Characters / MCU: HYDRA – Leadership

Main Character Index > Villainous Organizations > HYDRA > Leadership (Johann Schmidt | Grant Ward) | Operatives

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Spoilers for all works set prior to Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame are unmarked.

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HYDRA Leadership

Science Division

Johann Schmidt / Red Skull

See the Red Skull page

Dr. Arnim Zola

Dr. Arnim Zola

"The sanity of the plan is of no consequence. Because he can do it."

"Science could not save my body. My mind, however, that was worth saving."

Species: Human ^note Machine after transferring his consciousness to a computer before his physical death

Citizenship: Swiss, German, American

Portrayed By: Toby Jones

Voiced By: Eduardo Tejedo (Latin-American Spanish dub), Pep Sais (European Spanish dub), Mutsumi Sasaki (Japanese dub)

Appearances: Captain America: The First Avenger | Captain America: The Winter Soldier | Agent Carter

"HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security."

Weapons designer for HYDRA, and right hand man to Schmidt.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: He has Icy Blue Eyes instead of the brown eyes he has in the comics.
• Adaptational Wimp: In the comics, Zola frequently uploads himself into a new body whenever his old one is destroyed, and he often makes use of combat-capable robot bodies. The film version exists as a 1970s era supercomputer with no combat ability, and once this form is destroyed, he's dead for good. Or so it seems...
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He isn't the Punch-Clock Villain he says he is.
• Book Ends: His face first appears in the franchise as a sickly, distorted monocolor image on some sort of giant lens in his laboratory and last appears as a crude, distorted monocolor-screen image in Winter Soldier.
• Boxed Crook: He was recruited to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. after World War II, along with other Nazi scientists, as part of the real-life Operation Paperclip. This proved to be a very bad idea, as he used the opportunity to rebuild HYDRA within S.H.I.E.L.D. itself.
• Brain Uploading: He uploads his consciousness in a vast bank of computers in the 1970's.
• Bystander Syndrome: As mentioned, he only makes HYDRA's weapons. Beyond that is another matter entirely. The Winter Soldier throws this out the window when it turns out that he's instrumental in HYDRA's survival into the 21st century.
• The Cameo: He appears in The Stinger to the first season finale to Agent Carter, proposing an opportunity to team up with Dr. Fennhoff. It's unknown if this ever amounted to anything before he had his mind computerized.
• Cyanide Pill: The only HYDRA agent they ever catch who doesn't use one, due to being a Dirty Coward more concerned with preserving his own life than the cause. At first.
• Cyber Green: Due to the available technology when he digitized himself in the 70s, his digitized form is displayed on green monochrome monitors.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Upon being brought online by Steve and Natasha, Zola acts much more like an analytical computer than a human being. In particular, he analyzes the two of them based on their birth records with perfect, machine like memory, outright declares he's accessing the archives of HYDRA's history as though he were an A.I., and speaks with more of a robotic inflection in his voice, as though he were an evil Siri. Downplayed however in that Arnim does show at least some form of villainous glee at the fact that Steve's attempts to destroy HYDRA had failed in the long run.
• Deadpan Snarker: Becoming a living computer seems to have brought out Zola's snarky side. After provoking Steve into smashing one of his computer monitors, Zola just appears on another one, quipping "as I was saying..."
  Steve: Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years.
  Zola: First correction: I am Swiss. Second, look around you. I have never been more alive.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Zola deconstructs the Minion with an F in Evil. Originally a timid Nazi scientist who later worked for HYDRA under Johann Schmidt, the Red Skull, he only sided with Schmidt after he killed the Nazi officers with Tesseract powered weaponry since they discovered Berlin was on Hydra's hostile capitals map, and when captured in 1945, he immediately rats out Red Skull to Captain America and the SSR. However, he's a far more sinister villain than both Red Skull and the Allies gave him credit for, having already studied the serum ahead of time and found the flaw, but neglected to tell Schmidt about it to see how monstrous he'd become and taunted Erskine that Schmidt will kill him, revived HYDRA within S.H.I.E.L.D. while brainwashing Bucky, who'd seemingly died during the mission that ended in his capture, into the Winter Soldier, and created an algorithm for Project Insight that would allow HYDRA to eliminate potential threats to their New Order.
• Dirty Coward: After being captured by the U.S. Military in the forties, Zola is quick to give them information on the Red Skull in exchange for his life. Ultimately subverted in that Zola still believed in HYDRA's philosophy and did everything in its power to ensure the organization would live on, using S.H.I.E.L.D. itself as a front.
• Disc-One Final Boss: In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it seems like the mastermind of the conspiracy is Zola, having survived in a computer since the 1970s and created an algorithm that present-day HYDRA plans to use for their own needs. However, his "brain" is destroyed by a strike missile in an attempt to kill Steve and Natasha halfway through the film, leaving Alexander Pierce to take over as the Big Bad.
• Double Meaning: While trying to kill Cap, Natasha and himself with a missile strike, he tauntingly tells Cap that the two of them are both "out of time". Not only has Zola been stalling for time while the missile is incoming, but a shared trait between him and Cap is that both of them are living, displaced relics of WWII which have only survived to see the present day due to abnormal or outright unnatural means.
• The Dragon: A non-combatant version, to the Red Skull.
• Dragon Ascendant: Reforms HYDRA from within S.H.I.E.L.D. after being captured.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Implied, as he was the architect for creating the modern day HYDRA which has long abandoned any Nazi beliefs about racial purity.
• Even Evil Has Standards: While Arnim was unflinchingly loyal to HYDRA's cause, it's clear that he was frightened by the megalomania that the Red Skull displayed. It's telling that his more evil acts are much more covert by comparison, and he subtly denounces Schmidt in The Winter Soldier by noting how his directives to Take Over the World by force were misguided and only served to galvanize people against them.
• Evil All Along: While he seems like a harmless Punch-Clock Villain in Captain America: The First Avenger, the tie in prequel comic Captain America: First Vengeance reveals that he was responsible for Red Skull becoming as bad as he did. He had examined the super soldier serum ahead of time and found the flaw that resulted in Schmidt's deformity, yet he chose not to tell him so he would become as horrible as possible.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Abraham Erskine and Howard Stark, for they are scientific geniuses who work on opposite sides.
  • To Cap himself. As Zola points out, both of them are "out of time", living through World War II but surviving to the modern-day. However, achieved this through radically different approaches with Cap being a Human Popsicle while Zola utilized Brain Uploading.
• Evil Genius: His designs are above what Howard Stark or Schmidt could design alone. His weaponizing of the Tesseract done with 40's level technology, and then uploading his mind to a computer using 70's level technology show him as one of the greatest geniuses in the setting.
• Evil Gloating: Confronted by Steve and Natasha, Zola shamelessly brags about HYDRA's survival into the modern-day, even personally taunting Steve about his Senseless Sacrifice in 1945. He's partly doing this to stall for time while Pierce orders a missile strike on their location, but Zola clearly revels in revealing the extent of his work.
  Zola: We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your life: a zero sum.
• Evil Is Petty: Out of all the possible places Zola could have chosen to have his mind uploaded, he chose Camp Lehigh, where Captain America was trained, even though the man was presumed long dead anyway.
• Evil Vegetarian: When Col. Phillips offers him a steak, Zola refuses it, saying meat doesn't agree with him. However, he may have been lying since he suspected the meat was poisoned. (It wasn't.)
• Face Death with Dignity: After having survived up to 2014 by using a decades old supercomputer to house his brain, Zola seems content with finally dying, so long as he gets to take Steve Rogers with him. Although the behavior of his Earth-29929 counterpart indicates the copy of Zola Steve and Natasha conversed with was only willing to die because he knew there was still another copy of his brain in Russia.
• Faux Affably Evil: While quite polite and dorky, he still willingly backs Red Skull. Crops up again when he's talking to Captain America and Black Widow- he "politely" gloats as he expects them all to die.
• For Science!: He just builds the awesome glowing blue machines. HYDRA and Schmidt are the ones who actually use them.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: His glasses add to the Mad Scientist look.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Initially goes from being a meek HYDRA scientist with the characteristics of a Dirty Coward, to a domineering force in HYDRA's regrowth over the course of several decades.
• Greater-Scope Villain: To Alexander Pierce and the modern day HYDRA in general. See also Predecessor Villain below.
• Herr Doktor: A Swiss scientist who makes mad science weapons.
• Icy Blue Eyes: He has bright blue eyes and is a Mad Scientist who created the Winter Soldier.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Initially, Zola comes off as a Man Of Science, but in time it is revealed that his heinousness is arguably worse than his boss the Red Skull.
• Joker Immunity: He cheated death by creating a copy of his mind and uploading it into a supercomputer when his body finally succumbed to natural causes in the early 70s. And although the computer ends up being destroyed by a missile, What If...? indirectly reveals that Zola created several backup copies of his artificial consciousness that are spread across the globe to help HYDRA and ensure his survival. If even a single copy survived, Zola will be back to terrorize the Earth once again.
• Karma Houdini: Disturbingly, Dr. Zola is one of the few villains in the MCU to go more or less completely unpunished. After being captured by the US in The First Avenger, he's ultimately spared thanks to a plea bargain. In The Winter Soldier, it's revealed that he underwent a successful Brain Uploading upon death and spread HYDRA's influence practically unopposed and is completely content with his death via pulling a Taking You with Me on Captain America and Black Widow.
• Machine Worship: Downplayed. While not exactly "worshipped", Zola continues to be a domineering force to ensure HYDRA's growth after transferring himself into a computer, and even writes an algorithm that the modern day followers of the organization use to enact their plan for world domination.
• Mad Scientist: Though he's much saner than Red Skull, he loses all concerns for safety when he realizes the Tesseract's potential. Even more prominent in The Winter Soldier, where he is shown to be behind the creation of the Winter Soldier, and when he became fatally ill in the '70's, transferred his mind into a computer so he could survive and continue serving HYDRA.
• Manipulative Bastard: An implicit requirement for being able to convert SSR/S.H.I.E.L.D. agents over to the very organization they were fighting, one that arose from the Nazis. Agent Carter implies he may have had some help in this regard, through hypnosis...
• Minion with an F in Evil: Subverted. Zola's uncomfortable in Red Skull's work environment and doesn't commit any evil beyond building the weapons that Schmidt asks him to make, making it seem that he's just a poor sod who just happens to work for a lunatic. However, The Winter Soldier shows that while he's not as evil as Red Skull, he's still a very bad man. He's the one who makes Bucky into the Winter Soldier, and he's complicit in numerous murders as well as a decades-long conspiracy helping HYDRA to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D.. Worst of all, Zola writes a computer algorithm that helps to identify any and all potential threats to HYDRA's New World Order, numbering in at least the tens of millions, so that they can be murdered.
• Mistaken Nationality: Because of his accent and who he was working for, both Steve and the audience assumed he was German. Turns out that he's Swiss, as foreshadowed when Zola reads the document handed to him by Colonel Philips.
• The Mole: Deliberately joined S.H.I.E.L.D. with the intention of raising HYDRA inside it.
• Mythology Gag: His first appearance on screen is that of a distorted head in a screen, mirroring his most iconic incarnation. Later he's seen taking paper with the designs of said robot body. In The Winter Soldier, the camera attached to the computer his uploaded self is occupying looks like the camera on his comics counterpart's robot body.
• Nervous Wreck: In The First Avenger, Zola is constantly on edge due to working for Red Skull, with the threat of being killed should he become a liability being hung over his head. Subverted by the time of The Winter Soldier where Zola is portrayed as much more confident and a skilled manipulator at that.
• Non-Action Guy: Lampshaded by Zola himself.
  Zola: This is hardly my area of expertise. I merely develop the weapons, I cannot fire them!
• Not Afraid to Die:
  • Averted. Philips points out that Zola didn't have a personal cyanide pill to swallow when he got captured, unlike so many other HYDRA agents, which means he prefers to live. This makes him easy to blackmail.
  • However, after cheating death for more than forty years with a Brain Uploading, when a missile heads his way to kill Captain America, Black Widow, and himself by proxy, he tricks them into listening to his Evil Gloating until he believes it's too late to stop, then just gleefully accepts his fate as the price of success. It should be noted that What If…? (2021) indicates there's a second copy of his mind stored in Russia, and Zola's Earth-29929 counterpart is shown to panic when faced with the prospect of both copies of his mind being destroyed.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: In The First Avenger, he comes off more as a Punch-Clock Villain who was afraid of Red Skull, but smart enough to make weapons from the Tesseract. In the sequel, he's sowed the seeds and created a far more dangerous plan and army to take over the world.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Engineered HYDRA's weapons, turned Bucky Barnes into an ageless cybernetic killing machine, uploaded his own consciousness to a computer as early as the 1970s, and created a predictive analytics algorithm that puts its real world counterparts to shame.
• Only Sane Man: Compared to Schmidt, who's unrelentingly called insane throughout the film - even by Zola himself. Turns out, while he never bought into Red Skull's little personality cult, he was a true believer in HYDRA's cause.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Invoked. After the Red Skull's defeat in World War II, Zola realizes that HYDRA's initial strategy of announcing to the world that you plan to conquer and subjugate it to your rule isn't exactly a smart game plan. As such, Zola takes great strides to rebuild HYDRA under the radar and within a bigger organization to act as a smokescreen for their future crimes, while also feeding crises all over the world to create a chaotic atmosphere that would inspire humanity to take more drastic and fascistic measures to keep the peace.
• Predecessor Villain: Becomes this in The Winter Soldier, as we learn that he originally orchestrated S.H.I.E.L.D.'s corruption and concocted the film's Evil Plan before current Big Bad Alexander Pierce took the reins.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He has no stake in Schmidt's operation, but who else is going to give him a Tesseract? Think of the opportunities! Subverted in The Winter Soldier, as keeping him alive as an Allied scientist allowed him to manipulate S.H.I.E.L.D. from the back end and rebuild HYDRA as a shadow group, poised to bring about Schmidt's new world order using the United States' own technology.
• Reluctant Mad Scientist: He'd rather build his designs in an environment that did not require chanting "Hail HYDRA". The sequel reveals that he was only "reluctant" to work for Red Skull; he's quite happy to be a Mad Scientist and is ideologically proud to work for HYDRA, especially since it's implied that the Skull's successors treated him with more respect than the Skull did himself.
• The Starscream: Double Subverted Trope. While he does seem alarmed by Red Skull's Sanity Slippage, he maintains a firm belief in his ideals. Despite that, he isn't willing to throw his life away for the cause, and sells Red Skull out for his own safety — and, as revealed in Winter Soldier, to revive HYDRA right under its enemies' noses.
• Superior Successor: Downplayed. While he doesn't ever take on a dictator-like role like Johann Schmidt did, Arnim Zola manages to bring HYDRA closer to world domination than the Red Skull himself could've ever dreamed of. Notably, Zola takes Schmidt's previous failures into account to devise a much grander conspiracy that nobody was able to see coming until it was almost too late.
• Taking You with Me: Intentionally gloats and explains HYDRA's Evil Plan to Steve and Natasha so that S.H.I.E.L.D. can destroy all three of them with a guided missile. Granted, Zola would have survived; What If? reveals that he had multiple copies of his consciousness scattered all over the world^note the episode's point of divergence was at some point during Avengers: Age of Ultron, so it can be assumed that Zola's multiple copies exist on Earth-199999 as well, so he'd be at worst mildly inconvenienced.
• Took a Level in Badass: Dr. Zola takes multiple levels of this after the war ends and he's recruited to work for S.H.I.E.L.D., being responsible for the decades-long HYDRA plan to covertly take over the world by making them smarter and more competent. He comes closer to the fruition of HYDRA's plans than the Red Skull himself.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: His torture of the American soldiers is shown in The Winter Soldier which casts him in an even nastier light, and proves him to be a bigger threat than he let on.
• The Unfettered: In The Winter Soldier, Zola refused to allow death to stop him from furthering HYDRA's goals; he simply transferred his mind into a computer and went right on working.
• Villain Team-Up: In 1946, Zola's cell was eventually shared with another supervillain, Dr. Fennhoff, a talented hypnotist and leader of Leviathan. Zola offered him a chance for escape by combining their skills, and by proxy uniting Leviathan and HYDRA.
• Virtual Ghost: In The '70s, he was able to upload his brain into a lot of mainframe computers before dying. Despite some additions such as an USB port, it's mostly an old-fashioned Zeerust ghost that appears through tube monitors.
• Walking Spoiler: His very introduction in Winter Soldier is to show HYDRA is not dead, and quite infiltrated into S.H.I.E.L.D. to the point of using their resources to keep Zola alive as a Virtual Ghost.

Secretary Alexander Pierce

Secretary Alexander Pierce

"Are you sure you're ready for the world to see you as you really are?"

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Robert Redford

Voiced By: Arturo Mercado (Latin-American Spanish dub), Manolo García (European Spanish dub), Hideyuki Tanaka (Japanese dub)

Appearances: Captain America: The Winter Soldier | Avengers: Endgame | Loki ^note  Archive footage from Avengers: Endgame

"See, I took a seat on the Council not because I wanted to but because Nick asked me to, because we were both realists. We knew that despite all the diplomacy and the handshaking and the rhetoric, that to build a really better world sometimes means having to tear the old one down. And that makes enemies."

A member of the World Security Council and old comrade of Nick Fury. He is one of the primary heads of Project INSIGHT, and leads an investigation on all suspects of the assassination attempt on Nick Fury… including Captain America.

