.L.D., calling him his "one good eye." Fury later states this verbatim in the episode "The Beginning of the End".
** Also functions as this to his team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Compared to Melinda May and Grant Ward, he tends to be more compassionate and favors nonlethal solutions to the problems they face whenever possible. Although Skye seems to be edging toward this role as well.
** The "Building a Universe" documentary confirms that he's deliberately set up to be this for the Avengers.
* HeartbrokenBadass: While he's hidden it very well, it's revealed in "The Magical Place" that the loss of his relationship with his cellist girlfriend post ''Avengers'' hit him pretty hard. You can see it practically kills him to be near her and not be able to tell her he's alive.
* HeroAntagonist: In ''Thor'', he leads the S.H.I.E.L.D. group trying to investigate Mjolnir. To keep it hidden from outsiders he screws over Jane, Darcy, and Selvig in all ways possible, but thankfully once Thor gets his powers back, he acknowledges both him and S.H.I.E.L.D. are fighting the same cause.
-->'''Coulson:''' ''[confiscating Jane's stuff]'' Sorry, ma'am, we're the good guys!
* HeroicSacrifice:
** Coulson's choice in facing Loki alone could be interpreted as one, especially given the fact that he thought his death would get the Avengers to stop bickering with one another to avenge him, as it were.
** At the end of Season 2 of ''Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'', he grabs a falling Terrigen crystal so it won't explode and kill everyone, a death sentence for a non-Inhuman. Luckily, a quick-thinking Mack cuts off his hand before the petrification can spread.
* HerosClassicCar: Coulson has a '62 Corvette that he calls Lola. It was a beat-up old clunker that his dad had been working on and kept dragging him in to work on it. Now he keeps it with him and has it modified to fly.
* IDidWhatIHadToDo: Adopts this moral from Fury more and more as the series progresses much to the shock and frustration of his team.
* ImprovisedWeapon: We get our first glimpse of Coulson's physical abilities in ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRi0Y59sJDs A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer]]'', when he takes care of two armed robbers with only a bag of flour and martial arts. All because he couldn't decide on chocolate or powdered doughnuts.
* InTheBack: Courtesy of Loki and his scepter in the Hulk cell room.
* InSeriesNickname:
** Skye calls him "A.C." because it's 'cooler' than "Agent Coulson."
** Asgardians tend to have trouble with his name, assuming it means "Son of Coul", which, to be fair, ''is'' the literal meaning of the name Coulson, though Midgardian naming conventions make it quite possible that there hasn't been a Coul in his ancestry for quite some time.
* {{Irony}}: He was the agent in charge for Project T.A.H.I.T.I., as revealed in "Nothing Personal". However, he was so horrified at the side effects of the procedure, he threatened to quit if it wasn't shut down. After his death, Director Fury subjected him to Project T.A.H.I.T.I., complete with the memory alteration process.
* ItsPersonal:
** When Akela is found comitting crimes, he goes after her himself because she was his apprentice.
** When he hears that someone's popping off T.A.H.I.T.I. patients, he decides he has to get to the only other one of the first six remaining before the T.A.H.I.T.I. killer does because he was the project's director. To do this he locks up Skye in his place to keep her from interfering.
** After [[spoiler:Ward murders Rosalind Price]], he declares himself perfectly willing to cross lines not even Fury crossed if that's what it takes to destroy him once and for all.
* TheKnightsWhoSaySquee:
** He's very fond of Captain America. He's got the trading cards, plus he designed Cap's modern-day outfit.
** He has a love of classic spy gear. When Tripplet shows off his collection of his grandfather's Howling Commandos gear, Coulson goes full fanboy on the spot.
* LastNameBasis: In ''The Avengers'', Tony Stark snarks that Coulson's first name is "Agent", as opposed to "Phil", but after the agent's mortal wounding, Tony has a change of heart and when [[BadassBoast boasting to Loki]] about the various Avengers who are going to be coming for him, he finishes by referring to him by his first name.
* TheLeader:
** He's in charge of TheTeam, and for all that he's a very nice, very good man, he never forgets his position. After S.H.I.E.L.D. goes defunct in "Turn, Turn, Turn" Simmons points out that he's technically no longer in charge and things go more democratic. However, the team still follows him into the middle of nowhere.
** As of the season one finale, the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., officially his team and Agent Billy Koenig. He has expanded it quite a bit by the start of the second season.
* LifeOrLimbDecision: In the season 2 finale, he makes what he presumes will be a HeroicSacrifice, grabbing a tainted Terrigen Crystal before it can shatter and disperse its deadly mist across the ship. Mack promptly hacks off his petrified hand before the corruption can spread further and leave Coulson TakenForGranite.