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• Adaptational Villainy: In the comics, Pierce is a standard, good guy agent. In the movie, he's not only the Big Bad of the second film, but also a part of HYDRA.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Comic Pierce has black hair, the movie version has Redford's natural blonde.
• Age Lift: Pierce is a young man in the comics, somewhere in his thirties, and not even half of Redford's age.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Moles under his command take control over the S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters, Triskelion as well as all three Helicarriers.
• Badass Boast: His retort to Nick Fury's line in Broken Pedestal below.
  Alexander Pierce: You already did. You will again, when it's useful.
• Big Bad: Of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. He calls for the hit on Fury, gives orders to the Winter Soldier, and plans to use Helicarriers and Zola's algorithm to place the entire world under his control.
• Big Bad Friend: To Nick Fury, whom he has a long history with and whom he tries to have killed rather quickly.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: At first, Pierce seems like another Nick Fury. He rails against the World Security Council much like Fury, has a friendship with Fury and is a fan of the Avengers. The reality is, he's a Manipulative Bastard who is a member of a fascistic organization that was spawned in Nazi Germany and he himself is responsible for God-knows how many deaths over the years.
• Broken Pedestal: He was the man who appointed Nick Fury as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and was The Mentor to him. The revelation that he was Evil All Along greatly upsets Nick.
  Nick Fury: You know, there was a time when I would have taken a bullet for you.
• The Cameo: His past self appears in the 2012 Time Heist trying to take the Tesseract from Tony.
• Celebrity Paradox: Redford's long career combined with the size of the MCU would make it pretty hard to avoid, and sure enough Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has been mentioned on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and What If...?.
• Composite Character: The film's Pierce is an amalgamation of several different characters from the Marvel Universe; Alexander Goodwin Pierce, as far as the name goes, Robert 'Rebel' Ralston, in being an old friend of Fury's who was in an oversight position over S.H.I.E.L.D., not to mention being drawn to look like Redford for a time, and Aleksander Lukin, the Winter Soldier's master. His motives and high position evoke shades of Number One of the Secret Empire arc, and of the "Delta" LMD of Nick Fury Vs. S.H.I.E.L.D., while he physically resembles Arnold Brown, the leader of HYDRA during the Strange Tales story arc where the organization first appeared.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Although both the Red Skull and Pierce were the leaders of HYDRA in their respective time periods, the Red Skull was a superhuman who wanted all-out war while Pierce was a normal person who preferred more pragmatic methods.
• Cool Old Guy: The fact that he's Robert Redford is reason enough, but he also argues defiantly with the World Security Council and has a good sense of humor.
• Corrupt Bureaucrat: When it comes down to it, this is all he is, but the corruption is in a different way than most. Think of a kill list. People who, it's been decided, threaten the world's order enough that they must be killed to uphold it. From that, he's extrapolated the concept of figuring out what makes a person threaten world order, then removing the people who fit that profile in their dozens, or hundreds, or millions before they become threats. Never mind "innocent until proven guilty". Never mind those on kill lists have usually actively resisted less lethal alternatives. It's just another step…
• Deadpan Snarker: His remark about pointing out Algiers on a map qualifies. This is apparently a habit of his; at one point, one of the World Security Council asks Pierce to get any "snappy remarks" out of the way early.
• Death Glare: Despite his usual friendly-seeming demeanor, he can demonstrate a pretty chilling one, such as during Captain America's Rousing Speech and when Pierce kills the World Security Councilors.
• Detective Mole: He puts himself in charge of investigating Fury's "murder."
• Dies Wide Open: He succumbs to his bullet wounds while staring at the ceiling.
• Dissonant Serenity: This is his reaction to shooting his maid, who has walked in on him chatting with The Winter Soldier:
  Pierce: [in a completely calm tone] Oh, Renata; I wish you would've knocked.
• Dying Alone: After being shot by Fury, he's left to die in in the ruins of his office as the Helicarriers and his plans crumble to pieces around him, proclaiming loyalty to HYDRA with his final breath.
• Establishing Character Moment: His first appearance, meeting with the Council. He's standing while they're sitting passively, and while they're argumentative, stuffy, and obstructive, Pierce sees through all of it and delivers catty zingers at their expense. Lastly, there's this exchange, which greatly foreshadows The Reveal later on.
  Councilman: This Council takes piracy seriously.
  Pierce: Really? I don't. I don't care about one boat. I care about the fleet.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • His daughter, whose near death at the hands of terrorists was what motivated his Start of Darkness. When he saw how his inaction would've cost her her life and how Fury's unauthorized heroics saved her, Pierce decided he'd rather have the power to stop threats before they occur, whatever the cost, and this may have contributed to his turning to HYDRA.
  • He also expresses regret about the death of his maid, even though he personally was forced to shoot her after she stumbled on his meeting with Winter Soldier.
• Evil Costume Switch: Pierce initially appears wearing a gray business suit. After he's been confirmed as the Big Bad of The Winter Soldier, he switches to a dark suit. He was Evil All Along, but the change in costume comes after the revelation that he's a villain.
• Evil Old Folks: One of the oldest people in The Winter Soldier (Robert Redford was 76 at the time of filming) and the head bad guy.
• Faux Affably Evil: He may seem friendly and charming, but in reality he's cold and ruthless.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: A bespectacled remorseless mass murderer and HYDRA leader.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. The first season's Big Bad is a mysterious Diabolical Mastermind who calls himself the Clairvoyant, who is actually a HYDRA mole within S.H.I.E.L.D. That means this guy is his boss, but is uninvolved with his Evil Plan. Endgame reveals he was yet another overshadowing threat besides Thanos for the first Avengers film, and it was he who demanded to confiscate Loki's scepter and have him and the Tesseract handed to S.H.I.E.L.D. for HYDRA's (then-undercover) purposes, which leads to the creation of Ultron, and, by extension, the Sokovia Accords. They succeeded in taking the Scepter, but not Loki and the Tesseract, both of which ended up back on Asgard.
• Hannibal Lecture: After Natasha takes over his meeting, puts him at gunpoint and Nick Fury walks in, he gives one of these at the end of the movie. He tells Fury that seeing his aggressive stance on terrorism earlier in their lives is what inspired Pierce to actively stamp out any and all threats to peace. Giving that meant joining HYDRA, Fury is noticeably upset at the notion.
• Humble Hero: Turned down the Nobel Peace Prize. Why? Because he sees it as just the right thing to do. Problem is, he's more about "peace through overwhelming power".
• Karmic Death: Shot twice by Nick Fury, the man he tried to kill and whose "death" set the motion of the events in the film. Fittingly, the last exchange Pierce had with Fury had him say that he would have no qualms about having Fury shot again should it be necessary.
• Kick the Dog:
  • When his housekeeper unexpectedly returns and stumbles onto his meeting with the Winter Soldier, he shoots her twice with only the most minor of regrets.
  • While trying to get a mission report from the Winter Soldier, Pierce slaps him in the face when he proves unresponsive, then has him subjected to a painful memory wipe, indifferent to the Soldier's screams of agony as he walks away. This disturbs the HYDRA agents watching, which includes Brock Rumlow, and they're all normally very apathetic.
• Knight Templar: Seems to genuinely believe that HYDRA's work is for the good of mankind.
• The Man Behind the Man: The one who's pulling the strings of the Winter Soldier. He is also HYDRA's modern day leader.
• Manipulative Bastard: He's successfully manipulated S.H.I.E.L.D. for years, and does a good job for manipulating the World Security Council, Captain America and even seasoned chessmaster Nick Fury.
• Mole in Charge: He is HYDRA's mole within S.H.I.E.L.D. and he's Fury's boss. After Fury's death, his control of S.H.I.E.L.D. is essentially rock-solid.
• Moral Sociopathy: While Pierce is honestly doing what he believes is right and what will bring peace to the world, he cares little if at all for the people hurt or killed for his plan, rationalising that it's just the price one has to pay to create a better world.
• The Needs of the Many: He justifies his plot to have HYDRA shoot 20,000,000 people by saying their deaths will save billions. It's a bit of a hard claim to swallow, given that the targets include the President of the United States and heroes like Tony Stark and Bruce Banner.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Unusually for a superhero movie, Pierce does not appear to have any physical combat capabilities. However, he knows how to use guns and hidden kill-gadgets, and given that he is in command of virtually all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s resources (including legions of SWAT teams, multiple Helicarriers, and The Winter Soldier), he is still extremely dangerous.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: During the events of The Avengers, he tries to reclaim the Tesseract/Cosmic Cube for HYDRA, insisting it's S.H.I.E.L.D. property for 70 years, as seen in Endgame. It still goes to Asgard for Thor: The Dark World regardless of his jurisdiction, of course. Still, HYRDA managed to get Loki's specter with the Mind Stone inside.
• Obviously Evil: Savvy viewers could probably guess by the film's marketing and the premise for the character (the "real" head of S.H.I.E.L.D. who we've never even heard of until now) that Pierce is a bad guy. That part isn't as much of a spoiler compared to the much more spoileriffic notion of how he's a bad guy.
• Oh, Crap!: Multiple ones, during the Finale.
  • First when Natasha reveals that she infiltrated the Council and takes out his guards. Pierce can only watch in surprise.
  • Then, when Nick Fury reveals he survived the assassination attempt. Pierce respond with a grimace but tries to save face with a quip.
    Pierce: Did you get my flowers?
  • Last when, Black Widow shocks herself to disable Pierce's kill-device on her. This time his shock of trying to figure out what just happened buys time for Fury to grab a gun and shoot him.
• Pet the Dog: In Avengers: Endgame, just after trying to take the Tesseract off of Tony's hands by force and despite the fact he would later mark him for death with Project Insight, Pierce shows legitimate concern for Tony when he suffers a heart attack, tending to him and calling for a medic.
• Real Award, Fictional Character: Pierce is notable for that time he turned down the Nobel Peace Prize by saying that peace is a goal that must be continuously striven for and such a worthy goal does not need prizes. By this point in the film he's already been revealed as the head of HYDRA, and we know that HYDRA's ideas of peace are not the kind that would warrant the Peace Prize. Nick is suitably disgusted when he says the line.
• Remember the New Guy?: Introduced as friend and superior of Nick Fury's, a member of the World Security Council, despite not appearing among them in The Avengers. Almost all the WSC members seen here are new, though, so it's possible The Avengers either didn't show all the members or there was a change in staff in the time since. Endgame retcons him into being present during the immediate aftermath of the Battle of New York.
• Running Both Sides: For most of The Winter Soldier, he's in charge of both the legitimate S.H.I.E.L.D. and the American division of HYDRA.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Pierce wears a very sharp gray three-piece suit early in the film, and an equally snappy black suit in the finale.
• Smug Smiler: When Fury turns up alive, he can only smirk. Councillor Rockwell even calls him a "smug son of a bitch" which is a very accurate description.
• Spiritual Antithesis: Word of God hints of Pierce as this to Redford's C.I.A. analyst character from Three Days of the Condor.
• Two First Names: Alexander and Pierce.
• The Unfettered: The ends justify the means for Pierce, so he doesn't bother limiting his means; early in The Winter Soldier, he tries to have his old friend Nick Fury assassinated by police officers. Then there's Project INSIGHT.
• Villain with Good Publicity:
  • He turned down a Nobel Peace Prize because he supposedly felt that peace wasn't something you achieve and then get a prize for; it's something you must forever strive to attain and defend.
  • He remained a very high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent until Rogers exposed him as the leader of HYDRA.
• Walking Spoiler: The reveal he's actually controlling HYDRA makes him hard to discuss without revealing the whole movie.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Honestly believes he's doing the right thing, without a trace of selfishness. he may be insane but still…

Baron Wolfgang von Strucker

Baron Wolfgang von Strucker

"HYDRA. S.H.I.E.L.D. Two sides of a coin that's no longer currency."

Species: Human

Citizenship: German

Portrayed By: Thomas Kretschmann, Joey Defore (young)

Voiced By: Rubén Trujillo (Latin-American Spanish dub), Pedro Molina (European Spanish dub), Akio Hirose (Japanese dub)

Appearances: Captain America: The Winter Soldier ^note  In The Stinger | Avengers: Age of Ultron Prelude - This Scepter'd Isle comic | Avengers: Age of Ultron | Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (appears in Episode 103: "Rise and Shine")

"It's not a world of spies anymore, not even a world of heroes. This is the age of miracles, doctor. And there is nothing more horrifying than a miracle."

A prominent leader of HYDRA after the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the death of Alexander Pierce. He was also one of the HYDRA members infiltrated within S.H.I.E.L.D..

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• Abusive Parents: Strucker constantly beat his son, Werner von Strucker, when the latter was a child.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Is completely bald, scarred and often gaunt in the comics. He's played by the attractive Kretschmann in film, and he's buzzcut rather than bald.
• Adaptational Wimp: In the comics, Strucker is a big name villain and a serious physical threat. Being mentioned in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. appeared to set him up as one of the next big villains in the MCU. Come Age of Ultron, Strucker is shown to be a Dirty Coward who quickly surrenders and is taken out by Captain America moments after running into him. Then he's Killed Offscreen by Ultron.
• Age Lift: As with Nick Fury (basically his archenemy in the comics), we get no indication that he's been around since WWII.
• Asshole Victim: Murdered by Ultron, with his head painfully smashed against a wall. Hardly anyone, even out of Strucker's HYDRA contemporaries or even his own son, is particularly sorry about it. Only Ulysses Klaue shows even a hint of regret about Strucker's death, and even then, he shrugs it off pretty quickly.
• Bad Boss:
  • He leaks information about remaining HYDRA bases to buy himself time for his own plans while effectively selling out his underlings.
  • He urges his men to fight a losing battle against the Avengers while Strucker intends to surrender in order to save his own neck, but this is likely a ploy to distract the Avengers so List can escape with all their work.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Despite all of the build up, he's easily captured at the beginning Avengers: Age of Ultron, and doesn't even get an onscreen death, instead being Killed Offscreen.
• Characterization Marches On: In The Winter Soldier he is portrayed as a menacing and cold Diabolical Mastermind and clearly a major threat. Age of Ultron abandons those traits altogether, portraying him as a Big Bad Wannabe Dirty Coward who's nothing more than a glorified Disc-One Final Boss.
• The Chessmaster: A prominent HYDRA leader and previously a mole in S.H.I.E.L.D., he likely had a hand in formulating Project Insight and not only that, he escaped the havoc caused by the plot's unravelling in The Winter Soldier entirely unscathed.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Having his head smashed against a wall by Ultron couldn't have felt good. Of course, he definitely deserved it.
• Decomposite Character: The Red Skull takes over his comic counterpart's position as founder of HYDRA. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. reveals he's a member of the second generation of Red Skull's incarnation of HYDRA after its revival by Zola.
• Demoted to Extra: He is the founder and preeminent head of HYDRA in the comics. The movies make Red Skull the founder of the modern incarnation, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. implies he's actually one of a council. In a specific film example, he was originally the Big Bad of The Winter Soldier, as is evident in abandoned storyboards before Robert Redford was cast and the role was re-written to be Pierce instead.
• Dirty Coward: Pretty shamelessly, unless he was aiming for I Surrender, Suckers below. However, it's hinted that it's a trick to distract the Avengers so Dr. List can escape and continue their research.
  Strucker: We will not yield. The Americans send their circus freaks to test us. We will send them back, in bags. NO SURRENDER!
  HYDRA Soldiers: NO SURRENDER!
  Strucker: [quietly, to Dr. List] I'm going to surrender…
• Disc-One Final Boss: He's the primary threat of the first act of Avengers: Age of Ultron, and is succeeded by the titular character shortly afterward.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Strucker is quickly dealt with in Age of Ultron's opening act, and the next time we see him, he's already been killed by Ultron, with the robot smashing Strucker's head against the wall of his prison cell, to cover his tracks.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Appears in the stinger of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, before being featured more prominently in the opening of Avengers: Age of Ultron.
• Evil Genius: Strucker is an accomplished scientist working for HYDRA.
• Evil Wears Black: Like most of the rest of HYDRA in the films, Strucker wears a black uniform similar to the green one HYDRA had in the comics.
• Faux Affably Evil: When cornered by Cap, he acts well spoken and polite. Cap doesn’t buy it.
• Go, Ye Heroes, Go and Die: When the Avengers are quickly making their way to his HQ, he encourages his men to fight to the end and that they will not surrender. He then immediately turns to Dr. List and whispers that they're going to surrender. Though it's heavily implied that his surrender is part of a plan to distract the Avengers so Dr. List can escape with their research.
• Greater-Scope Villain: He's this to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2, as dialogue suggests he's superior in the organization to Whitehall and the HYDRA council. He's on Team Coulson's hit list but they have other, more immediate, targets.
• Hate Sink: While not exactly admirable in Age of Ultron (being a Dirty Coward who engages in lethal human experimentation), references and flashbacks in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. make him out to be even more loathsome, showing Strucker to be an abusive, sexist, arrogant asshole who has been a HYDRA loyalist from a young age.
• He Knows Too Much: After telling Ultron that he can obtain more vibranium from Ulysses Klaue, Ultron murders Strucker to cover his tracks. The Avengers find his body with "PEACE" written on the wall in his cell.
• High-Class Glass: Wears one just like in the comics. This one seems to be actually a high tech lens and not a straight monocle.
• Killed Offscreen: After he's knocked out by Captain America in Age of Ultron's opening, he is next seen dead in his prison cell, having been murdered by Ultron after giving up information on how to get vibranium, and given the position of the blood stain, it's likely that Ultron killed him by smashing his head against the wall, then used his blood to write "PEACE" on the wall of the cell.
• Informed Attribute: In The Winter Soldier and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Strucker is presented as a serious threat and one of HYRDA's greatest leaders. Come Age of Ultron he's revealed to be a Dirty Coward whose forces are Curb Stomped by the Avengers and he's easily taken out by Captain America.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Despite claiming to surrender, he has Scarlet Witch on standby ready to attack Cap. It doesn't work.
• The Mole: He was a high-ranking HYDRA mole within S.H.I.E.L.D..
• New Era Speech: His "age of miracles" monologue is a downplayed version of this since he's only thinking about his two new bioweapons (Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch).
• Obviously Evil: Von Strucker's Nazi-esque appearance wouldn't be out of place in a 1940s film serial.
• Oh, Crap!: In a deleted scene, Strucker has this reaction upon seeing Ultron enter his cell.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Besides human experimentation using Loki's staff, Strucker was also working on a variety of scientific endeavours. In particular, it was his robotics projects that inspired Tony Stark to create Ultron. Tony thinks that the mind inside the scepter (revealed to be the Mind Stone) is what was truly doing all the thinking.
• Overlord Jr.: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. reveals that he has a son named Werner von Strucker. Ironically, Werner says that his father kept him as far away from HYDRA as possible, and Werner ended up instead being a Upper-Class Twit who spent his father's money. It was someone else who groomed him for HYDRA leadership.
• Put on a Bus: Strucker is the only villain who first debuted in Captain America: The Winter Soldier to not return in Avengers: Endgame when Iron Man, Captain America, Ant-Man, and Banner time traveled to the Battle of New York.
• Red Herring: Was initially led to be believed to be a major threat, however when he returns in Age of Ultron, he was just a Starter Villain taken out at ease.
• The Rival: To Brigadier General Hale, way back at the academy days. Hale was actually the better student but Strucker had already been marked for leadership.
• Smug Snake: Strucker acts as if he’s in complete control, but in reality he’s a Dirty Coward who’s quickly thrown in prison and later murdered.
  • In a deleted scene, Strucker thinks he’s being busted out of prison by HYDRA, acting smug with a big smile on his face and muttering “About time.”. Then he sees Ultron and his smile is immediately wiped off his face.
• Starter Villain: For Age of Ultron he is the first threat that the Avengers take down, and from him they steal Loki's Scepter. This leads to Ultron.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: In his second MCU appearance, he's the villain of the prologue, but is then suddenly Killed Offscreen by Ultron.
• Undignified Death: Unceremoniously murdered in his prison cell by a psychotic murder bot, who then uses some of Strucker's blood to write a message on the wall.
• The Von Trope Family: Wolfgang von Strucker.
• We Have Reserves: He plans to leak intel to Captain America about other surviving HYDRA bases so Rogers will be distracted taking them out while he completes his plan.