* LimitedWardrobe: He's almost never seen wearing anything other than a collection of dark suits. One episode has him choosing between two different shades of gray. The first episode of Season 3 show that he does in fact own other types of clothes.
* LivingLegend: Not as instantly recognised as May or Fitz-Simmons, perhaps, but it's clear that since the Battle of New York ''everyone'' in S.H.I.E.L.D. knows his name and what he did. (Though not many of the rank-and-file know he's still fulfilling the "living" part of the trope.) See MemeticBadass, below.
* LockedOutOfTheLoop:
** Despite believing he didn't die in ''The Avengers'' and just faked his death to motivate the team, it appears there's more to it than that. Maria Hill cryptically says to Dr. Streiten that Coulson can't ever find out the truth. During "A Magical Place" Coulson confronts him and the truth is... he's still a human being. He had simply lost the will to live during the procedure to bring him back to life, so they had to put that memory of Tahiti in his brain.
** Inverted for another instance of the trope in "Providence": Agent Koenig reveals to Coulson that Nick Fury's alive, but to keep it to himself, hence making Coulson the only member of his team in the loop.
** As of season 2 it's his job as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D to lock everyone else out of the loop. Like Fury said, no one is supposed to know everything, except the guy in charge.
** Unknown to him, there's another S.H.I.E.L.D. out there - it considers itself to be the ''real'' S.H.I.E.L.D. Bobbi and Mack have been acting as double agents for them the entire season with the end game of aquiring Fury's Toolbox. And they've taken great pains to keep their secret from Coulson to the point of kidnapping Hunter when he realizes what's going on.
* LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe: [[spoiler: The latest model of Coulson's prosthetic hand is able to project an energy shield strong enough to withstand an explosion. He thought it [[RuleOfCool would be cool]] if the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. used an actual shield of their own.]]
* MagneticHero: Gonzales remarks that Coulson's ability to inspire UndyingLoyalty in people, even from mercs who are OnlyInItForTheMoney, makes him more dangerous than a Gifted.
* MemeticBadass: "Providence" confirms that he's become one InUniverse to other high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. He's even acquired his own {{Fanboy}}, in the form of Agent Eric Koenig. Eric's brother Billy seems to have just as much affection for Coulson when they meet.
* MissionControl:
** Plays this role in the ''LEGO Marvel Superheroes'' video game; he's even voiced by Gregg.
** In season two of the series, he also plays this role because he's the new Director and has to coordinate things.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: When he finds out that ''he'' was the one in charge of Project T.A.H.I.T.I. and that he recommended that it should be shut down or he would quit S.H.I.E.L.D. because there were too many ill side effects on the test subjects. His haunted expression says it all.
* MythologyGag: in Deadpool Bi-Annual #1, he's shown ''actually in Tahiti'' getting a massage from a hot girl... complete with lampshade hanging on the scene.
* NiceGuy: One of the nicest S.H.I.E.L.D. agents there is.
** He was outraged when he learned the lengths that Fury went to for his revival, and yet he makes the same decision when one of his own subordinates was in critical condition. However, he's incredibly conflicted about it, [[TearJerker breaking down]] when he admits to Skye what he knows about the [=GH325=] used to save them.
** In a heroic version, he, like his idol Captain America, is officially a vigilante ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agent working against HYDRA after it began the civil war within S.H.I.E.L.D., a state he finally acknowledges fully in "Ragtag".
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: By killing [[spoiler:Ward]] instead of leaving him trapped on a barren planet, he helps Hydra achieve their ultimate objective: [[spoiler: Hive, an Inhuman so dangerous, his own kind banished him to another planet, is able to assimilate Ward's corpse and return to Earth]].
* OneManArmy: Not to the extent of Ward, May, or likely even Trip, but he can still single-handedly defeat handfuls of {{Mooks}} on his own (even while unarmed), including soldiers from the US military.
* OnlyMostlyDead: Even after Loki seemingly killed Coulson, Clark Gregg maintained he might still be alive, stating that [[http://www.craveonline.com/film/articles/173736-clark-gregg-on-the-avengers-marvel-one-shots-iron-man-3-and-more Whedon told him beforehand that Coulson would survive the events of the film]] (although afterwards he [[http://twitter.com/clarkgregg/status/210219396378013696 admitted he was lying]]). Ultimately it was ambiguous until ''Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D'' was announced, upon which Joss Whedon himself confirmed that Coulson survived his wounding in ''The Avengers''...though as BackFromTheDead above shows, not enough to avoid a painful/traumatic resurrection process.
* OnlySaneMan: Trapped among prima donna superheroes and morally ambiguous world security leaders.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness:
** As mentioned [[PerpetualSmiler below]], Coulson is almost-perpetually calm. Thus, if he ever raises his voice, you know something must be very, ''very'' wrong. Additionally, he trashes his own office after [[spoiler:Ward murders Rosalind Price]].
** He wouldn't lock up one of his own (e.g. Simmons and Skye) unless it was a very serious situation. Ward would be an exception, except Coulson had already decided he wasn't one of his own.
* OrderReborn: At the end of Season One, Nick Fury entrusts the rebuilding of S.H.I.E.L.D to Coulson.
* OriginalGeneration: [[LogicBomb Retroactively]]; see "PromotedToOpeningTitles" below.
* PapaWolf: He's very protective of his protégés.
** "Eye Spy". After learning the identity of the person who was controlling Akela, he immediately springs into action in order to arrest the crook.
** In "[[Recap/AgentsOfSHIELDS1E13TRACKS T.R.A.C.K.S.]]" he instantly knocks out Quinn when the latter implies he hurt Skye, [[CallBack mirroring what Skye did to Raina two episodes back regarding Coulson.]]
** In "End of the Beginning", he points a gun, filled with real bullets as opposed to nonlethal Icers, at May when she is hunting down Fitz, who has discovered that she is TheMole for an unknown party. To reiterate: he drew down on ''a member of his own team'' in order to protect another one.
** In "Who You Really Are", Lady Sif attempts to capture Skye, believing her newly-acquired superpowers to be a threat. Coulson responds to the Asgardian (read: someone who can easily best him in a fight) with a GoThroughMe reaction.
** In ''Purpose In the Machine'' he threatens to turn over Professor Randolph unless he helps them save Simmons.
* ParentalSubstitute: Given Skye's history of being continually passed between foster homes, Coulson's probably the closest (and certainly the longest running) thing to a father figure she's had in her entire life. This has continued even after Skye finally meets her real father, which is one of the reasons why Cal doesn't like Coulson.
* PerpetualSmiler:
** A part of his persona that he uses to help guide conversations. He's almost never seen without his serene, calm smile on his face, even during otherwise morose or trying situations. Since he never loses his cool, he never drops the smile.
** In ''[[Series/AgentsOfSHIELD Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.]]'', Coulson seems to feature a more stoic and serious demeanor. This is more than likely due to him [[CameBackWrong coming back wrong]]. When the situation demands it, whether it's resolving a conflict within his team, or dealing with the shadier aspects of S.H.I.E.L.D., Coulson has proven that you shouldn't handle him lightly.
* PopularityPower: After Coulson's death in ''The Avengers'', {{Website/Twitter}} and {{Website/Tumblr}} ''exploded'' with support for him to come back, campaigning the slogan [=#CoulsonLives=]. Their attempts were so successful that not only did Marvel bring Coulson BackFromTheDead, but [[AscendedMeme they even made tweeting [=#CoulsonLives=] unlock a trailer]] for ''Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D''.
* PromotedToOpeningTitles: He started off as just a standard suit in the first ''Iron Man'' movie, but his role was greatly expanded by ''Thor''. Now, he's deeply entrenched into the Marvel lore, even getting his own comics, short films and ''TV series''.
* ProperlyParanoid:
** As Director he keeps his people LockedOutOfTheLoop on things they don't need to know for security reasons. Which proved to be justified when he found out that Mack and Bobbi were moles for a splinter cell of S.H.I.E.L.D. who are very hostile to anything assocaited with alien tech or "gifted people."
** In season 3, he says that the only agents who do ''not'' have trust issues are either young or dead.
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: He is ''extremely'' tolerant of the antics his team sometimes gets into and in some cases even encourages them.
* ResurrectionSickness: After his death during ''Film/{{The Avengers|2012}}'', he was resurrected using the regenerative drug GH.325; upon his initial revival, Coulson was in terrible pain and begged to be killed again, forcing the scientists to implant FakeMemories of him going through a peaceful rehabilitation in Tahiti.
* TheReveal: ''Battle Scars'' #6 reveals that "Cheese", Marcus Johnson's soldier friend, is actually the 616 counterpart of Agent Coulson.
* RoomFullOfCrazy: After Garrett goes insane from injection of the alien compound and began etching alien writing on walls and other surfaces, Coulson starts compulsively doing the same, starting a couple of times a month, then progressing to weekly, then daily. Once he discovers that the writing is actually a three-dimensional blueprint of a city, the compulsion vanishes.
* RunningGag: Referring to traitorous individuals as [[PrecisionFStrike sons of bitches]]. Done in "Turn, Turn, Turn" to Garrett and in "A Fractured House" to Ward.