Dr. Daniel Whitehall / General Werner Reinhardt

Dr. Daniel Whitehall / General Werner Reinhardt

"Discovery requires experimentation."

Species: Human

Citizenship: German, American

Portrayed By: Reed Diamond

Voiced By: Óscar Gómez [Disney Dub], Gabriel Cobayassi [Sony Dub] (Latin-American Spanish dub); Antonio García Moral (European Spanish dub)

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. | Avengers: Endgame ^note  Archive photography from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

"Freedom. Equality. Individual rights. These principles make mankind a plague on this planet. Think of a forest. It dries up and catches fire with the first spark. Now, mankind would fight that fire, believing every individual plant perfect in its own individual way. But it's the fire that's perfect."

One of the most prominent leaders of HYDRA. Originally a high ranking officer of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS), during World War II he led many expeditions to recover mysterious artifacts for HYDRA.

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• Adaptational Nationality: British in the comics, German here. Later, he adopts American citizenship after he changed his identity into "Daniel Whitehall".
• Adaptation Name Change: In this show, his real name is Werner Reinhardt.
• Arc Villain: Though he starts off as Season Two's Big Bad, he doesn't last beyond "What They Become".
• Ascended Extra: Daniel Whitehall is a relatively new villain in the Marvel comic universe, having only debuted in 2009 (though he's the replacement/successor to long-time HYDRA agent Commander Kraken, who debuted in 1970). Here, he's the Big Bad of Season Two and one of the heads of HYDRA.
• Asshole Victim: He is one of the most evil characters of the series and when Coulson shoots him, everyone is happy, even some of his allies claim they didn’t like him.
• Big Bad: At the onset of Season Two, he appears as one of the heads of HYDRA and is the lead villain searching for the Obelisk. His actions in torturing Jiaying were also a major influence in her Start of Darkness which led to her becoming the Big Bad for the latter half of Season Two.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: At the end of "A Hen in the Wolf House", Whitehall teams up with Calvin Zabo to kill Coulson and his team, and he later brings Ward into the fold in "The Things We Bury".
• Big Bad Wannabe: While he's certainly dangerous, Cal notes that for all his extensive research he has no idea what the Obelisk's purpose actually is, likening him to a monkey scratching at it. Not to mention how he's unceremoniously gunned down by Coulson halfway through the season.
• Break Them by Talking: He delivers one to Agent 33 about HYDRA's philosophy of The Evils of Free Will to wear down her resolve while brainwashing her.
• Character Catchphrase: "Discovery requires experimentation", which he use whenever he employs such violent experiments and psychological methods on his victims.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: He boasts about Deathshead-levels of torture, like how he once operated on a conscious woman on-and-off for a full week, and how the hardest part was keeping her awake enough to feel the pain.
• Determinator: He's been after the Obelisk since 1945, and spent a whole week visecting Jiaying's organs so he could transfuse her anti-aging powers into himself.
• Disc-One Final Boss: He spearheads the search for the Obelisk, and later the hidden city, in the first half of Season Two. After he's killed by Coulson, he leaves a hole that could be filled by Calvin Zabo, Ward and Agent 33, or Jiaying, with the position of Big Bad ultimately going to Jiaying.
• The Dreaded: His subordinates are terrified of failing him, and rightly so, given his penchant for Cold-Blooded Torture and utter lack of anything resembling a conscience. This is evident when Raina herself expresses deep fear of the man when he threatens her life. It's also shown that he instilled fear to those loyal to Hydra, as shown when Nathaniel Malick was shown to be quite worried about being summoned by the man, and also reminding his brother of what could happen if they refused to attend a meeting with the man.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: The first half of "What They Become" is spent building up to a final confrontation between Calvin Zabo and Whitehall. Just before the big showdown, Coulson arrives and shoots Whitehall on sight, killing him instantly and pissing Zabo off.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • On the receiving end of this after his death, as one of the HYDRA leaders speaks ill of him at the subsequent meeting, and even Agent 33 realizes that he was a terrible master.
  • While his objections aren't remotely moral in nature, Whitehall wants nothing to do with the "ancient cult" facet of HYDRA, viewing it as barbaric religious nonsense, to which he prefers the scientific aspects established by the Red Skull. He even tried to convince the young Malick brothers, Gideon and Nathaniel, to turn away from the cult and join his faction of Hydra. He also views the boys' father Wilfred Malick as a coward, knowing that the man devised a way to cheat his way out of being chosen to go through the Monolith.
• Evil Old Folks: Decades spent in custody has not mellowed him out one bit, given his gruesome and prolonged torture of Jiaying. In the present he still is this, despite despite his relatively youthful appearance.
• Fauxreigner: Inverted, he dropped the German accent and adopted an American name after being released from S.H.I.E.L.D. custody.
• Faux Affably Evil: His introduction has him cheerfully chatting with a subordinate even as Agent Carter and the SSR are closing on their location, even reassuring the subordinate and telling him not to be scared because the Red Skull is now dead. He doesn't even get particularly upset when the SSR arrests him, but his veneer of good manners thinly disguises a psychopath who expects everyone around to obey him completely out of Mind Control or sheer terror, and it's rare for him to open his mouth without speaking about torture, mass-murder or power.
• For Science!: "Discovery requires experimentation" is his personal mantra for a reason.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He's seen calmly cleaning his glasses during the evacuation of his HYDRA camp. He repeats the action after receiving word that Creel has obtained the Obelisk in the present day. He calmly orders the vivisection, organ extraction and then dumping of Skye's mother.
• The Fundamentalist: Whitehall is an ardent believer in Schmidt's cause of eliminating The Evils of Free Will, and is even described as "a disciple of [the] Red Skull" by Bakshi. That said, Whitehall didn't seem too upset to learn of Schmidt's death, implying that he was more loyal to the message than the man.
• Hate Sink: He is introduced in the first episode of season two as an Affably Evil Benevolent Boss who happens to be a Nazi. As the the series goes on, his affability becomes an obvious façade as he is shown committing atrocious acts
• Healing Factor: While never shown demonstrating it, this is why he's Older Than They Look, having extracted it from Jiaying and applied it to himself.
• Hypocrite: He frequently says that his twisted experiments on innocent individuals is necessary for scientific discovery, citing "Discovery requires experimentation." Yet, he keeps such discoveries for himself, such as the serum he crafted from Jiaying's body that he used to de-age himself.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Regarding the Obelisk. Despite searching for it for decades he knows nearly nothing about what it really is, despite Malick's HYDRA being well aware of Inhumans and their origins.
• Mad Doctor: It's not clear what kind of doctor he is, though he references performing surgery (as torture) and is interested in scientific research (into weapons of mass destruction).
• The Man Behind the Man: He appears to be running a portion of HYDRA in the present day after the demise of Alexander Pierce, though Ward implies that Whitehall is subordinate to Baron Strucker.
• Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: Zig-Zagged. While imprisoned, he still has considerable influence over not only the Red Skull's HYDRA, but also Malick's Hive-worshipping HYDRA. However, he was still stuck in prison with no way out, and as the decades passed his influence appeared to wane and he was honestly amazed when, as a crippled old man, he learnt that HYDRA was still active and in need of his services again. ^note Might be a case of Hoist by His Own Petard since he mocked a young Gideon Malick concerning his worship of Hive, and since Malick went on to become one of the major leaders of HYDRA he might have decided to just leave Whitehall there for the insult, and it was only chance that Whitehall proved useful to the cause again.
• Older Than They Look: He appears alive at the end of "Shadows"... set nearly seventy years after his appearance in a flashback at the beginning of the episode. It's revealed that he did in fact age naturally into an old man while in custody until Alexander Pierce freed him under the pretense of "medical release". He and HYDRA tracked down a woman who didn't get killed by the Obelisk and who hadn't aged a day- Skye's mom. Whitehall vivisected her to rejuvenate himself and then tossed her corpse into the woods.
• Orcus on His Throne: He lets his many agents do his dirty work for him. The only two things he has done personally are: go after Raina and brainwash Agent 33.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: In addition to being a Nazi, he ignored General Hale's skills in favor of using her for a super breeding program, and expressed surprise at a female operative making it as far as she did.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: For a villain, anyway. He has no problem with his agents changing their plans or failing their mission, such as when Agent 33 failed to catch Raina or when Ward took Skye from the Quinjet. However, he won't tolerate direct disobedience.
• Remember the New Guy?: He was apparently a very high-ranking member of HYDRA in the 40's and part of the inner circle of the Red Skull, despite the fact that he's neither seen nor mentioned in Captain America: The First Avenger and only appears in the MCU starting with the second season of AoS.
• Sadist: Whitehall is a remorseless sadist to the very core: anyone in his custody can expect a long, protracted death. He boasts to Raina that he's perfected the art of performing surgery without anesthesia—For the Evulz—without them falling unconscious from the pain. He also seemed to greatly enjoy mentally breaking Agent 33. His underlings range from those who are utterly terrified of him to those who he controls completely with brainwashing as well.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: A few camera angles with the right lighting give him this.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Rare evil to evil version. When he corners Raina and she tries to negotiate, he just shuts her up with a little remote torture device.
  Whitehall: You should know, I'm not like the people you're used to dealing with. I'm not so easily confused.
• The Sociopath: Very sadistic, Faux Affably Evil, experimenting with the Obelisk using human test subjects and then continuing with the same methods when it becomes apparent that they don't work simply For the Evulz. That, coupled with the fact that he's The Unfettered, makes him this.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: He always talks in a calm, almost monotone, manner.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: A HYDRA leader who ran a base in Austria filled with a good number of future 084s — including the first official 084 according to S.H.I.E.L.D. records.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: After spending a good deal of Season 2's first half on the Doctor's quest for brutal revenge against him, he gets a deliberately anti-climactic and unsatisfying death from Coulson with a couple bullets he doesn't even see coming.
• Those Wacky Nazis: A first-generation member of HYDRA, which spun out of the Nazi party, but essentially kept the major themes along with a touch of Stupid Jetpack Hitler.
• Totalitarian Utilitarian: Believes that there should be a single world order run by HYDRA dedicated to eradicating The Evils of Free Will and anything resembling liberty or freedom.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • He didn't get to live to see it (or really care), but his vivisection of Jiaying would mean doom for plenty of innocent people down the line.
  • He’s the reason why Brigadier General Hale is running the Destroyer of Worlds program, which is destined to bring about the apocalypse.
• Villainous Friendship: Despite being a sadistic sociopath and former Nazi, Whitehall was held in surprisingly high regard by his HYDRA peers. List even admits to missing him after Whitehall was killed, and the HYDRA council honors him with a toast, saying that he had joined the Red Skull in the afterlife.
• Villainous Legacy: Despite being long dead, he still casts a long shadow in subsequent seasons, and it's not uncommon for him to appear to in flashbacks.
  • Obviously, the actions against Jiaying is what causes her to develop a hatred towards humanity, resulting in her becoming the Final Boss of Season 2, with her even adopting his idea of experimenting on the Diviners for her own purposes.
  • In the flashbacks of Season 3, he is the one who revealed to the Malick boys the truth about their father cheating himself out of being sacrificed to Hive. This act would cause Gideon to develop a fear of being chosen, leading to him using his father's method of rigging the ceremony in his favor, allowing him to live long enough to meet Grant Ward, who he would work together to bring Hive to the planet.
  • In a flashback in Season 5, he is revealed to be the one who developed the Destroyer of World's project that would result in the world being quaked apart in the future.
  • Finally, in Season 7, Nathaniel Malick, having witnessed Daisy using her powers, calls Whitehall for his instructions on surgically transferring enhanced abilities. This would lead Nathaniel to perfecting the method, which he planned to use on all the Inhumans at Afterlife to transfer their powers to his own crew.
• White Hair, Black Heart: He's a sadistic HYDRA scientist with white hair. It doesn't appear to be age-related either, as he still has it even as a middle-aged man during 1945.
• You're Insane!: Gets this from Cal, who declares his methods in trying to figure out the Obelisk (specifically, repeating methods he knew didn't work) "the very definition of insanity".

Dr. List

Dr. List

"Let's show them what we have accomplished. Send out the twins."

Species: Human

Citizenship: German

Portrayed By: Henry Goodman

Voiced By: Armando Réndiz (Latin-American Spanish dub)

Appearances: Captain America: The Winter Soldier ^note  In The Stinger | Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (first appears in Episode 33: "Aftershocks") | Avengers: Age of Ultron

A scientist and one of the leading figures of HYDRA, often representing the voice and interests of Wolfgang Von Strucker.

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• Ascended Extra: His role in the movies is fairly brief. His only real function there is to be a loyal aide von Strucker can confide his evil plans to. By guest starring in three episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as the Greater-Scope Villain, he ends up with more screentime than his boss.
• Big Bad Ensemble: With Jiaying in the second half of Season 2.
• Boom, Headshot!: He's killed when Iron Man shoots him in the head with a repulsor beam in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
• The Dragon: He represents Strucker's interests and works on his behalf.
• Dragon Ascendant: With the deaths of Whitehall as well as the HYDRA councillors his standing within the organization increases.
• Early-Bird Cameo: His first appearance was in The Stinger of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
• Evil Old Folks: An evil man whose age is starting to show.
• For Science!: Though not as much as Whitehall, he has no compunctions against experimenting on living people. He even respects Whitehall's dedication.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Set up as one for the latter half of Season 2, despite not appearing much. He's a leading scientist in HYDRA and is Coulson's primary target to destroy HYDRA.
• The Mole: He was one of the many S.H.I.E.L.D. members secretly aligned with HYDRA.
• Mouth of Sauron: Served as Strucker's in the HYDRA council.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: After the deaths of the HYDRA council, his wardrobe improves.

Sunil Bakshi

Sunil Bakshi

"I'm part of a grand history."

Species: Human

Citizenship: British

Portrayed By: Simon Kassianides

Voiced By: David Martínez [Disney Dub], Armando Guerrero [Sony Dub] (Latin-American Spanish dub); Juan Antonio Arroyo (European Spanish dub)

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (first appears in Episode 23: "Shadows")

"We grow stronger every day while S.H.I.E.L.D. clings desperately to a world it no longer understands. We will rip it from your hands."

A HYDRA operative of British origin who gives the orders in the field as well as recruiting gifted individuals.

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• Ambiguously Brown: Played by a slightly darker white British actor of Cypriot descent, though his surname implies South Asian or Jewish ancestry and in combination with the first name, sounds Indian.
• Bad Boss: Seems benevolent at first, but is unsympathetic when telling an undercover Simmons that if she fails she dies.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Bakshi tries very hard to be a threatening villain, but just can't cut it. As The Dragon to Whitehall, he's a Bumbling Sidekick who is easily captured. As the Dragon Ascendant, his escape is only part of an elaborate trap, and he's soon recaptured after being tricked into assassinating the rest of his allies.
• Bumbling Sidekick: Even though he should by all accounts be a formidable villain, being Whitehall's Dragon, a senior member of HYDRA, and the one who supervises HYDRA's brainwashed subjects, he has a surprising tendency to fail at every instance. It's a wonder that Whitehall kept him around, even if his failures weren't apparent from the start:
  • He thought Simmons, of all people, could be trusted. He backpedals on this quickly, only for Deep Cover Agent Bobbi to reveal herself and get the jump on him instead.
  • With Agent 33, he catches May in a trap and by all means should've held the upper hand, but after Coulson sees through their disguises, he fails to make any backup plans and tries to make a hasty extraction, but is quickly hit with an ICER and foiled as a result.
  • Both Ward and a disguised Hunter are able to make quick work of him.
• Canon Foreigner: Unlike his master, he has no comic book counterpart and was created specifically for the show.
• Compelling Voice: He uses a Trigger Phrase in order to keep brainwashed subjects in line.
• Dirty Coward: As soon as he winds up in a situation he has no control over, such as Hunter holding him at gunpoint, he is reduced to a simpering coward.
• The Dragon: Bakshi serves as Whitehall's second-in-command.
• Dragon Ascendant: Once Whitehall has been dealt with, he is effectively the head of HYDRA in Whitehall's region of the globe. However, he never actually gets to do anything, since he is a prisoner of S.H.I.E.L.D., then Talbot, then Ward, and then he's killed.
• Driven to Suicide: Has a cyanide pill in his cheekbone, which he utilizes while being grilled by Bobbi. It didn't quite kill him.
• Evil Brit: Speaks in a noticeable British accent. He also joined the British military but was expelled.
• Evil Genius: He's quite intelligent, to say the least.
• Faux Affably Evil: Initially he is shown as Affably Evil, when talking with Creel and after he interrogated Simmons and concluded that she was loyal, he is nothing but polite to her and guides her through her mission, but when Simmons asks what she should do if the target doesn’t respond well, Bakshi replies with "I guess there will be a new opening in our laboratory", showing how beneath his facade, he couldn’t care less about his employees.
• Fighting from the Inside: Is apparently resisting his brainwashing by Ward and Kara, leading to the capture of Deathlok and Lincoln by HYDRA. Then it turns out that he's really not. His acting was so convincing, even viewers thought he had legitimately returned to HYDRA.
• Humiliation Conga: He was already a Butt-Monkey from the start, but after being betrayed by Ward and sold out to S.H.I.E.L.D., he can't seem to catch a break.
  • Bobbi breaks him by talking and gets him to indirectly spill Whitehall's secret behind his Older Than He Looks appearance. Following this, he fails to kill himself with cyanide.
  • After Whitehall is killed, he is fooled into thinking there is a power struggle in HYDRA, and following a faked breakout scheme, he is manipulated into ordering the assassinations on the other HYDRA leaders before being recaptured and taken into military custody.
  • His last brainwashed subject breaks him out of prison... except she is working with Ward, and he quickly finds himself subjected to the same brainwashing. Worse, he is outright told he is expendable and it seems the procedure is little more than revenge and For the Evulz.
  • To summarize: He failed to notice S.H.I.E.L.D. had infiltrated HYDRA's ranks until it was too late, couldn't stop S.H.I.E.L.D. from finding the underground city first, lost control of his brainwashed subjects, inadvertently let slip his master's secrets, undermined his entire leadership on his first day as Dragon Ascendant, and finally was Hoist by His Own Petard when he was subjected to his own brainwashing procedure.
• Irony: The HYDRA agent that oversees brainwashed individuals was not only brainwashed himself, but manipulated into destroying HYDRA itself. Not that he needed brainwashing to already do that.
• Karmic Death: He is killed by Jemma, albeit accidentally or in self-defense with a Splinter Bomb, an item created by HYDRA to kill people horribly.
• Non-Action Guy: He hasn't shown any incredible fighting prowess. When dealing with May, he catches her off-guard so Agent 33 can taze her, then tortures her while she's tied up. Once she's free, he wisely makes a break for it before being stunned by Coulson. In the next episode, he chases down Simmons while flanked by backup and given his lack of bruises later, seems he didn't opt to fight Bobbi himself (probably for a good reason).
• Oh, Crap!:
  • His reaction after being found by the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents being tied up on a chair. This happened after Ward beat him up off screen along with other HYDRA agents.
  • When Agent 33 breaks him out of prison, he is relieved to see that she is still loyal... then Ward appears right behind her.
• Private Military Contractors: In-between being expelled from the UK military and joining HYDRA he used to be a mercenary.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Has thus far only been seen wearing a nice suit, even on a field mission (while his underlings have more proper attire).
• Taking the Bullet: Meets his end when Simmons tries to kill Ward with a Splinter Bomb.
• Undying Loyalty:
  • Bobbi thinks she's cracked his personal code and found out how to make him turn on Whitehall. As a final push, she asks "what kind of a man are you?" He replies, "A loyal one!" Then he bashes his head on a table to break open a Cyanide Pill hidden in his cheekbone.
  • This is still a primary trait even after he is brainwashed by Ward. He meets his end by putting himself in the way when Simmons tries to kill Ward.
• Unwitting Pawn: He's made into the patsy that takes down most of the leadership of HYDRA.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Bobbi's theory behind his loyalty to Whitehall is based on this sort of approval-seeking behavior. Her Sherlock Scan told her that he's estranged from his parents and a ray of acceptance and respect from Whitehall secured his devotion.
• You Have Failed Me: Implied to have this attitude when an undercover Simmons asks What she does if Donnie Gill doesn’t respond well, he doesn’t even sound sympathetic or caring at all when he tells her that she will die.

The Council

The Council (Octavian Bloom, the Baroness, the Banker, the Sheikh)

Species: Humans

Citizenship: Various

Portrayed By: Fred Dryer, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Joel Polis, Maz Siam

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (appear in Episode 33: "Aftershocks")

The various branch leaders of HYDRA alongside Daniel Whitehall under Baron von Strucker.

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• As Long as There Is Evil: Captain America: The Winter Soldier shows us that if you "Cut off one head, another shall take its place". What Team Coulson doesn't know is that the HYDRA leadership is still alive and well, even if they destroyed a very big branch of HYDRA. Coulson knows, though, since he sent Deathlok to scout out the remnants of HYDRA.
• Arab Oil Sheikh: The Sheikh, as his alias implies.
• Beard of Evil: The Banker and the Sheikh, leaders of a fascist terrorist organization with graying beards.
• Bald of Evil: The Banker and Bloom are leaders of a fascist terrorist organization with balding heads.
• The Baroness: The Baroness is literally one, inkling towards the Rosa Klebb type.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: They are implied to be at equal footing with Whitehall. They only have this position for one episode before they die.
• Big Bad Wannabe: The episode they're introduced, they are quickly assassinated.
• Boom, Headshot!: Bloom gets one from Lance Hunter.
• Canon Foreigner: None of them seems to have comics counterparts, except for the Baroness, who shares her title with Helmut Zemo's wife, Heike Zemo, who is also referred to by her title.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Banker, as his codename implies.
• Cosmopolitan Council: They're a surprisingly diverse group for HYDRA, including several ethnicities and two genders.
• Deadly Gas: The Sheikh is killed with poisonous gas.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: The Council includes a woman and a Middle-Eastern man. They are all still fascists, though.
• Evil Old Folks: All of them are above their fifties and lead a fascist terrorist organization.
• Mouth of Sauron: Dr. List serves as Strucker's voice in the HYDRA council.
• Nazi Nobleman: Well, noblewoman. The Baroness is a European aristocrat affiliated with a fascist organization.
• No Body Left Behind: The Banker is killed and disintegrated by a Splinter Bomb, the same bomb Marcus Scarlotti had used to kill Agent Noelle Walters.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Save for Octavian Bloom, we never find out their real names.
• Red Baron: They all have titles such as The Banker, The Sheikh, and The Baroness.
• Taken for Granite: How the Baroness dies, after drinking champagne laced with the weaponized Diviner effect.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: All of them save List die thanks to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s manipulations in the episode they are introduced.

Brigadier General Hale

Brigadier General Hale

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Catherine Dent, Alyssa Jirrels (young)

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (first appears in Episode 93: "Rewind")

A high-ranking officer who takes charge in investigating S.H.I.E.L.D. when Talbot ends up in a coma. In reality she's a surviving HYDRA operative, using her power and influence to continue HYDRA's mission in her own image. And destroy whatever remains of Coulson's team.

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• Abusive Parent: She keeps her "disappointing" teenage daughter locked up in some military base, when she's not having her do missions as a covert assassin.
• Affably Evil: In her later appearances, her politeness towards SHIELD appears to be genuine, however she started off as Faux Affably Evil.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Despite everything that she did, her ultimate fate is presented in a somewhat tragic light, having lost the only person she ever truly cared about and realizing that all of her life, she did HYDRA's bidding. And just when she tries to atone for it all, she receives an absolutely brutal death at the hands of Talbot.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: She refuses to believe that Coulson went into the future, and thus refuses to believe that her attempt to revive the Destroyer of Worlds program could end in catastrophe. This is despite all the supernatural things happening in the MCU, which includes things that she personally would be familiar with, sich as the Tesseract and gravitonium.
• Baby Factory: She was selected by Whitehall to be a glorified broodmare to bear a candidate for his attempt at replicating Project Rebirth.
• Bad Boss: Breaks multiple laws regarding human rights, and kills two subordinates for failing her. Oh, and she has her teenage daughter working as a black ops assassin.
• Big Bad Ensemble: In Season 5, Kasius and the Kree are the threat in the future, she's the threat in the present. She's left as the sole Big Bad of Season 5, following Kasius' death and Team Coulson's return to the present. Ultimately Subverted; it turns out she was Demoted to Dragon to the Confederacy, though she's a Dragon with an Agenda to overthrow them.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Her plans to save the world ultimately put the pieces in play that lead to its destruction, and she's easily overthrown by her own daughter.
• Bond One-Liner: After executing Steger for threatening her daughter: "And now we’re the last two."
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Hale has a serious loyalty issue. She's a member of the US Military, but secretly a sleeper agent for HYDRA. She's actually working for the Confederacy, a group of aliens offering protection to mankind, but plans on double-crossing them, too. Then she briefly makes allies with S.H.I.E.L.D., only to backstab them to the Confederacy for real after Yo-Yo kills her daughter. Finally, when Talbot catches the S.H.I.E.L.D. boarding party on the Confederacy ship, she tries to pin the blame on Coulson after briefly allying with him again, before finally being killed by Talbot when she attempts to use the HYDRA code phrase to save Coulson. Got all that?
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Crushed into a ball by Talbot with the power of gravity. Let's just say that wasn't entirely undeserved.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Is revealed to be working on behalf of the Confederacy, and is killed by Talbot shortly after her Heel–Face Turn.
• The Dragon: She's taking orders from the Confederacy... a group of aliens offering protection to mankind in exchange for Gravitonium and Inhumans. She is revealed to be a Dragon with an Agenda when it turns out she actually plans on double-crossing them.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: She's dismissive of Coulson's "benevolent" leadership methods, failing to see the benefits of having people who are genuinely loyal to you, instead of someone being blackmailed, abused, or coerced into service. Even when she wants to protect the Earth from the Confederacy, she still insists on killing anybody who disagrees with her.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Despite her abusive treatment of her daughter, she's still utterly heartbroken when Yo-yo kills her daughter...to the point of selling S.H.I.E.L.D., and by extension the entire Earth, out to the Confederacy just so she can make them pay.
• Evil Counterpart: To Coulson. While Coulson is a Magnetic Hero who inspires Undying Loyalty, Hale is a Tyrant who bullies and coerces people into working for her, which mean she is Hated by All, so much that even her own daughter wants to kill her.
• Faux Affably Evil: Hale poses as a Strict but well meaning general in the US Navy. When she has people in her custody (such as Coulson and Talbot), she starts off as apologetic, kind and wants to work with them. But in both cases, when they reject her offers, she immediately turns nasty and takes away the formers bed and food and the latter she brainwashes. However she has a Hazy Feel Turn and while still not a good person, she’s more genuinely affable.
• Foil: To fellow HYDRA leader and seasonal Arc Villain Gideon Malick. Both of them are leaders of their own HYDRA cells and have been in the organization since childhood, but Malick seems to have lived a fairly cushy life while Hale attended the HYDRA equivalent of public school, an experience which was no doubt quite demanding and painful. Malick is a politician and former World Security Council member wealthy enough to fund his cell out of his own pocket, while Hale is a soldier in the US Military who seems to rely on government resources. While Malick is a proud member of a HYDRA dynasty and makes little pretense of his true allegiance, Hale denies it and insists that she and Baron Von Strucker merely "had overlapping interests" (Interestingly, both of them also knew Daniel Whitehall when they were children.) Both of them have daughters who they care about deeply, and both of them lose it when said daughters are killed. Both of them are working for an alien, but while Malick brings Hive to Earth only to realize how badly he underestimated it, Hale is only working for the Confederacy with the intent of betraying them. Finally, both of them suffer a severe and painful Heel–Face Door-Slam.
• Freudian Excuse: She developed her Straw Feminist attitude from her HYDRA superiors, especially Whitehall, ignoring her skill in favour of using her to breed a superhuman. Inside, however, there is still a schoolgirl desperate for her teachers' approval, who will stop at nothing to save the Earth on her terms by creating the Destroyer of Worlds.
• General Ripper: She was originally content with imprisoning Team Coulson. But after Fitz escaped, she's modified her orders to "shoot to kill"; that's because she's HYDRA.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: Played with before her heel face door slam.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: After a previous Heel Realization, she tries to aid Coulson and Talbot in dealing with the Confederacy. Unfortunately, the latter only grows more and more unstable as time goes on, and after a failed attempt of cooling him down via the previous brainwashing, Hale gets brutally crushed by him.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Hale gets hit with a double-dose of this. Brutally killed by Talbot, a man she was responsible for kidnapping and brainwashing, with the powers he got from her Graviton program.
• Insistent Terminology: She insists she wasn't a HYDRA operative, rather she and Baron Von Strucker just had "overlapping interests" ... but is disgusted that HYDRA fell under his watch. She is definitely a HYDRA operative; raised to be so in fact, and works with the Confederacy, an alliance of aliens.
• Inspector Javert: She leads the investigation to track down Team Coulson, and has zero redeeming qualities. In fact, she's more villainous than the Trope Namer, as her goal is not actually to capture S.H.I.E.L.D. but eliminate them; this is because she's a surviving HYDRA operative, and she's not remotely interested in following the law.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: She's originally a surviving HYDRA operative who managed to evade capture... despite her blatant violation of military law putting a very obvious target on her back. However, she is later killed by Talbot.
• Mutant Draft Board: Wants Robin Hinton "controlled" because her powers might uncover secrets.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The only time she tries to activate Talbot's compliance protocol for altruistic reasons (to save Coulson's life), he uses his powers to crush her up into a cube.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: She claims what she's doing is necessary,and as a more sympathetic surviving HYDRA operative this seems to be the case if somewhat questionablely Given HYDRA"s methods, but with the revelation that her faction is being run by the Kree, her claims go from questionable to outright bullshit. Even with the reveal that her plan is to betray the Kree overseers, her being The Unfettered in her methods and her ego as the underlying motivation make her a cut and dry villain. This is compounded when YoYo kills Ruby; Hale then gives up any pretense of altruism and gladly betrays the Earth to avenge Ruby.
• Only One Name: We never learn what her first name is.
• Punny Name: To quote Daisy:
  Daisy: Hale is HYDRA. [Beat] "Hale HYDRA". Seriously?
• The Quisling: Her HYDRA faction is controlled by the Confederacy, a group of aliens with some Kree among them, the same species that in the future subjugates humanity. However, she actually wants to stop them.... Until her daughter is killed, and then she becomes this for real.
• Revenge Before Reason: She's so anguished about Yo-Yo killing her daughter that she abandons her plan of fighting the Confederacy in favor of handing them the Gravitonium on a silver platter, a fact that she knows full well may doom the entire Earth.
• The Remnant: She leads the remnants of HYDRA after Talbot used Gideon Malick's information to destroy most of HYDRA's infrastructure.
• The Rival: She was this to Wolfgang von Strucker back in their HYDRA Academy days, but while Hale was the better student, Strucker had already been selected for leadership because of his heritage.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: In her first two appearances alone she does things that would get any officer court-martialed. That's because she's actually HYDRA.
• The Sociopath: She has no regard for indiviual human lives at all, except her own daughter's, and even said daughter is treated like an asset.
• Stupid Evil: She's cruel and abusive, and her "recruitment" methods mean that none of her operatives are working for her of their own free will. Her own daughter is plotting to kill her at some point.
• Straw Feminist: She dismissed HYDRA as a "boys' club" and takes great pleasure in forcing powerful men like Creel and Anton Ivanov into working for her against their will. Ironically her immediate superior in the Confederacy is a man. She even refuses to listen to Coulson about the Stable Time Loop because she thinks he's patronizing her. It turns out this is because HYDRA saw her as little more than a baby machine, despite her obvious skill and cunning.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Takes Talbot's role while he's in a coma. While Talbot is a Jerkass, he was not entirely unreasonable, had his Pet the Dog moments, and did everything by the book; Hale actively disregards human rights and kills her own people, among other violations of military law. She has Talbot locked up in her secret base.
• The Unfettered: Hale sees herself as simply doing what has to be done to stop the Confederacy. Coulson disagrees, in part because he's seen the damage her plan will do.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Her plan is to use Whitehall's "Destroyer of Worlds" program to stop the invasion, which will lead to the Bad Future seen in the first half of the season. Her plan to use Hive's beacon to lead SHIELD into a trap would lead the heroes to bring said beacon back to their base, where it exploded, creating the Fear Dimension that would create a Big Bad for the next season.
• Visionary Villain: She has vague plans for a new world order that will establish Earth as a force to be reckoned with in the galaxy, something more ambitious than HYDRA ever planned.
• You Have Failed Me: Shoots Evans and Lucas dead after failing to get answers, completely unconcerned with facing any repercussions for such a blatant breach of military law.

Other Prominent Members

John Garrett / The Clairvoyant

John Garrett / The Clairvoyant

"Oh, the power's all on this side of the room, fellas."

Species: Enhanced human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Bill Paxton, James Paxton (young)

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (first appears in Episode 14: "T.A.H.I.T.I.")

"You hear the dying breath of an old world, general. And a new world is coming."

A S.H.I.E.L.D. agent sent to retrieve Ian Quinn from Coulson's team. When he finds out that they need to save a member of their team (Skye), he and his co-agent Agent Triplett aid the group in breaking into the Guest House.

He is also a high-ranking HYDRA agent, having become disillusioned with S.H.I.E.L.D. after being left to die on a mission. Under the guise of the Clairvoyant, he sought to discover the secret behind Coulson's resurrection so he could heal his own dying body.