* SacrificialLion: All who heard of his loss were motivated to defeat Loki for him. Especially [[Film/IronMan Tony Stark]].
-->'''Tony''': And there's one other person you pissed off. [[AndThisIsFor His name is Phil]]. ''(blasts Loki with his repulsors)''
* SeenItAll: Hints of Type 1, as is typical of [[TheMenInBlack MIB]]. He also has Type 2's smartness as he orders his men to let Thor try and lift his hammer, and realized just in time that Destroyer's head opening and glowing is a very bad thing. When he calls Black Widow, who's been captured but then subsequently beats the tar out of her captors, his expression is of complete boredom as he listens to [[CurbStompBattle the resulting scuffle]] as if it were ''hold music''. This trait is a case of CharacterDevelopment throughout the entire Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse. In his first appearance in ''Film/IronMan1'', he was rather nervous and unsure of himself. Each subsequent film added more and more to his confidence.
* SharpDressedMan: Season One, Episode Six of ''[[Series/AgentsOfSHIELD Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.]]'' is the first time he's seen without a suit. His suits get progressively [[http://hellotailor.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/costumes-and-characters-of-avengers.html sharper]] as we learn more about him.
* ShellShockedVeteran: His behavior is a little more erratic post-''Avengers'' as seen in ''Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.''. Coulson eventually admits this to himself and May, who tells him that ''dying'' is going to change someone no matter who they are. His revival also took a bit of a toll on his sanity and faith in S.H.I.E.L.D.
* ShipperOnDeck: For Thor and Sif, as seen when Sif wonders why hearing Thor's name makes her smile:
-->'''Coulson:''' Who can explain the mysteries of the Asgardian brain?\\
'''May:''' ''I'' can.
* SilentSnarker: He doesn't even have to ''say'' anything (which delighted Creator/JossWhedon to no end). His reactions are pure gold.
* SmallRoleBigImpact: To the Avengers in ''Film/AvengersAgeOfUltron''. Despite not actually appearing in the film, it was he who tipped them through Maria Hill to beat HYDRA and to locate and retrieve Loki's scepter in Sokovia. It's also revealed that the Helicarrier that shows up in the film's climax and saves everyone is "Theta Protocol", which Coulson has been working on for almost a year.
* StoicSpectacles: Part of his disguise as Simmons's "father" in "T.R.A.C.K.S." and as a Fitz Expy in "Ragtag", right down to the cardi and tie.
* SuperStrength: His robotic arm has some degree of it, enough to shortly restrain Lash.
* TeamDad:
** Whenever the team gets into an argument, expect Coulson to be the one to break it up. Skye even refers to him as such.
** Coulson so embodies this trope, [[http://howtodadwithphil.tumblr.com/ there's a blog about it.]]
** When Coulson shows up to debrief Jemma about her time with HYDRA, he confronts her about her food choices.
--->Sriracha? Beer? That's it?
** In "...Ye Who Enter Here", Skye has a dream where Coulson and May are acting as parents to a baby (obviously herself). Coulson is white, May is Chinese. Skye's biological father is white, her biological mother Chinese.
** In "SOS", when Cal confronts Coulson, the latter outright admits that Skye is the closest he's ever had to a daughter.
** In Deadpool Bi-Annual #1, [[ComicBook/BruteForce Brute Force establishes itself as hating humans for imprisoning animals and ruining the environment...]] until Coulson shows up, at which point they ''immediately'' try to get him into a group hug. [[spoiler: Turns out that Phil was their government contact while they did some black-ops work in the nineties until an operation went south and they had to lay low, but still, given their attitude towards almost every other human, the way they treat him almost certainly qualifies as this.]]
* ThatCameOutWrong: Coulson's fanboy love of Captain America intersects with some unintentional awkwardness when talking to the man himself.
-->'''Coulson:''' I watched you while you were sleeping. ''[awkward silence]'' I-I mean... I was present when you were unconscious from the ice.
* TomatoInTheMirror: He was the one calling the shots on Project T.A.H.I.T.I. all along. His reaction? A FlatWhat-like reaction in the form of a stunned "Huh".
* TookALevelInJerkass: In the second half of the season toward May when he finds out that Fury told her about his resurrection and was ordered to keep him in the dark about it. Justified, because that's not something you forgive so easily, and even then he realizes he's been acting as such and wants to apologize for it within two episodes.
* TrueCompanions: He sees his team as his family, with himself as the father. When a surgeon told him and the rest to gather Skye's family before she died, he said it was already present.
* TheSpymaster: As the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., part of his job is to handle assets and secrets. Season 2 deals primarily with how acting as TheSpymaster is taking its toll on Coulson, though he proves to be excellent at it as seen with the moment Coulson wipes out most of HYDRA's leadership in one fell swoop. However it's because of this that "real" S.H.I.E.L.D. distrusts him and even Simmons and May began to lose faith when they find out to what extent they've been LockedOutOfTheLoop.