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• A Father to His Men: He inspires loyalty in his men, with Triplett would follow him to the end, and Ward has fond memories of serving under him. Ultimately subverted when he's outed as the Clairvoyant, as Coulson realizes that this means he's killed three of his own men because they asked the wrong questions. He's suitably furious at the hypocrisy, and Triplett turns on him completely due to one of the dead men being his partner.
• Abusive Parents: He was considered a father figure to Ward, and kidnapped him from a government facility when he was a teenager. Garrett proceeded to emotionally and physically abuse him for fifteen years.
• Adaptational Villainy: In the comics, John Garrett is a legitimate and loyal agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., one of Nick Fury's closest confidants, and was even on the Howling Commandos. Here, he's a HYDRA agent and the Big Bad of Centipede and Season One.
• Appropriated Appellation: "Clairvoyant" is the name given to him by his minions; he finds it overdramatic, and he also expresses annoyance at the name of the Deathlok program. "Centipede" appears to come from a similar source. In general, he seems to find code names largely unnecessary.
• A Pupil of Mine Until He Turned to Evil: He and Coulson studied under Fury himself, and then he goes and becomes a HYDRA agent.
• Arc Villain: For Season One. By Season Two, he's largely irrelevant outside of what effects the G.H. serum had on him.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Garrett is constantly joking around, but he's also a cruel and manipulative mastermind who is willing to go through countless lives for his own benefit.
• Big Bad: As the leader of Project Centipede in Season 1, he is the man behind all of their wrong doings, as well as having Ward infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He posed as an Anti-Hero, acting like wanted to put bad people like Ian Quinn behind bars and is implied to be A Father to His Men, but he's otherwise a brutal and unfettered guy. To convince Quinn to talk, he threatens to rip out the guy's tongue and later smacked Quinn for getting too lippy. As it turns out, he's not heroic at all.
• Blood Knight: Shown to eagerly be this in contrast to the more reserved Coulson. See the "tongue" example above.
• Body Horror: He wears turtleneck sweaters to conceal some rather large neck scars. His left side is also cybernetically augmented in some fashion, similar to the comics where he became one to save his life. He's revealed to be Deathlok Mk. 1 in "Ragtag," after having to stuff his guts back in and duct tape the wound shut when S.H.I.E.L.D. was unable to extract him after his injury.
• Boom, Headshot!: How his 1983 self dies in the altered timeline, at the hands (pun not intended) of Victoria Hand, who's death he was ultimately responsible for in the original timeline.
• Boring Yet Practical: A high-level S.H.I.E.L.D clearance isn't exactly psychic powers, but it's extremely effective.
• Broken Pedestal: To several of his colleagues, including Coulson and Triplett. Raina is also disappointed his persona as the Clairvoyant was just a cover for his true identity. Even Ward eventually loses faith in him.
• Casting Gag: Who better to play a younger incarnation of Garrett than Bill Paxton's own son?
• The Chessmaster: The Clairvoyant seems to be fifteen steps ahead of virtually everyone else on the show. Even after his ties with S.H.I.E.L.D. are severed, Garrett is still able to play every other faction like a fiddle. He becomes more dangerous in a lot of ways, since he doesn't have to hide and is able to just openly raid S.H.I.E.L.D. bases.
• Chewing the Scenery: Already somewhat hammy to begin with, once he gets the GH serum, he starts devouring the scenery, or rather, "tasting it on [his] tongue".
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Averted, as "The Clairvoyant" most certainly sounds like the name of a comic book supervillain. When S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are able to talk with him (so to speak), he says his subordinates named him that and he himself finds it a little overdramatic.
• Cool Old Guy: He tends to make quips during missions in order to keep up his allies' morale, as seen during the infiltration of the Guest House. He keeps this up even after being revealed as a HYDRA operative.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: He is initially thought to be Thomas Nash, a man who can't even move unassisted and communicates through computer. This is later discovered to be a ruse, meant to throw them off the trail. The real Clairvoyant, however, really is on life support: Garrett is the prototype of Deathlok, as an Emergency Transformation, and until the end of "Ragtag" was dying from organ failure.
• Diabolical Mastermind: The mysterious and malevolent intelligence behind the group.
• The Dragon: As of "Stolen", his Alternate Timeline self has become this to Nathaniel Malick.
• Emergency Transformation: After getting maimed by an IED, he was made into the first Deathlok. It happens again after taking a rocket to the chest and getting stomped to death by the newest Deathlok, but he's unceremoniously vaporized by Coulson moments after that transformation is finished.
• Evil All Along: Garrett is one of Coulson's old friends but when his true identity is revealed as a HYDRA agent, it's clear that he's been evil for the entire series.
• Evil Feels Good: He clearly enjoys the heck out of being bad, being incredibly jovial and happy about it and reveling in saying and doing stereotypical Big Bad type things. See Evil Is Funny and Faux Affably Evil.
• Evil Mentor: To Grant Ward and Antoine Triplett, more so with the former than the latter because the latter didn't know about his true allegiance and turn into an evil hitman.
• Fallen Hero: He used to be a loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agent until his superiors left him to die out in the field. It was then that Garrett decided to treat S.H.I.E.L.D. the same as S.H.I.E.L.D. treated him.
• Faux Affably Evil: He maintains the chummy attitude he's previously been using in a civilian disguise, as seen during his interactions with Coulson and Fitz after his true identity is revealed. It's best exemplified when Ward is experiencing a Villainous BSoD after killing Victoria Hand; Garrett keeps laughing and joking as he tells Ward about an old mission he was on, not caring about what's happening to Ward. His humor and "friendliness" seem to be real, but it's outweighed by the selfishness and Lack of Empathy.
• Fiction 500: Coulson and the team, unwilling to believe that the name "The Clairvoyant" could really mean a psychic, conclude that since Centipede would need a lot of money to function, the Clairvoyant must be code for their financial backer. However, Coulson seems slightly more willing to believe he's legit after Raina demonstrates very personal knowledge of him that would not be easy to come by.
• Freudian Excuse: The reason he initially (covertly) joined HYDRA in the first place was as a way to get revenge on S.H.I.E.L.D. after he was injured by an IED in Sarajevo and S.H.I.E.L.D. refused to provide him a medical evacuation. In the new timeline, seven years prior to this incident, even merely learning about the future from Nathaniel Malick is enough to make him just as much of a monster as in the original timeline.
• The Ghost: As the Clairvoyant, he made no appearances until he was revealed in "Turn, Turn, Turn".
• Go Mad from the Revelation: After he's revived with GH-325, Garrett comes back... kinda kooky. It's clear that he's not totally nuts, since he's still just as effective a mastermind as before, but whatever came with that has clearly driven him over the edge.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: Acknowledged. Garrett intends to play the "bad cop" for Quinn, but he sees the injuries Quinn got from Melinda May and says, "I guess there was already a bad cop before I got here, huh?"
• He Knows Too Much: He has a habit of killing off people who ask the wrong questions, such as his three subordinates.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: 1983 Garrett in the alternate timeline suffers this fate. After being left to die by Nathaniel Malick, he teams up with S.H.I.E.L.D. to get revenge on him, only to get killed the moment they leave the bunker. No one really mourns his death, as they still didn't trust him in the least.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: For much of Season 1 his end goals (and thus Centipede's) were entirely unknown. They're creating super-soldiers, but their purpose for doing so was not revealed. "Ragtag" reveals that the super soldier project is in fact a nice bonus to Garrett's true purpose of prolonging his own life. When it comes to either replicating the GH serum for use with his soldiers or saving himself, he chooses the latter.
• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: In his words, he didn't join HYDRA because he shares their beliefs, unlike the fascistic Alexander Pierce. Garrett joined them because he thought the winds were blowing in their direction rather than S.H.I.E.L.D.'s.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: In "Turn, Turn, Turn", Garrett mentions Raina having been inside the same memory machine she used on Coulson, a fact that Coulson hadn't shared with anyone.
• It's All About Me: The true purpose of Project Centipede is to save his own life. Super-soldiers are just a handy bonus application of the research.
• Karmic Death: First, he's blasted and stomped by Deathlok, but he's Not Quite Dead. He climbs into Ian Quinn's cybernetic enhancement table and gets cyborg'd up, while delivering (to himself) a villain speech... only to get atomized by Coulson using the 0-8-4 device, which is HYDRA technology. His younger self also suffers a strangely karmic death by being shot in the head by Agent Victoria Hand, someone that his older self would have later ordered Ward to murder.
• Kick the Dog: Forces Ward to shoot his faithful dog and later orders him to kill two of his former friends just to prove that he isn't held back by weakness.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: "There's a reason they say cut off the head. Now, I'll be unst-*zap*"
• Killed Off for Real: Blown up by Coulson just when you think the Tahiti serum and cybernetic enhancements will protect him for a Sequel Hook.
• Lack of Empathy: The feelings and lives of others don't mean a thing to Garrett. Even Ward, who Garrett had known and mentored since he was a teenager and was absolutely loyal to him, was treated as completely disposable. Garrett was perfectly willing to let Ward die if it meant getting something he wanted.
• Laughably Evil: For the evil head of a ruthless terrorist organization, he's pretty funny.
  S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent: How did HYDRA know you were here?
  Garrett: We told them!
  [Ward shoots both guards]
  Ward: You could have given me some warning.
  Garrett: I know, but it was such a perfect line.
• Love Is a Weakness: A firm believer in this, and he spent a big chunk of Ward's adolescence drilling that into his head.
• Ludicrous Gibs: He is disintegrated in a truly hilarious manner by Coulson in "Beginning of End".
• The Man Behind the Man: Usually, Project Centipede does just fine on their own without the Clairvoyant's assistance. However, its members hold him in very high regard and he gives them instruction when they begin to fail.
• Manipulative Bastard: Knows the right way to push peoples' buttons to get them to do what he wants. The reason for this is because he has access to S.H.I.E.L.D. agent files and uses them to predict their behavior.
• The Mole: Skye realizes that all his statements about the team members were taken verbatim from their S.H.I.E.L.D. files, and Coulson concludes that rather than having psychic powers, he's a member of S.H.I.E.L.D. itself.
• The Münchausen: He sure loves to talk about his old battles, exaggerating about half of the stuff he has done over the years. It works on the younger agents, but when someone like Coulson was actually there, he lampshades that he likes to make the stories better.
• Narcissist: Garrett is completely self-absorbed, constantly plays up his achievements, destroys hundreds of lives to save himself, and only values other people if they can do something for him.
• The Nicknamer: Calls Raina "Flowers" and Mike "Mikey", among others.
• No One Sees the Boss: The Clairvoyant is the intelligence behind Project Centipede, pulling certain strings within the organization, but only Edison Po (later Raina) is allowed to speak to him, and any knowledge of his appearance is basically a death sentence. This is because he can't allow anyone to find out that he's a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Once HYDRA comes out of hiding, he abandons this pretense.
• Not So Omniscient After All: Despite claims that he's able to know what the President's dreaming, he doesn't know how Coulson came back to life. He's very eager to learn this secret. It turns out he's a high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who was using his access to the team's files to fake being clairvoyant. He didn't know about Coulson's resurrection because Fury refused to let a file be made about it.
• Old Master: He's Ward's former SO, i.e. the one that taught him how to disarm nuclear bombs. He's clearly been in the business for a while.
• The Omniscient: Exhibits some form of Mundane Omniscience, which is where the name comes from. According to Po and Raina, the Clairvoyant can somehow learn about anything or anyone they need to further their plans, as well as other important information, but he may or may not choose to reveal this information until the time is right. It's later revealed that the source of this so-called omniscience is not a psychic ability but simply S.H.I.E.L.D. security clearance, and—as shown to eerie effect in The Winter Soldier—S.H.I.E.L.D. has been gathering a lot of data on a lot of people.
• Pet the Dog: A fairly minor one and more or less still villainous example. After he freed Blackout, he let the enhanced human go and told him to "follow his dreams", rather than forcibly recruited him.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Despite his tendency to pull out a You Have Failed Me at the drop of a hat, he's extremely friendly to minions who don't fail him. He gives Raina everything she needs for her work (and also a beautiful new flower dress after breaking her out of prison) and buys Ward an expensive steak dinner for finding one last secret in the Fridge. He even acts like this with his minions who are on an Explosive Leash—after Deathlok finishes a mission with admirable speed, the Clairvoyant cheerily has a streaming video of his son set up, without Deathlok even having to ask.
• Sanity Slippage: The effects of the redone Guest House serum managed to unhinge Garrett, to the point of him seeing "everything" and blurting out supposedly visionary statements that don't make any sort of sense.
• Self-Serving Memory: Known to repeatedly remember speeches and sayings incorrectly.
  • In one instance, he thinks the HYDRA motto involves cutting off a leg instead of a head.
  • He also misinterpreted Nick Fury's "One Man" speech, taking it to mean that one should inspire to be something bigger, instead of being a part of something bigger.
  • Finally, he states "there's a reason they say 'cut off the head'..." Except the context of the quote normally implies that doing so results in more "heads" taking its place, which is not the case here. Garrett seemed to take it literally, suggesting the only way to kill him would be to cut off his head. Coulson complies.
• Shout-Out: The manner in which James Paxton portrayed 1983 John Garrett is very reminiscent of the roles Bill Paxton often took in the '80s, calling to mind in particular Weird Science and Aliens.
• Sink or Swim Mentor: His first lesson to Ward was to drop him off in the woods with nothing but a bag of clothes and a hunting dog. He came back six months later.
• The Sociopath: Garrett has no empathy, values no one but himself, manipulates everyone around him, and the affability he displays is either completely shallow or undermined by how selfish he is. He also admits to having been "a pyro" as a kid, a telltale sign of sociopathy.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: After he's finally revealed, all that light-hearted joking takes on a sinister hue.
• The Starscream: He was never really loyal to HYDRA. He only cared about keeping himself alive and getting revenge on S.H.I.E.L.D. Creating super soldiers for HYDRA during the process is just a nice bonus.
• Teleportation: In the altered timeline, Garrett acquires a copy of Gordon's teleportation powers thanks to Nathaniel Malick's procedure.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Was literally vaporized from off-screen mid-sentence as he was attempting to pull a Not Quite Dead. And then again in the alternate timeline, he is shot in the head literally the moment he teleported S.H.I.E.L.D. out of the Lighthouse.
• Villains Want Mercy: He has the gall to appeal to Coulson to stop Mike from killing him.
  "You don't wanna do this, Mike! Tell him, Phil!"
• Walking Spoiler: He's actually the Clairvoyant, leader of the "Centipede Group", and is also part of HYDRA.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In addition to the whole "kill switch implanted in his super soldiers" thing, he has a habit of using and discarding people as necessary.
  • He kills off Mr. Po without a second thought when he doesn't produce results in a timely manner, with the role of his contact passing to Raina.
  • Raina is left to rot once captured by Coulson's team, and the next contact is Ian Quinn. However, he winds up recruiting her again in "Providence".
  • Ian Quinn suffers the same treatment after he aids in the creation of Deathlok and instigates a failed gambit to discover the means behind Coulson's revival. From this point he speaks to Deathlok directly. Quinn gets broken out of the Fridge by him in "Providence".
  • Even Ward gets this treatment. Deathlok, and therefore Garrett, was fine with letting him die of a heart attack if Skye didn't cooperate.
• Your Days Are Numbered: By the time of "Ragtag", he has only a month or two left to live due to organ failure. Fitz's EMP on his cybernetic components shortens it to minutes. However, he gets cured at the end of the episode.
• You See, I'm Dying: Revealed in "Ragtag" that his organs are failing, and that the entire purpose behind the Centipede project was to extend his own life. If he happened to get an army of super-soldiers out of it to serve HYDRA, that's just a nice bonus.

Mitchell Carson

Mitchell Carson

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Martin Donovan

Voiced By: Sergio Gutiérrez Coto (Latin-American Spanish dub), Fernando de Luis (European Spanish dub)

Appearances: Ant-Man

A member of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s 1989 board who tried to steal the secret of Pym Particles. He becomes Cross's investor in the modern day to get his hands on them again.

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• Age Lift: In the comics, he's in his prime, to the point that he was the candidate to take over the role of Ant-Man. Here he's an old man in the present, and a contemporary colleague of Howard Stark and Peggy Carter.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: His comic book counterpart has half of his face hideously scarred, too the point he looks Two-Faced. In the MCU he's placed by the clasically handsome Martin Donovan.
• Casting Gag: Donovan had previously played a scientist who is being forced to work for an evil organization who want to use his work for their evil agenda, and his field was in creating nanites, a tech also about miniature/microscopic size.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Neither Stark or Carter stood up for him when Hank slammed his face onto the desk.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Provides Cross with the contract for Yellowjacket suits and Pym Particles for HYDRA's use.
• In Name Only: The only characteristics he shares with the comic character is working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and wanting to possess Ant-Man's powers.
• It's Personal: It is very much clear that he resents Hank for punching him in the face, even 26 years later.
• Jerkass: Uses Janet's Heroic Sacrifice to mock Hank for failing to save her. And that's before he's revealed to be working for HYDRA.
• Karma Houdini: He escapes with a vial of Cross's Pym Particles with only a few ant bites for his troubles. Peyton Reed has revealed that he did get his comeuppance in the original script, but then the Marvel higher-ups asked for him to be left alive to be used in the future.
  • Though it's arguably downplayed as he has no idea of the Sanity Slippage side effects the Particles have and Cross's imitation is implied to still be inferior than Pym's. Plus, with Hydra thoroughly dismantled, he most likely has no way of making more now.
• Kick the Dog: Mocks Janet's death right in front of Hank's face in the 80's. Hank gives him a bloody nose for it and Howard thinks he deserved it.
• The Mole: One of the many HYDRA infiltrators within S.H.I.E.L.D.'s structure.
• Obviously Evil: Not to Cross's extent, but no one is surprised that the member of the board that took time to mock Hank's deceased wife turned out to be part of HYDRA.
• Private Military Contractors: After leaving S.H.I.E.L.D., he's become the head of one, and also works as an arms dealer. Then again he's still a part of HYDRA.
• Sole Survivor: By the end of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5, Carson is the only member of HYDRA's upper echelon (of the ones we've been introduced to thus far) who isn't dead at this point.
• Token Evil Teammate: Even Peggy and Howard clearly don't like him that much - the latter makes it perfectly clear that he's got No Sympathy for his broken nose after Hank slammed his face on the desk for mocking his wife. Turns very literal with The Reveal he's with HYDRA.

Vasily Karpov

Vasily Karpov

"Hail HYDRA."

Species: Human

Citizenship: Russian, American

Portrayed By: Gene Farber

Voiced By: Eduardo Bosch (European Spanish dub), Haruo Yamagishi (Japanese dub)

Appearances: Captain America: Civil War | The Falcon and the Winter Soldier ^note  Flashback with archive footage from Civil War

A Russian HYDRA Commander infiltrated in the Russian Armed Forces who was the Winter Soldier's handler during the early 90s.

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• Adaptational Villainy: In the comics he was active during World War II and joined Captain America and the Invaders to foil a plot of the Red Skull and Master Man. In the MCU he's The Mole for the very organization led by Red Skull and serving its fascist goals.
• Adaptation Deviation: More or less the only thing he has in common with his comic counterpart is a role in the Winter Soldier program (and even then, it's a different role than the one in the comics).
• Age Lift: He becomes middle-aged in present day, but Vasily Karpov is much younger than his WW2-fighting, dead-by-1991 comic book counterpart.
• Asshole Victim: Casually left to drown by Zemo after refusing to give out HYDRA secrets. Though considering the way he ruthlessly tortured Bucky and the other Winter Soldiers, it's completely deserved.
• Bad Boss: Doesn't give a damn about the other Winter Soldiers going berserk on his staff except for his own safety, casually tortures people as part of brainwashing, isn't bothered by the Painful Transformation endured by the Winter Soldiers, isn't bothered by Bucky's clear humiliation at being bested by Josef.... this guy is no ideal boss.
• Decomposite Character: His role as the "creator" of the Winter Soldier was assumed by Arnim Zola, but Karpov still appears as the Soldier's handler (the other part of his role in the comics).
• Defiant to the End: He refuses to give information to Zemo even when he is going to kill him by drowning him in a sink.
• Dirty Coward: When the other Winter Soldiers begin to turn on the doctors and guards, Karpov's only response is to hide behind Bucky like a shield while ordering him to fight his way to the exit, leaving the guards and doctors to their brutal fates.
• Dissonant Serenity: Casually fills out paperwork while listening to the screams of the other five Winter Soldiers.
• The Mole: He was a HYDRA infiltrator within the Soviet Armed Forces.
• Mythology Gag: In the comics he was responsible for turning Bucky into the Winter Soldier. While Zola took that role from him, he does appear to be the Winter Soldier's handler and was responsible for the creation of the other five Winter Soldiers.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He only appears in three short scenes before being killed by Zemo in the second of them, but it was on his orders that the Winter Soldier killed Howard and Maria Stark, leaving a massive impact on Tony and setting up the climax of Civil War. Moreover, his refusal to give Zemo information tanks Zemo's plan A, leading to the Vienna bombing and all that followed.
• Undying Loyalty: Even after not being an active agent, and after HYDRA had been all but completely destroyed, he refuses to give Zemo the information he was looking for on a mission from HYDRA, even giving the "Hail HYDRA" as Zemo left him to drown.
• Unknown Rival: He’s ultimately responsible for the Starks’ deaths, but Tony is unaware of his role and never meets him.
• Villainous Valour: Absolutely refused to give in to Zemo's torture, uttering a defiant "Hail HYDRA" before he drowns.

General Fischer

General Fischer

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Rocky McMurray

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

An Air Force General, one of HYDRA's infiltrators, and Hale's apparent HYDRA superior.

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• Bald of Evil: He's bald and serves a fascist organization bent on world domination and curtailing the freedom and rights of humanity over a misguided notion of 'order', and willing to commit genocide to achieve its goals.
• Driven to Suicide: As he's about to be arrested by Talbot for treason, he bites into a cyanide pill to die and avoid capture.
• The Mole: He's a mole for HYDRA in the United States Air Force along with Hale.
• Posthumous Character: He appears only in flashbacks to the time Gideon Malick spilled the beans on HYDRA's remaining assets and members and commits suicide during it.
• Undying Loyalty: He chooses suicide over being arrested in order to keep HYDRA's secrets with himself.

Professor Steger

Professor Steger

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Graham Sibley

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

"It is a rite of passage to a life built on control and survival. That's why when you cut off the head, two more spring up!."

A professor at the HYDRA Preparatory Academy.

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• Asshole Victim: General Hale executes him for threatening her daughter because she wouldn't kill her dog as her graduation. That bullet was well deserved.
• Beard of Evil: Has a beard and indoctrinates children and teenagers into the ideology of a fascist organization devoted to taking control over humanity and willing to commit genocide to achieve its goals.
• The Fundamentalist: Even as news of HYDRA's fall reach the Academy, he's adamant on Ruby complying with the tradition of sacrificing her dog as the rest of the pupils have done. He comes close to threatening Ruby when she defies the tradition.
• Posthumous Character: He appears only in flashbacks to the time HYDRA was taken out by Talbot and the ATCU and is killed by Hale during it.

The Cult

In General

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (first appears in Episode 46: "Purpose in the Machine")

"Thousands of years ago, an Inhuman was born on this planet that was destined to rule it, so powerful, so fearsome that others were consumed with dread, and so they banished it from the Earth, sent it through the portal to a distant planet. HYDRA was founded with the sole purpose of engineering its return."

— Gideon Malick

This secret society was founded in ancient times centered around the fanatical worship of a powerful Inhuman that was exiled to the planet Maveth by ancient Inhumans. Ever since his banishment, the cult has been determined to bring him back to Earth to commence a planetary takeover. Over the centuries, the cult evolved, taking many forms, with its most recent incarnation coming into existence shortly after the rise of Nazism in 1940s where the cult took on the name HYDRA, which has become the organization's most colloquial label.

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• All for Nothing: Ultimately their plan to rescue Hive ended with nobody getting what they wanted since, as Malick notes, Hive was only ever interested in preserving Inhuman kind rather than humans. Once it's free from its prison Hive begins its own plans separate from HYDRA and the few remaining cult leaders that weren't killed/captured by the ATCU near the end of season 3 were used as guinea pigs for the Inhuman conversion experiments and died as a result.
• Ancient Conspiracy: "Many Heads, One Tale" revealed that HYDRA is actually descended from a cult worshiping an ancient Inhuman, who was banished through the Monolith thousands of years ago, and have been working towards retrieving him ever since.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Most, if not all, members of the group in the mid-19th century are European noblemen.
• As Long as There Is One Man: "Cut off one head, two more shall take its place." Considering the group has been around through millennia, it's safe to say that the phrase is more than just a Badass Creed.
• Cult: They worship a specific ancient Inhuman who has been banished into a planet on the other side of Monolith.
• Drawing Straws: They draw lots (in this case, colored stones from a sack rather than literal straws) to see who will go into the Monolith to feed Hive. At some point (possibly but not necessarily starting with Malick's father), the white stone was scored so that the leader of the group could always know which stone not to draw.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Seemingly averted with the ancient incarnation, whose members are white men. Played straight with the modern incarnation, whose members include people from multiple races and both genders.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: It seems that over the thousands of years the cult has existed, none of the leaders never considered that perhaps Hive was banished to Maveth for a reason, or that Hive would have any gratitude (or use) for them once brought back. This comes back to bite them hard when he does return.
• Human Sacrifice: When the society came in possession of the Monolith, they started sending men through the portal, hoping to save or at least serve their leader on the other side. But none of them ever came back.
• Mythology Gag: The retcon turning HYDRA from a Nazi splinter group into an Ancient Conspiracy was used in the comics years ago.
• Sigil Spam: The Hebrew word for "Death", seen in "Purpose in the Machine", is used in the group's castle to mark secret passages and other dangerous places. They also can't stop themselves from putting disguised variations of their symbols everywhere for millennia.
  • The Sigil Spam actually makes a lot more sense with the reveal that the HYDRA sigil is actually an ancient depiction of what Hive actually looks like.
• Villainous Legacy: The group was founded millennia ago, and still exists in the modern days.
• We Are Everywhere: In the mid-19th, their castle was in England and most of the members appear to be European (the nobleman named Manzini is most likely an Italian, for example). During World War II, they are centered in Germany. In the modern days, they are pretty much everywhere around the world.

Hive

Alveus / Hive

^{Click here to see Hive possessing Will's body}

^{Click here to see Hive possessing Ward's body}

^{Click here to see Hive pre-Terrigenesis}

Species: Human (formerly), Inhuman

Citizenship: Various

Portrayed By: Jason Glover (original human form), Brett Dalton (prominent human host)

Voiced By: Alejandro Gómez [Disney dub], Manuel Campuzano [Sony Dub] (Latin-American Spanish dub)

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (first appears in Episode 49: "4,722 Hours")

"Sometimes the world's greatest miracles happen by accident."

An ancient and powerful Inhuman who was banished through the Monolith centuries ago. HYDRA was originally founded to engineer its return to Earth.