* UndyingLoyalty: To S.H.I.E.L.D. and Nick Fury. His HeroicBSOD in "Providence" reflected that even though S.H.I.E.L.D. his disbanded, he still sees himself as a devoted agent that still means something. Phil was the only one who believed Fury sent him the co-ordinates of the base too.
* UnfazedEveryman: There really isn't anything that can surprise him, be it thunder gods, men clad in flying wearable tanks, or superhuman WWII vets who were frozen for the better part of a century. [[note]] The WWII vet gets a reaction, but only because [[TheKnightsWhoSaySquee he's]] a {{fanboy}}.[[/note]] Justified in that this is the sort of thing S.H.I.E.L.D. does. Thunder gods aren't special, they're Thursday. [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness This makes what he sees in T.A.H.I.T.I all the more serious]] as it drives him into a HeroicBSOD.
* UnwantedRevival: In "That Magical Place", we finally see the details of his "resurrection", and it's horrifying. His skull was split open and a robot operated on his brain while Coulson begged "Just let me die" over and over again. Dr. Streiten says, because of the procedures, Coulson completely lost the will to live and the Tahiti memories were an attempt to give that will back.
* WhatTheHellHero:
** Gives Skye two of them. The first is in "Girl in the Flower Dress" after she betrays his trust (see BerserkButton and BewareTheNiceOnes above). The second is in "The Hub" after he catches her prying into something about the mission of the episode meant for Level 8 eyes; this earns her a good talking-to and an explanation as to why secrecy is important in certain situations. He then uses what Skye told him about what she saw in those files (that nobody had been assigned to extract their teammates after they completed their mission, and that nobody had told them that before sending them in) to give another one to Agent Hand.
** May receives one from him when it is revealed that she'd been informing on him to Director Fury and knew all about his resurrection the entire season. Fury eventually gets one of his own, but the only bit of it we hear is a flustered-sounding Coulson telling him, "Stupid, stupid, stupid! And cruel! And ''very'' stupid!"
** He's also on the receiving end of two. First, from Skye after she finds out about the mission in "The Hub". Second, when he's disguised as Simmons's estranged father in "T.R.A.C.K.S.", he gets lectured by Creator/StanLee himself on good parenting.
* WideEyedIdealist: His belief in heroes, old-fashioned notions, and in the Avengers to work together as a team can be seen as this. In the ''Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'' pilot, he manages to talk down an enraged Mike because he believes people are ''good''. This is also why Nick Fury calls him TheHeart of S.H.I.E.L.D.
* WithMyHandsTied: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAMgkpQYOSQ A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer]]. Coulson doesn't need his gun to bring down petty thugs.
* WolverinePublicity: ''WesternAnimation/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'' has a story in [[ComicBook/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes the comic series]] in which Maria Hill recaps the first season, with help from Nick Fury's records. Coulson joins her in examining the records, despite the fact he never shows up in either season of the cartoon. This also extends to ''ComicBook/UltimateMarvel'', where he showed up in ''[[ComicBook/CataclysmTheUltimatesLastStand Cataclysm: Ultimates]]'' without any warning, and went on to be TheLeader of the Ultimate Future Foundation. In the central "Earth-616" MarvelUniverse, shortly after ''Film/{{The Avengers|2012}}'', he became the go-to background S.H.I.E.L.D. agent for people to call upon to help other people, be it for a reason, like having him tag along with a hero or heroine, or for no reason, like having him brought up as someone's friend, with no relevance to the plot.
* WouldHitAGirl: Camilla Reyes, his former flame. Justified as she started it ''and'' can dish it out as well as she can take it.
* YouAreInCommandNow: In "Beginning of the End", Nick Fury gives him the resources to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D., with Coulson as the new director since he himself is officially dead.
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: A heroic example, directed at Grant Ward, in "A Fractured House". The only reason he did not kill Ward back in Season One was because he was useful for HYDRA intel. Now he is more useful as a bargaining tool.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Melinda May]]
!!''Melinda Qiaolian May''
[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/may_melinda_2627.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''"People believe what they want to believe to justify their actions."'']]
->'''Portrayed By''': Creator/MingNaWen
->'''Appearances''': ''[[Series/AgentsOfSHIELD Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.]]''