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• Achilles' Heel: Hive can't use a living person for a host, only a dead body, and it can't use Inhumans. It also either can't or refuses to feed on other Inhumans. It can keep its hosts functioning long after decay, but requires to feed on other humans to heal the host (and the host can be killed properly with fire).
• Adaptational Badass: In the comics, Hive was just one of several HYDRA leaders introduced in Secret Warriors who was a genetically engineered parasite monster whose only power, beyond turning a random host into a tentacle monster, was controlling and assimilating people with Puppeteer Parasite creatures it spawned (which needed special labs to grow) and bringing back a recently dead Viper as a Humanoid Abomination (which he only demonstrated once). Here, the people who genetically engineered Hive into what he is are the Kree, and he's the founder of HYDRA's original form, an immortal Inhuman, who can effortlessly devour humans, control Inhumans, and is very hard to kill. Not to mention, while in the comics Hive took years to completely control a host and couldn't speak in an understandable fashion, here, Hive gains control of his hosts pretty quickly and can speak perfectly fine using them.
• Adaptation Deviation: In the comics, Hive was a bio-engineered monstrosity created to demonstrate HYDRA's ideals. Here, not only is it an Inhuman, but HYDRA was originally a cult worshiping it. Even their famous skull and tentacles symbol appears to be a reference to it.
• Adaptation Name Change: Downplayed. "Hive" is used in both the show and comics, but the "Alveus" name was invented for the show.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: In the comics, Hive is the result of a HYDRA lab experiment, not an Inhuman.
• Adaptation Species Change: In the comics, Hive was a human HYDRA agent subjected to an experiment involving bio-engineered parasites created by HYDRA that bonded with him. Here, he is an Inhuman worshiped by HYDRA.
• Admiring the Abomination:
  • Hive was the subject of HYDRA's admiration, to the point of worship, for centuries.
  • In an inversion, Hive (the abomination) expressed some admiration for its final host, Grant Ward, even wishing that they could have known each other while Ward lived.
• Affably Evil: Hive's tone of voice is always polite, if unsettling, especially when addressing its fellow Inhumans. Whether this affability is genuine or not is ambiguous, due in no small part to Hive's complex mental state, emotionless demeanor, and fondness for psychological torture.
• A God Am I: Mostly from the perspective of others (HYDRA was founded as a cult based around it, and Malick directly refers to Hive as a god), but Hive is suggested to have a similar view of itself, referring to making "a believer" out of Giyera. The demeanor of its swayed Inhumans is also disturbingly reminiscent of a cult. He tells the Kree Reapers that they created "something divine" when referring to himself, and describes himself to Coulson as "the great Alveus".
• Alas, Poor Villain: Shares one last moment with Lincoln prior to their deaths, where Hive laments that it failed to make the world "better" as it had always wanted to. Hive and Lincoln even manage to sympathise with one another, showing an impressive amount of humanity from the otherwise monstrous Hive.
• Alien Blood: It bleeds some brownish ooze.
• All There in the Manual: It being the MCU version of Hive was revealed shortly before the midseason premiere of Season 3, but in the first few episodes of Season 3 after the midseason finale its name was not spoken In-Universe.
• Ambiguous Gender: Hive was originally male, but centuries and countless bodies later, such things as gender don't apply to it any more.
• Ancient Conspiracy: "Many Heads, One Tale" reveals that the being on the other side of the portal is actually an ancient Inhuman that was banished from Earth millennia ago. A cult soon rose up bent on finding the creature and bringing it back, a cult that over time evolved into something we're already familiar with: HYDRA.
• Ancient Evil: He has lived for thousands of years while committing acts of evil. One of them being killing humans and taking over their bodies.
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: He refuses to let other Inhumans be killed, sparing Lincoln after Giyera managed to knock him out. Of course, since it can Mind Control Inhumans and was intentionally designed to be their leader, this may be less of a moral qualm than simple pride and power. "Emancipation" shows that Hive is fully willing to kill Inhumans he cannot control and sacrifice those he does if it means furthering his goals.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: By far the most powerful and threatening Inhuman seen, and the most dangerous HYDRA leader in the entirety of the MCU, which is befitting given he was made to control and lead the Inhumans and was HYDRA's founder and first leader.
• Badass Longcoat: After regenerating, Hive shows a liking for long, black trenchcoats.
• Bad Boss: Will do anything to ensure his mission to turn half the world into potential slaves. Even bleeding dry Daisy who cannot object as she has been Brainwashed into submission.
• Big Bad: Serves as this for Season Three, taking the position from Malick once he regains his full power.
• Bilingual Bonus / Meaningful Name: Alveus is pretty close to "alveare" — Latin for "hive".
• Black Cloak: In one form, it wears a long and tattered black cloak with a correspondingly dark and concealing hood.
• Blofeld Ploy: Pulls one off on Gideon Malick, directly threatening him while speaking as his brother Nathaniel, who Gideon deliberately sacrificed to the Monolith - then kills Malick's daughter instead of him.
• Body Horror:
  • While possessing Will, it walked around with a gaping leg wound, and while possessing Ward, it was emaciated and corpse-like, still showing signs of the injuries that killed Ward. Once it consumes five humans, Hive manages to restore Ward's body to health.
  • Hive's method of killing people is to use its own cells to break down their bodies and assimilate their organic material. This is all done very graphically.
• Body Surf: When one host body is damaged beyond usefulness, Hive transfers to a new one, though it apparently can only do this with hosts who are already dead and aren't Inhumans. The "blood sacrifices" of early HYDRA were meant to provide it with a steady flow of new bodies to inhabit.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: To Hive, all he's trying to do is end war and bring peace and unity, and this can be achieved by uniting everyone as one singular organism. To the rest of the world (i.e., sane, rational people), he's trying to brainwash and control everyone by assimilating them into his hive mind. When he is ultimately defeated, he makes it clear that he truly believed that turning the world into Alpha Primitives under his thrall was a good thing, and has an epiphany where he comes to understand Humans Are Flawed.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Hive's spores can infect the brains of other Inhumans, causing them to devote themselves to him. It's described as being similar to a drug addiction, releasing dopamine to make the victim feel as if his presence fulfills a need. The process is theoretically reversible, as the spores don't cause any damage. Lash manages to remove and destroy the spores that were infecting Daisy, although he's killed before he can do so for anyone else.
• Canon Character All Along: It is eventually revealed to be Hive.
• Captured Super-Entity: Was imprisoned on a distant planet for a very good reason.
• Character Death: Hive is obliterated by its own warhead while he drifts in outerspace in the Season 3 finale. He is not coming back from that.
• Composite Character:
  • Given that the X-Men and associated characters can't be used in the MCU due to rights issues, this Hive is more or less a stand-in for Apocalypse; his backstory, immortality, goals, and overall personality have far more in common with that character than the comics Hive.
  • Additionally, his backstory of being the ruler of the Inhumans who was forced into exile by his people while his existence was hidden from the present-day Inhumans, and his large number of other powers, seem to have been taken from The Unspoken, a very unrelated character.
• Create Your Own Villain: The Kree turned him into what he is, and he kills two of their reapers for it.
• Creepy Monotone: After it inhabits Grant Ward's body, it speaks in his host's voice but without inflection.
• Cthulhumanoid: His true form has gray skin and Gorgon-like tentacles for hair. In fact, this may have inspired the tentacle motif used in HYDRA's emblem.
• Death Seeker: Normally it's the ultimate survivor and a living inspiration for HYDRA's ideal "cut off one head and two more shall take its place." But when everything else fails, it admits that death is the one thing it was never able to achieve. It shares a final quiet moment with Lincoln right before they both die, saying that their impending deaths give them a greater connection than its mind control could ever achieve.
• Despotism Justifies the Means: Hive was create to lead and control the Inhumans via Mind Control; by the modern era it wishes to control anyone and everyone it can get its hands on, whether that is an alien race, or by turning humanity into a race of mutant zombies. It is unclear if this stems from bitterness over the original Inhumans turning on it or if, more likely, Hive is simply power mad.
• Dishing Out Dirt: On Maveth, it can summon sandstorms at will, and that's usually a sign that it's close by.
• The Dog Bites Back: After thousands of years, it finally gets a chance to get its revenge on the very Kree who subjected it to horrific experiments after summoning them with the artifacts James had been hoarding.
  Hive: I'm not that frightened hunter any more.
• The Dreaded: Everyone who isn't a HYDRA secret society true believer is scared shitless of this thing. Simmons honestly preferred death rather than letting Hive on Earth. It is stated that Jiaying was fully aware of his existence and did everything she could to keep him sealed up, and both she and Gordon freaked out upon hearing that S.H.I.E.L.D. had the Monolith. Bobbi even speculates that the reason Nick Fury ordered the Illiad destroyed was because he didn't want to take the risk of HYDRA getting the Monolith and bringing Hive back.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Most likely a coincidence, but a creature that resembles Hive appears◊ in Captain America: The First Avenger when Erskine explains the origins of the Red Skull.
• Eldritch Abomination: As an Inhuman, Hive must have been human at some point. Now, it's an immortal worm-like parasite with a strange sense of morality.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Regarding HYDRA bringing it back to Earth. They clearly had no idea what it would do once it got back or that it was banished for a good reason.
• Expy:
  • Of two Angel characters; a Big Bad that appears human but is not actually one, feeds on humans, and brainwashes others into becoming his loyal and happy worshipers and seeks to do so in a global scale is similar to Jasmine, while his status as a God-like being long exiled from the Earth who has now returned by possessing the body of one of the main characters brings to mind Illyria.
  • Of Albert Wesker. Begins life (at least its host Grant Ward does) as The Mole. Is eventually defeated and killed, but comes back from the dead with a Death-Activated Superpower, A God Am I beliefs and Hell-Bent for Leather fashion sense (complete with a Badass Longcoat). Enslaves the primary female lead (from whom he had served as an Evil Mentor) with More than Mind Control. Seduces the Rich Bitch before pulling You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on her. Develops a plan to use The Virus to "save the world" as a Dark Messiah by turning a large percentage of its population into hideous monsters. This plan involves deploying it from an aircraft, which the heroes board and fight him on.
  • Hive being a worm-like parasite that uses bodies as hosts is similar to the evil alien from The Hidden and the Yeerks of Animorphs fame.
  • It is also a Marvel supervillain who is a millennia-old former human given godlike powers by aliens, including the ability to enslave others of his own kind. In short, it is similar to Apocalypse.
  • It is a former human transformed into a parasitic superorganism^note which is to say, an organism consisting of many organisms that kills others and takes over their bodies, making it similar to the minor Spider-Man villain "The Thousand".
  • Some of Hive's traits, including its Blue-and-Orange Morality and belief that peace and unity come from uniting everyone into a single organism, call to mind the perspective of the Thing in the short story The Things.
• Face Death with Dignity: In its final moments aboard the Quinjet with Lincoln, it doesn't try to fight its way out, kill Lincoln out of spite, or even use its sway on him. It just quietly accepts its fate, and they share a rather touching dialogue in their final moments.
• Fan Disservice: Often appears shirtless in its third host Grant Ward. He retains some of his muscles, but is also visibly decaying and his chest is still caved in. After he's healed, he appears naked, but also covered in blood and ooze from five stripped skeletons.
• Fantastic Racism: Hive considers Inhumans to be the superior species and has no qualms about painfully murdering anyone else.
• Feel No Pain: Due to its possession of a dead host, Hive doesn't seem to feel pain. It takes bullets, grenades, and several stab wounds without so much as blinking.
• Final Boss: Season 3 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. initially had The Big Bad Shuffle, with Ward, Malick, and Lash all vying for the position of Big Bad. Once Hive returns to Earth, however, it wastes little time establishing itself as the sole Big Bad of Season 3.
• Foil: To Lash. Lash is a visually terrifying modern Inhuman who inspires dread in his fellow Inhumans, but is ultimately a moral (or at least Necessarily Evil) individual, while Hive is a human-looking ancient Inhuman who creates a feeling of contentment in other Inhumans with its sway, who proves to be a well-intentioned but amoral Satanic Archetype.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: It was once a random prehistoric hunter who happened to be near the Kree Reapers when they landed on Earth, and couldn't run away fast enough. They turned him into an Inhuman designed to lead their armies, and it then rebelled and drove them off the planet.
• Game Face: That Sigil Spam HYDRA constantly use? that is it's true face, although unlike most examples of this trope, it doesn't seem to need to change into it's monsterous visage to use its full power.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of Season 3 until it escapes to Earth in the mid-season finale, at which point it drops this trope for Big Bad, as well as for HYDRA as a whole. It was an ancient Inhuman banished long ago, and HYDRA has been worshiping this thing since it was founded.
• Healing Factor: Once he's fully recovered, Hive can heal any damage caused to his host without needing to feed, though there's presumably an upper limit to it given his state before he got back to Earth.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Even Malick admits he doesn't know what Hive has actually planned. Given what Hive did to the planet he was trapped on, it can hardly be good for humanity. Eventually it reveals its goal: to forcibly turn the rest of humanity into Inhumans.
• Hive Mind: When it infects Inhumans, it "brings them into the hive." They don't appear to be able to share detailed knowledge in either direction, but the Inhumans understand Hive's will and are devoted to it to in a explicitly religious extent. Daisy Johnson describes it as like having a piece that's always been missing finally filled, and slips into using the Royal "We" when excited. According to Fitz and Simmons, it's like a drug addiction, and its victims are controlled by being kept on a perpetual "high" and are open to suggestion. This turned out to be very accurate as after Daisy is cured, she wants to be punished for what she's done and wants Hive to stay very far away; that is, until Hive is within reach, upon which she promptly makes her way to him begging to be taken back into the hive.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: Hive is ultimately killed by the warhead it intended to use to spread its will across the Earth.
• Human Resources: Hive can heal its hosts by taking living tissue from other humans. Ward's body is healed by stripping five humans to skeletons. However, it adamantly refuses to feed on its fellow Inhumans, though whether this is lack of ability or simply personal preference isn't made clear.
• Humanoid Abomination: Once Hive latches on to a human host and regains its strength, it demonstrates considerable, and quite horrifying power, with even its individual cells acting as an extension of its will.
• Hypocrite: It preaches a peaceful world but is happy to murder millions just to fit its own vision of a perfect world. It claims to want Inhumans to have a peaceful paradise but uses warheads to make others worship It. On a lesser level, It acts holier-than-thou but has deep anger issues and sadistic impulses; It may not show much emotion, but It most definitely gets angry and seems to enjoy bullying Malick.
• Insistent Terminology: Downplayed. While Hive is normally fine with being referred to as an Inhuman, when pressed it notes that it's technically a different type of creature, since it was a human directly modified by the Kree rather than a descendant like the others.
• Interrogating the Dead: Hive assimilates the memories of its hosts. It knew Fitz from possessing Will, and tracked down Malick in no time after taking over Ward.
• Invincible Villain: Nothing slows him down, from normal hand guns to a freaking rocket launcher. Even Lash's usual one-hit-kill only temporarily incapacitated him, and he shrugged off the brain-frying from Team Coulson with time. It ultimately took a nuclear warhead detonating above the atmosphere to finally kill Hive.
• It's All About Me: At the end of the day, Hive's greatest concern is for itself. While it does show some concern for its fellow Inhumans, Hive has little problem with abusing them to suit its own goals. Its willingness to turn everyone on Earth into barely sapient, zombie-like Inhumans that exist only as extensions of Hive further illustrates this trait. Hive's use of the Royal "We" also implies that its concern for the Inhumans under its sway only goes as far as it seeing them as extensions of itself.
• I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: For Malick's cowardice, he gives his daughter Stephanie the kiss of death, which horribly disfigures her face. Considering everyone else Hive killed in a similar manner was turned into bloody skeletons, she got off easy.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Hive's idea of punishing Malick for his cowardice is to murder his daughter, Stephanie, right in front of Malick.
  • Hive was perfectly fine with letting Daisy be drained of her blood until she died as long as it got what it wanted.
• Kill and Replace: It takes over the bodies of those it kills to impersonate them. How well this works seems to depend on how fresh the host is and its access to food, as it can't repair the bodies without a steady source of protein. An astronaut it used against Simmons and Will was ragged, likely from a decade of neglect, and when it took over Will it couldn't do anything about a broken leg. When it takes over Grant Ward's body, Hive manages to completely heal by taking the living tissue from five normal humans.
• Knight of Cerebus: Being the only Eldritch Abomination in the series, this is a natch. Even when it's mentioned, the mood gets noticeably darker, and most scenes that it appears in are accompanied by at least one form of Body Horror.
• Knight Templar: It describes its mission as "creat[ing] the world Inhumans have always deserved". Confirmed to be a lie when it discovers a way to turn ordinary humans into primitive, zombie-like Inhumans under its thrall and plans to turn the rest of humanity into them rather than actual Inhumans — its ultimate goal is merely to control as many people as possible.
• Lack of Empathy: While it shows some concern for Inhumans (and even then, its compassion doesn't go very far), Hive is completely dead to human suffering, devouring or killing them at will and murdering Malick's daughter before his eyes as a form of punishment.
• Long Lost Sibling: A weird example. Since it's a Mind Hive of all its hosts, it is in some way all the sacrifices HYDRA sent through over the centuries — including Gideon Malick's brother, Nathaniel, who was sent through when Gideon rigged the lottery to save himself. Hive spends a good portion of "Paradise Lost" speaking as Nathaniel, even killing Gideon's daughter to teach Gideon the meaning of sacrifice.
• Master of Your Domain: Once it has regained some strength, Hive demonstrates the ability to control its host's tissue for various purposes, releasing it as a cloud of individual cells. On other Inhumans, these cells infect the brain and make the Inhuman loyal to Hive above all else. With normal humans, it's to aid in feeding. Hive describes its own body as "every cell working together for a common purpose".
• Me's a Crowd: It's a parasitic superorganism, essentially an infection with a personality. While trapped on the alien planet, it travels as a sandstorm (possibly only part of the sandstorm), but when it infects a host, it appears as a worm, and when it shows its true face, it looks like a squid-headed person. Ultimately, it acts a lot like a slime mold, capable of being multiple organisms or one.
• Mind Hive: It contains all the memories and personalities of all its hosts, including the countless "Travelers" sent by HYDRA to feed it over the centuries. Normally, it maintains a distinct and calm personality, but it's unclear if that is Hive's original, "true" personality, or an aggregate of everyone it has absorbed.
• Monster Lord: It is one of the original Inhumans, if not the original, hand-crafted by the Kree to lead their armies.
• Monster Progenitor: It's implied to be the first Inhuman that the Kree created.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Hive is seemingly unaffected by bullets, since its hosts are already dead, and fire only forced it to find a new host. In the end, it takes being completely destroyed by a nuclear warhead to finally, permanently kill Hive.
• No Name Given: As far as the Season 3 midseason finale, "It" had not been named but was otherwise known as the dark Inhuman or just It. Promotional material released shortly before the beginning of season 3B identified it as being the character "Hive", from the comics. In "Paradise Lost," an Inhuman researcher says it used to be called Alveus, Latin for Hive.
• No-Sell: Lucio's power has no effect on him, though precisely why isn't made clear. It's probably related to making use of a dead host or Hive's own Master of Your Domain abilities.
• Not So Stoic:
  • Hive's composure wavers ever so slightly when confronted with Lash, and even more so when Lash proves that he can resist Hive's spores and do some rather painful damage to it.
  • Hive's Villainous Breakdown in the Season 3 finale has him show some genuine rage. Exposure to the memory device totally destroys Hive's composure until it manages to shake off the effects, and just before its death, Hive expresses sincere sorrow and regret for its failure to better the world as it wanted to, and it even shows some sympathy for Lincoln and resignation to their impending deaths.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: It insists that it is working for the Greater Good, that it wants to create a perfect world free of war, poverty and want, and that all humans and Inhumans would be better off once it had taken over the world. Few people bought it, since it wasn't giving anyone a choice. It has been willing to kill even other Inhumans if it served its purpose to do so, and an entire alien civilization had destroyed itself trying to kill it. Eventually it found a way to turn humans into primitive mutant-zombie Inhumans that it could control just as easily, and seemed perfectly content with this outcome, confirming that the only thing Hive wants is to enslave the human race.
• It's Personal: Hive's feud with the Kree that created him is very personal. When he finally confronts one of them, despite the fact that be could use his spores to kill his opponent easily, he chooses to fight the physically superior Kree Reaper in hand to hand combat and ferociously punches him, and looks absolutely content despite easily losing the fistfight.
• Oh, Crap!: When it sees Lash coming down the ramp, it stops smiling and quickly starts backing up, not taking its eyes off its opponent for a second.
• One-Man Army: The planet it was banished to was once populated with nine major cities. "It" reduced them to dust and desolated the planet by itself, though Hive implies that they destroyed themselves in a futile effort to kill it. The fact that they felt the need to resort to such measures still says a great deal about Hive's power.
• The Paragon Always Rebels: Created to be the leader of the Kree's Inhuman army, and instead lead the rebellion against them.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Insists that HYDRA doesn't kill any of his fellow Inhumans working with S.H.I.E.L.D.. Then again, don't want to kill off any new recruits to the hive mind, do we?
  • When he encounters Simmons while kidnapping Dr. Radcliffe, he takes a moment to try and give her closure from Will's death and help her move on, by channeling Will and telling her to "let me go". It's disturbing, but proves successful.
  • It is friendly, even fatherly, to its enthralled Inhumans, and is usually willing to go the extra mile to give them what they want as long as it doesn't conflict with its own agenda.
  • Hive promised the ancient leaders of HYDRA that if they returned it from Maveth, it would grant them power. The first recipients of the new Inhuman treatment were the last heads of the religious HYDRA. Hive is quite upset when the procedure kills them.
  • The only reason S.H.I.E.L.D. escapes at the end of "Failed Experiments" is because Hive checked to make sure Daisy was all right instead of pursuing them.
  • Hive kidnaps a number of the Watchdogs for a dangerous experiment as a "gift to Daisy," assuming that she would appreciate the cruel irony. She doesn't, but Hive was genuine in its intent.
  • Once the Watchdogs are transformed into sub-human "Alpha Primitives," Hive is proud to call them part of itself, and is quite curt when Radcliffe calls them abominations. Of course, this leads to Hive declaring the experiment a success and seeing no need to improve it, which even Hive's enslaved Inhumans find disturbing.
  • Declines to sway Lincoln in their final moments, seeing the fact that they're about to die together as connection enough.
• Physical God: HYDRA worships it as a god, an opinion Hive itself does nothing to dissuade. Malick eventually decides that while it is a god, it was never one for humans, and it only cares about Inhumans.
• Pragmatic Villainy: While its orders to avoid killing Inhumans can be seen as a Pet the Dog moment, an equally likely and less altruistic motive is that Hive cannot sway dead Inhumans.
• Pronoun Trouble: In addition to gender difficulties, it will sometimes alter the pronouns it uses for itself. Sometimes it says "I," sometimes "we," and sometimes it refers to its hosts as separate people while other times it speaks as them directly. There's also some ambiguity, even on This Very Wiki, about the proper pronoun to use when referring to Hive; some people use "it" (a reference to Hive's inhuman nature and complex biology) while others use "him" (every body we've seen Hive use has been male, which was also Hive's original gender).
• Puppeteer Parasite: Hive is actually a worm-like parasite that uses dead bodies as hosts.
• Really 700 Years Old: Has existed and possessed its powers for millennia. It is the result of one of the first, if not the first, Kree experiment to create Inhuman weapons.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In his true form, Hive's eyes are a deep blood-red.
• Royal "We": Hive refers to itself as "we". Makes sense, considering it has its own memories plus the memories of its host (and possibly all of its previous hosts as well).
• Sadist: Hive is rather fond of psychological torture, and since it possesses the memories of every single person it has ever used as a host, it's capable of getting under the skin of a great many people. Its treatment of Malick is particularly cruel. Hive manipulates him into committing his first hands-on murder, pretends to be his long-dead brother to mess with his head, and then finally brutally murders his daughter right in front of him. Hive's particular method killing via its spores is also extremely painful, as they eat normal humans from the inside out.
• Sanity Slippage: Induced this in Will Daniels' colleagues, causing their suicides one-by-one.
• Satanic Archetype: After losing his daughter, Malick starts comparing him to Satan, and Coulson is all too ready to agree with him on that point. In fact, Coulson goes so far as to speculate the inverse—specifically, that Satan is an archetype of Hive. Fittingly, its true form resembles Cthulhu. Daisy later states that the ability to steal someone's memories is pretty close to stealing their soul.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Trapped on an alien world, which HYDRA is seeking to reopen the portal to. It escapes in the mid-season finale.
• Serkis Folk: Its true form, shown in the picture above, is achieved through motion capture.
• Smug Super: Its general demeanor is best summarized as "I'm a god, I don't have to worry about things." Its every scene emphasizes that it is constantly aware of how much stronger it is than everyone else.
• The Stoic: Hive is always calm and collected.
• Super-Persistent Predator: The second your blood hits the air, Hive will start coming for you.
• Superpower Lottery: Most Inhumans have one power; Hive has several, very different and unusual abilities. Justified as the Inhumans, unlike mutants, are explicitly designed, and Hive was specifically designed to be the leader of the Inhumans and so his multiple powers are likely to ensure Asskicking Leads to Leadership.
• Super Prototype: Hive was one of the first Inhumans created by the Kree, and is, with little doubt, the most powerful.
• Super-Strength: When healed, he's strong enough to fight a Kree Hunter (which are tougher than normal Kree) on equal terms.
• Start of Darkness: Hive was once a Mayan warrior out on a hunt before he was found by the Kree Reapers. The Kree captured him and put him through a horrifying experiment which turned him into one of the first Inhumans.
• Take Over the World: Gideon Malick says Hive was destined to rule the world and that HYDRA was formed to be its army.
• This Is Your Brain on Evil: Hive can infect inhumans with its parasites and put them under its "sway" by increasing their dopamine levels, putting them in a state of perpetual happiness. Once freed from Hive's control, the inhumans in question experience what is essentially withdrawal symptoms, comparable to a drug addiction. Hive infected five inhumans during his time on Earth, though only two of them survived: Daisy Johnson and Hellfire. Daisy turned to vigilantism to deal with the trauma of what she'd gone through, along with the loss of her boyfriend, becoming the outlaw know as Quake. Meanwhile, Hellfire grew to detest his condition and inhumans in general, choosing to become a Hunter of His Own Kind and forming an alliance with the Watchdogs.
• Villainous Breakdown: After its plan is initially thwarted by S.H.I.E.L.D. in the Season 3 finale, Hive shows genuine rage for the first time. The breakdown only gets worse when it's exposed to the memory device, which causes Hive to randomly relive the memories of its past hosts, leaving Hive very unbalanced until it manages to shake off the effects.
• Was Once a Man: More than most Inhumans. They remain generally human shaped after Terrigenesis with just the occasional physical side effect, but Hive became a worm-like creature that inhabits the dead.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: During his final moments, he laments that he really did want to make the world a better place, and Lincoln believes him.
• Worf Had the Flu: Centuries of being imprisoned have all but eliminated the supposedly vast power it once possessed. Fitz is able to disable its host with a flare gun, and it doesn't demonstrate itself to be any stronger than its host would be. Hive insists that, once it has regained its strength, it will prove that the stories about it are true. He restores his strength by gorging on five humans.

Grant Ward

See the Grant Ward page

Kirk Vogel

Kirk Vogel

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Mark Atteberry

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (appears in Episode 60: "Paradise Lost", Episode 63: "Failed Experiments")

A member of the HYDRA's inner circle alongside Gideon Malick.

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• Body Horror: His flesh and bones melt away after volunteering for Hive's experiment to turn him into an Inhuman.
• Canon Foreigner: There's no Kirk Vogel in the mainstream comics.