A highly experienced agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. who is an AcePilot and weapons expert. She is a member of Agent Coulson's team that is assembled to investigate strange events around the world and easily one of the strongest characters in the series. With Coulson now Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., May functions as his NumberTwo in the fight against HYDRA.
----
* AbortedDeclarationOfLove: During her explanation of why she kept TAHITI a secret from Coulson, she almost let it slip that her feelings for Coulson might be deeper than it friendship.
-->'''May:''' I did it for you, to protect you! I ... You mean a lot to me. A lot.
* AcePilot: She serves as the pilot for the team, though a few team members are skeptical as to whether or not this is all Coulson has planned for her, given her fame within S.H.I.E.L.D.
* AffectionateNickname: Just as Fury called Coulson his one good eye, Coulson calls May his right hand after losing the other one.
* AlliterativeName: '''M'''elinda '''M'''ay.
* AlmightyJanitor: It's hinted she's a famous and very experienced agent who decided to step away from the field for a desk job, and now officially is just the pilot of the team's jet. She eventually moves out of this role, becoming Coulson's right-hand and an active field agent again.
* AntiHero: She's firmly on the side of good, but she occasionally does some less-than-heroic things, such as mercilessly beating up the imprisoned and combat-''in''capable Ian Quinn after he shoots Skye. To be fair, he ''did'' shoot Skye.
* ArrogantKungFuGuy: [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed, but there]]. May is not prone to bragging, but if you place her skills in doubt, [[PreAssKickingOneLiner she'll gladly tell you how badly you'll get your ass kicked before proceeding to do exactly that]].
* BadassBoast: To ''[[LadyOfWar Sif]]'', of all people, when the latter warns May about [[BrainwashedAndCrazy Ward]] not hesitating to kill her.
--> '''May''': He (Ward) won't kill me. He may try to kill me... but he won't.
* BadassFamily: Her mother is a RetiredBadass secret agent.
* BadassInANiceSuit:
** She wears a pantsuit in "Ragtag" when she's disguised as a businesswoman.
** Also in "Melinda" during the incident that earned her the nickname "The Cavalry".
* BadassTeacher: She takes responsibility for training Skye in the timeskip between Season 1 and 2. Judging from how many [[TookALevelInBadass levels in badass Skye takes]] in Season 2 (going from knowing exactly one move and not being able to reliably release the safety from her gun to taking down ten men with a mixture of martial arts and gunplay in one scene), it's pretty clear May's training is more effective than Ward's for Skye.
* BatmanGambit: Fury knew Coulson would want her on his team, so he got to her first, explained the details of Coulson's resurrection, and asked her to keep an eye on him in case he CameBackWrong. She came up with a list of team roles she'd need in case things went south, which Fury translated into the mission profile he gave to Coulson: a biologist for looking after his body, a mechanical engineer for the machine for looking after his mind, and a special forces operative for helping May physically take him down.
* BerserkButton:

!!''Lola''
[[quoteright:310:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bscap0045_4915.png]]
->'''Appearances (in use)''': ''[[Series/AgentsOfSHIELD Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.]]'' [[Recap/AgentsOfSHIELDS1E1Pilot (Episode 1: "Pilot")]]'', ''[[Recap/AgentsOfSHIELDS1E10TheBridge (Episode 10: "The Bridge")]]'', ''[[Recap/AgentsOfSHIELDS1E12Seeds (Episode 12: "Seeds")]]'', ''[[Recap/AgentsOfSHIELDS1E20NothingPersonal (Episode 20: "Nothing Personal")]]''

A '62 red Corvette that Coulson helped his father restore. Coulson has since made his own modification to the car.
----
* BrickJoke: Remember how Lola can fly? Comes in handy in "Seeds". The ability becomes a ChekhovsGun in "Nothing Personal," when her flying ability saves Coulson and Skye. Coulson is later able to restore her but only after getting S.H.I.E.L.D. back to ops. Whether she can still fly remains to be seen.
* CargoShip:
** InUniverse: several other characters - including Skye, Maria Hill and Nick Fury - take Coulson's professed love for Lola quite seriously. Skye even echoes Coulson's warning of "don't touch Lola" to a group of visitors when he's not around to do so himself.
** Coulson eventually reveals that when he was a boy, his father restored a '62 Corvette and had his son help; the young Phil was upset and wished he was out with his friends... until he saw how beautiful the finished product was. Lola is implied to be ''that'' car, but either way it's clear she has sentimental value to him because she brings back fond memories of his late father.
* CompanionCube: Coulson refers to his car the same way he would a member of his team. Nick Fury even once asked how "she was doing."
-->'''Reyes:''' There's the flying man-cave, the hot red sports car--\\
'''Coulson:''' Her name is Lola.\\
'''Reyes:''' Of ''course'' it is.
* CoolCar: A red Corvette that can fly.
* FlyingCar: Lola is equipped with a version of Howard Stark's early repulsor technology as demonstrated in ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger''.
* HatesBeingTouched:
** According to Coulson, who tells everyone not to touch her.
** Agent Blake makes a point of loudly running his finger along Lola's side as he walks off the Bus in "FZZT" to piss Coulson off.
** It's given a MeaningfulEcho in "The Magical Place" when, as she's kicked off the Bus on Agent Hand's orders, Skye tells her and everyone else still on board, "Don't touch Lola."
** Skye is naturally upset when Ward and Deathlok shoot her up as she and Coulson use her to escape the Bus, which Ward had captured.
** Once Creator/EmilyVanCamp [[http://33.media.tumblr.com/0631232a90c26d633ecd35ae17ba3c30/tumblr_neniljQHvU1su6zr6o1_500.gif touched Lola in a Marvel special]], the fandom went nuts... but [[IfItsYouItsOK Coulson himself]] [[https://twitter.com/clarkgregg/status/530085312509542400 sees no problem]]. ([[TheVamp Lorelei]] [[https://twitter.com/clarkgregg/status/443548089094111232 apparently has a pass too]]).
** He lets Skye drive her in the Season 2 finale, though this is partly out of necessity, since he only has one hand, which would make driving difficult.
* MidLifeCrisisCar: Camilla accuses her of being this. Coulson says she's more of an ''after''life crisis car.
* NumberOneDime: In Season 2, Coulson explains that its sentimental value comes from the fact that his dad was a car guy, and they together restored a certain red '62 Corvette.
* PutOnABus: Rarely seen in Season 2, though occasionally referenced; mostly by Mack, who's angling to do some work on her. Lola reappears in "One Door Closes", when Coulson finally offers Mack a peek under the hood.
* WeaponizedCar: Lola has a pair of [[Film/{{Goldfinger}} Aston Martin DB5]]-like machine guns that pop out from the front lights, as Ward and Deathlok found out the hard way. According to Fitz, she also has flamethrowers that we have yet to see in action as well as the world's first GPS.

* LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe: [[spoiler: The latestst model of Coulson's prosthetic hand is able to project an energy shield strong enough to withstand an explosion. He thought it [[RuleOfCool would be cool]] if the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. used an actual shield of their own.]]

* SheCleansUpNicely: When disguised as Coulson's estranged "daughter" in "T.R.A.C.K.S.". Who'd have thought she'd look so good [[Film/ThorTheDarkWorld wearing lady clothes]]? Jane Foster would probably feel upstaged at that point.

* [[spoiler: BrainwashedAndCrazy:]] [[spoiler: in "The Team", Hive infects her, turning her into his mole within S.H.I.E.L.D.]]

** Unknown to him, there's another S.H.I.E.L.D. out there - it considers itself to be the ''real'' S.H.I.E.L.D. Bobbi and Mack have been acting as double agents for them the enitire season with the end game of aquiring Fury's Toolbox. And they've taken great pains to keep their sectet from Coulson to the point of kidnapping Hunter when he realizes what's going on.

* {{Badass}}:
** It takes a particularly special kind of badass to go up against an Asgardian single-handedly, even if he was wielding an experimental weapon based on alien technology.
** He does it again on ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'' by attempting to take on Garrett and a group of Centipede-fueled soldiers on his own. It doesn't go so well, but he gets back up and tries again.
** We get our first glimpse of Coulson's physical abilities in ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRi0Y59sJDs A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer]]'', when he takes care of two armed robbers with only a bag of flour and martial arts. All because he couldn't decide on chocolate or powdered doughnuts.

** His plan to take down HYDRA in Season Two is both ingenious and ruthless: use a high-ranking HYDRA agent that they captured as a pawn by convinving him that there's a faction of the organization that is plotting against each the rest. This convinces HYDRA leadership to kill each other to prevent a coup, so S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Army can take down the leaderless grunts with ease.

A highly experienced agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. who is an AcePilot and weapons expert. She is a member of Agent Coulson's team that is assembled to investigate strange events around the world. With Coulson now Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., May functions as his NumberTwo in the fight against HYDRA.

* ActionGirl: Easily one of the strongest characters in the series, female or otherwise.

* {{Badass}}: May is easily the most badass member of the team, shown particularly in "The Well" where she uses two pieces of the Berserker Staff without visible effort when [[TheBigGuy Ward]] goes UnstoppableRage with just one.

** It's suggested that this is why she can handle the Berserker Staff; unlike Ward, whose rage is locked away, May and all her rage and darkness are one.

* ActionSurvivor: In season 1, she's not ''quite'' an ActionGirl, but she can survive against standard [[{{Mook}} mooks]] when the situation calls for it. This changes in season 2.
* ActionGirl:
** Starting in season 2, wherein she's able to hold her own against Agent 33, who has much more combat experience than Skye does.
** Forget about Agent 33, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hReYNlIoIWE this clip]] of Skye's {{Oner}} fight scene from "The Dirty Half Dozen", where she single-handedly takes down ''nine'' HYDRA agents with no help from her superpowers looks like something out of ''Film/JohnWick''.

* {{Badass}}: Her unrivalled hacking abilities make her an excellent asset to S.H.I.E.L.D., and she's also shown to be quite the GuileHero. With combat training from her superiors, she becomes combat-capable enough to the point that she's able to hold her own in the field.

* GunFu: Displays a ''Film/JohnWick''-esque version of this during the shootout scene in "The Dirty Half Dozen".

** From "Providence" onward, he begins to feel this way towards Triplett too: helped by the fact that Triplett, as well as being a total {{Badass}} and potential LoveInterest for Simmons, is clearly also very intelligent, meaning that Fitz can't even fall back on his role as TheSmartGuy around him.

* {{Badass}}: One of the team's more combat-effective members. Despite still recovering from a life threatening wound, Tripp manages to run around and disarm four remote bombs before they detonate and kill everyone in the Underground city.

* BrickJoke: Remember how Lola can fly? Comes in handy in "Seeds". The ability becomes a ChekhovsGun in "Nothing Personal," when her flying ability saves Coulson and Skye, likely at the cost of her "life."
** Coulson was able to restore her but only after getting S.H.I.E.L.D. back to ops. Whether she can still fly remains to be seen.

** Coulson eventually reveals that when he was a boy, his father restored a '62 Corvette and had his son help; the young Phil was upset and wished he was out with his friends... until he saw how beautiful the finished product is. Lola is implied to be ''that'' car, but either way it's clear she has sentimental value to him because she brings back fond memories of his late father.

* NumberOneDime: Is this to Coulson. In Season 2, Coulson explains that its sentimental value comes from the fact that his dad was a car guy, and they together restored a certain red '62 Corvette.

* BerserkButton: Nothing freaks Fitz out faster than the thought of any harm coming to Simmons. Unfortunately for him, it's sort of an occupational hazard.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: By killing [[spoiler:Ward]] instead of leaving him trapped on barren planet, he helps Hydra achieve their ultimate objective: [[spoiler: Hive, an Inhuman so dangerous, his own kind banished him to another planet, is able to assimilate Ward's corpse and return to Earth]].

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: By killing [[spoiler:Ward]] instead of leaving him trapped on barren planet, he helps Hydra achieve their ultimate objective: [[spoiler: Hive, an Inhuman so dangerous, his own kind banished him to another planet, is able to assimilate Ward's corpse and return to Earth]].