The Malick Family

As a whole

• Big Bad Duumvirate: Each of them are this with the Big Bad of their respective seasons.
• Big Bad Wannabe: While each of the Malicks are pretty big threats on their own, they are always placed in this position, as the current Big Bad of their seasons humor their alliances with them until they no longer have a use for them.
• Canon Foreigner: None of them have counterparts in the comics, though the name Malick could be a reference to Albert Malik, the Soviet Union version of the Red Skull.
• Dirty Coward: The defining trait of the male members that we see (Wilfred, Gideon, Nathaniel) is that they are prone to running away whenever a situation becomes clearly unfavorable to them, quickly dropping their smug demeanor to flee.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: “Malick” sounds an awful lot like “malice”.
• Old Money: The Malick family are direct descendants of the original leaders of the cult that worshipped Hive in ancient times. Over generations, the family amassed a large wealth that was maintained until the stock market crash in 1929. In 1931, Wilfred Malick was given a chance by Hydra to restore his family's reputation by delivering the key ingredient needed for Abraham Erskine's prototype Super Soldier Serum that will be used by Johann Schmidt. Upon completion, Hydra restored his family's fortune, and over the decades, Wilfred maintained the fortune into his old age. Upon his death, his son Gideon was able to expand the family wealth even more thanks to his many investments into businesses that he purchased across the world, making the Malick family one of the richest people in the world in the present day.
• Religion of Evil: They all follow the traditions of the original Hive-worshipping group within HYDRA (aside from the alternate timeline version of Nathaniel who abandons HYDRA's goals in favor of striking a personal alliance with the Chronicoms to help them Take Over the World and Screw Destiny).

Wilfred Malick

Wilfred "Freddy" Malick

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Darren Barnet (1931), Neal Bledsoe (1955-1976, pictured)

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

A bartender at a New York speakeasy, working under Ernest Hazard "Gemini" Koenig. Eventually, the seemingly innocent young man becomes a force to be reckoned with, as a leader of HYDRA...

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• Affably Evil: As a head of HYDRA, Malick is not without a certain sense of courtesy and honor, as shown when he spares Deke's life in 1955 after the latter spared him in 1931, citing his gratitude for Deke's role in his rise to power, although he tells Deke not to expect the same courtesy a second time.
• Bad Boss: He kills one of his men after they mistakenly kidnapped Deke instead of their intended target.
• Beard of Evil: By 1955, he's a HYDRA leader within S.H.I.E.L.D. and sporting a nifty beard.
• Been There, Shaped History: He helped smuggle one of the key ingredients of Abraham Erskine's prototype Super Soldier serum that would turn Johann Schmidt into the Red Skull. This in turn would also lead to the rise of the modern version of Hydra, the creation of Captain America to fight off the Red Skull, and lead Peggy Carter and Howard Stark to turn the SSR into SHIELD. Because of this, he becomes a target for the Chronicoms, as killing him would prevent all that from happening, which would allow them to take over Earth in the future with no interference.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: He joins forces with the Chronicom Luke to prevent the defeat of HYDRA. However, it only lasts one episode, as on their next meeting in 1976, Deke shoots him dead.
• Big Bad Wannabe: While a major player in HYDRA, he's a small fry compared to the Chronicoms, who use him to further their own schemes. They do not seem terribly fazed when Deke unceremoniously kills him.
• Broken Pedestal: His son Nathaniel admires him until he finds out Wilfred had rigged the annual ritual that chose Hive's next sacrifice. Averted in the alternate timeline created by the Chronicoms, as Nathaniel looks down on his father for letting himself be bound by Hydra's old school rules and traditions.
• Chekhov's Gunman: He was mentioned in Season 3's episodes "Closure" and "Paradise Lost", and, like his youngest son, was a plot device meant to help further explore Gideon's past and the history of the Hydra faction that worshipped Hive. In Season 7, his past self becomes involved with the Chronicoms, and serves as one of the main antagonists in the first half of the season.
• Cosmic Retcon: He originally died from unknown causes in 1970, but due to the Chronicoms' interference, he survived to 1976 in the resulting timeline.
• Dirty Coward: He resorts to using a scored stone to keep from being selected to sacrificed to Hive. His past self is also shown to be this to be this, as he ran and hid from the Chronicoms, leaving his contact Viola behind after she was shot by the Chronicoms.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Despite being a ruthless Hydra head, he does love both of his sons. After he and the Chronicoms sprung a trap decades in the making on SHIELD in 1973, he was ultimately forced to let them go after they took his son Nathaniel hostage, pissing off the Chronicoms who simply could not understand his reasoning.
• Even Evil Has Standards: While he has no qualms killing an innocent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, he allows Deke to walk away with his life when the latter reminds him of how he saved him in 1931. That said, he makes it clear that Deke should not expect the same outcome if they meet again.
• For Want Of A Nail: The Chronicoms want to kill him during his youth to prevent the rise of HYDRA and the creation of S.H.I.E.L.D.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Seemingly an innocent bartender, Freddy Malick goes on to become one of the heads of HYDRA in its early years.
• The Ghost: He is mentioned in Season 3 episodes "Closure" and "Paradise Lost". The latter episode revealed that he had passed away in 1970, when Gideon was a young adult. Averted in Season 7, where the SHIELD team encounter a younger version of him in the past, where he ends up not only becoming a Hydra head, but also a willing ally to the Chronicoms.
• Hypocrite: As a young man, Wilfred scorns his father for committing suicide after the stock market crash, viewing him as a coward. As an older man, Wilfred would rig the stone sacrifice ceremony to Hive in his favor out of cowardice.
• Kill Sat: As part of the Chronicom's alterations to history, he nearly launched Project Insight 38 years early, using satellites instead of helicarriers.
• Mole in Charge: He's taken part of the S.H.I.E.L.D. infiltration, occupying a position higher than Daniel Sousa. Later, he achieves a position higher than that of General Rick Stoner.
• Parental Neglect: Based on both of his sons' statements, it is implied that because of his role as a Hydra head within SHIELD, and working behind the scenes with the Chronicoms for Project Insight, Wilfred had very little time to spend with his two sons. It's possible that his youngest son Nathaniel's feelings of neglect is the reason why he became disillusioned with Hydra's whole hierarchy and rules, as it perhaps made him feel that his father valued his position over him and his brother.
• Posthumous Character: Flashbacks in "Paradise Lost" reveals that he died in the year 1970, and doesn't make a physical appearance, only being spoken about by a few characters. This is averted in Season 7, when the team encounter a younger version of him in the past, where he manages to avoid his death thanks to the Chronicoms.
• Rags to Riches: His family lost everything due to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, but after delivering the key ingredient for Erskine's original Super Soldier Serum to Johann Schmidt, he earned a spot in Hydra's leadership, which allowed him to rebuild his family's wealth by 1955.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: It appears that his role as a Hydra head within SHIELD, as well as working with the Chronicoms, left him pretty busy during the years between the time-jumps. Gideon even brings up how the man spent a lot of days locked up in his windowless office.

Gideon Malick

Gideon Malick

"Sometimes you sacrifice a player to save the game."

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Powers Boothe, Cameron Palatas (young)

Voiced By: Jorge Lapuente [The Avengers and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Disney Dub], Gabriel Pingarrón [Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Sony Dub] (Latin-American Spanish dub); Jaume Comas [The Avengers], Juan Fernández [Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.] (European Spanish dub)

Appearances: The Avengers | Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (first appears in Episode 50: "Among Us Hide...")

"We are at a tipping point, where humanity is going to make some difficult choices about the preservation of our very existence, and these Inhumans... these Inhumans are the key to our survival."

One of the leaders of HYDRA. Originally one of HYDRA's infiltrators in the World Security Council where he advised Nick Fury during the Battle of New York, he broke ties with that organization after it became defunct, becoming an advisor of President Matthew Ellis. From there he orchestrated the formation of the Advanced Threat Containment Unit and manipulated the agency into collecting the newly transformed Inhumans to build an army for HYDRA's ancient leader to command. In the aftermath of Baron Wolfgang von Strucker's defeat, Malick joined forces with Grant Ward so they could destroy S.H.I.E.L.D. and finish Project Distant Star Return to accomplish HYDRA's oldest goal.

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• Affably Evil: He starts off as Faux, but after his Heel Realization, his politeness towards Coulson appears to be genuine.
• Ascended Extra: He previously appeared in The Avengers as an unnamed member of the World Security Council.
• The Atoner: Gideon tries to convince Hive that he did everything in his power to bring his brother back. Hive doesn't buy it, because he possessed/consumed Nathaniel on Maveth and has his memories.
• Bad Boss: He subjects his own HYDRA men to the Terrigen fish oil pills without them knowing so either those who were Inhuman would have powers or those who didn't would die.
• Beard of Evil: His 70s past self sports one.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: With Ward since they are the only heads of HYDRA left in Season 3. They join forces as the leaders of HYDRA's remnants. After the mid-season finale, he tries to form an alliance with Hive. However, Hive doesn't do alliances: it does submission. Malick finds himself Demoted to Dragon as soon as Hive's power is restored and is subsequently killed when he betrays Hive to S.H.I.E.L.D.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Malick would be a pretty big threat on his own; however, he overestimates his ability to control Hive and believes that said Eldritch Abomination would work with him. Over the course of the second half of Season 3 Hive strips him of his control on HYDRA, gathers his own Inhuman minions, kills Gideon's daughter in front of him and then finally kills Malick himself once he's outlived his usefulness.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Despite having her completely at his mercy, Malick doesn't finish off Daisy immediately, but decides to torture her some more. He's too busy enjoying "true power" to think pragmatically and so instead he's acting villainous.
• Break the Believer: He's a HYDRA devotee from a long line of HYDRA devotees, and he's from a branch of HYDRA that worships Hive, not Red Skull's science division, nor from a merely political branch. So it devastates him when Hive devours his daughter in front of him in the third season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..
• Break the Haughty: He is a horrible person, make no mistake, but seeing him first getting visions of his death, having to witness his own daughter getting killed right in front of him by the very entity he thought would reward him for everything he and his organisation did for it and then being horribly murdered by a Hive-controlled Daisy makes you at least feel a bit sorry for the guy.
• Broken Pedestal: He feels this way about Hive after he murders his daughter in front of him, even deciding that instead of resurrecting a god, he had freed the Devil incarnate. He becomes this to his daughter after she discovered that he had been cheating his way out from being selected as a sacrifice to Hive.
• Canon Foreigner: There's no Gideon Malick in the mainstream comics.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The part of Hive that was once Malick's brother believes that Gideon should die for betraying him, but Hive decides that he still needs his services, so he kills Gideon's daughter to punish him instead.
• Casanova Wannabe: His younger self suffered this in 1973 when he chose Daisy Johnson as his target, with her all too familiar with who he is, and who he would become.
• Chekhov's Gunman: He first appears as a nameless member of the World Security Council that Fury talks to in "The Avengers". In Season 3 of Agents of SHIELD, he is revealed to be a head of HYDRA and serves as one of the main antagonists of the season.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Malick is merely an ordinary old man until he puts on an exoskeleton that gives him Super-Strength and leads him to get Drunk on the Dark Side. When it gets destroyed, he is Brought Down to Normal.
• Commander Contrarian: To Nick Fury in The Avengers. He was the Councilman that pushed Fury hardest to develop and use the "Phase Two" Tesseract-powered weaponry instead of the Avenger Initiative, and called Fury out on sending the Tesseract back to Asgard. Given his true allegiances, Malick's motives may have gone a little further than simple extremism.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Under Hive's control, Daisy hits him with her earthquake power until his skull is crushed by the vibrations. It is so nasty that when he saw a vision of it, he thought it was Hive's flesh-dissolving power.
• Demoted to Dragon: Once Hive recovers and starts taking the initiative, Malick is reduced to being another lackey, albeit one with a lot of resources.
• Dirty Coward: His father used a scored stone in the ritual to ensure he was never sent into the Monolith, which he and his brother learned about after talking to Whitehall. When Gideon learned of this, he continued the tradition, and his brother — who also knew and thought that Gideon had tossed that stone into a lake — was the next person to be chosen. This sheds a whole new light on him convincing Ward to go too.
• The Dog Bites Back: After being disrespected, bullied and outright betrayed by Hive, Malick seizes the opportunity to share information that could bring it down.
• The Dreaded: Loeb said about him: "Gideon is incredibly menacing and in him we have a character that even the stone-cold Grant Ward would fear." Ward refers to him as "the guy all the others were afraid of." Even the President is too afraid to act directly against him, which is why he wants Coulson and SHIELD to continue acting in the shadows, as it would be the only way they could take Malick down.
• Drunk with Power: Downplayed, but it's there — interestingly enough, Hive has to sort of talk him into it, and even then he limits himself to flipping one big table and crushing a guy's head to show off his Super-Strength. After that he's all business again.
• Enemy Mine: Malick gives up information about Hive and his ability to control Inhumans to Coulson, in order to get revenge for the death of his daughter.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He loved his father, and was distraught to learn of his true cowardly nature. Malick did love his brother, but his fear of being selected to go into the Monolith made him betray his brother by rigging the ceremony to select him instead. It's played straightest with his daughter, Stephanie, who he is shown spending quality time with in one of The Stinger. Her death destroys him, and makes him defect to SHIELD and give up information that leads to HYDRA being almost completely wiped out before his death.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He isn't pleased that Ward put Werner von Strucker in the field before he was ready, and only sells Werner out because it's the pragmatic thing to do.
  • He does not want to involve himself with Ward's quest for revenge against SHIELD, viewing such things as insignifcant. He prefers to stay focused on moving forward with Hydra's true mission, and to never look back.
  • Before Ward, Malick had considered bringing in other Hydra leaders in on his plan to bring Hive back to the planet, but passed them on for pragmatic reasons (Alexander Pierce being too bloodthirsty, and Garrett being too much of a Narcissist). That said, he gives the latter praise for bringing Ward into Hydra, saying it was the best thing he has ever done for the organization's cause.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Malick finds out the hard way that he really should not have broken Hive out of its prison.
• Evil Sounds Deep: He speaks in a low, gravelly voice, courtesy of Powers Boothe.
• Face Death with Dignity: Atoning for his lifelong cowardice and hypocrisy, Malick shows no fear in the face of his own death, having lost everything that gave his life meaning in the first place. He stoically accepts his fate.
• False Friend: Werner turns to him to try and gain protection from Ward's wrath. While Gideon assures Werner of his safety, he later arranges with Ward to hand over Werner as part of a deal so he can earn Ward's trust.
• Faux Affably Evil: The way Gideon speaks, you would think he is a kindly, protective grandfather rather than a terrorist trying to bring back a monster to Take Over the World.
• Fiction 500: He's insanely wealthy thanks to business connections all over the world. In "Spacetime" Hive states that Malick is personally worth 9.2 billion dollars. After his death, Hive was able to use just a fraction of Malick's wealth to buy out an entire town.
• The Fundamentalist: Before he meets Hive, he is a true believer, a religious devotee of HYDRA's ancient god.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: He betrays Hive and does everything he can to help S.H.I.E.L.D., but is killed before he can fully transition into The Atoner.
• Honorary Uncle: Werner von Strucker says Gideon was nicer to him than his father ever was.
• Idiot Ball: Malick, and by extension all of HYDRA throughout history have been carrying one; they're so fixated on the idea of "power" and bringing Hive back to Earth that it apparently never occurred to any of them that Hive was exiled to Maveth for a reason.
• If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: Hive has Malick don a suit of Powered Armor and kill a man, just to show him what true power is. Malick is hesitant at first, but he really gets into it.
• I Have Your Wife: In "The Inside Man", Malick kidnaps Talbot's son, holding the poor boy hostage so the general will betray Coulson for him.
• I Lied: After Talbot has done as ordered, Malick orders both him and Coulson killed despite Talbot's protests. Coulson isn't surprised, and Talbot was prepared for that by having Creel be his backup plan.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: After Hive murders Stephanie, he lets himself be captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. and divulges everything Coulson needs to know to decimate, if not thoroughly eliminate, the HYDRA he had believed in up to that point before accepting his fate at the hands of Daisy.
• Manipulative Bastard: Malick is a master manipulator, having pulled the strings of HYDRA for some time. He even convinces Grant Ward, a Manipulative Bastard himself, to willingly go on a (potential) suicide mission for him.
• Mole in Charge: A HYDRA leader within the World Security Council, putting him on the same level as Alexander Pierce. Also, he helped found the ATCU and commands its Science Division by obfuscating Rosalind's oversight, using it to create Inhumans to further HYDRA's goals.
• My God, What Have I Done?: It's only when Hive murders Stephanie that Gideon begins to think that HYDRA might have been wrong about his motives.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Gideon means "he that bruises or breaks; a destroyer."
• Non-Action Big Bad: Hive lampshades this, noting that Malick orders the deaths of others, but has always been tempted to do it personally.
• Not So Stoic: Thanks to an Inhuman which can show visions of death through physical contact, Malick loses his cool for the first time in a while.
• Oh, Crap!: Malick has this reaction at the beginning of the episode when he realizes that Hive is in his home. He has another, more minor one when he sees that Hive gave his daughter a copy of Paradise Lost, showing he knows what Malick and his father have done.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Hive punishes Malick for his cowardice by murdering his daughter right in front of him.
• Powered Armor: The exoskeleton Malick dons increases his strength, allowing him to crush a man's head. It's destroyed by the end of the episode.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Malick's goals (bringing back Hive and his own survival) ultimately cost him everything: his brother, daughter, his leadership of HYDRA, and his own life.
• The Remnant: He's the last of the old guard at HYDRA thanks to the actions of Team Coulson, the Avengers, and Grant Ward's New HYDRA.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections! / Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: He's ridiculously wealthy and has fingers in every political pie he can get his hands on.
• Super Weapon, Average Joe: Once he puts on Transia Corp's strength-enhancing exoskeleton, he can go one-on-one with Daisy.
• Together in Death: After Hive kills Stephanie, he views death as reuniting with her.
  Daisy: We can't let you keep talking.
  Malick: ...And I won't be kept from my daughter.
• Ultimate Job Security: Given Malick's political and economic contacts with dozens of governments, bringing him to justice through the legal system would be virtually impossible. President Ellis tells Coulson that he can't touch Malick legally, but does note that someone outside the law wouldn't have that problem...
• Villain Ball: Malick decides to bring Talbot's son all the way from America to Taiwan, which allows S.H.I.E.L.D. to rescue him, instead of leaving him safely at the HYDRA base.
• Villain Has a Point: Coulson admits to Malick during the interrogation that he's right to believe that Hive is the devil, considering Coulson himself committed the sin that allowed him to return to Earth.
• Villain with Good Publicity: He was a member of the World Security Council as he was able to keep his alliance with HYDRA hidden a long time, to the point that not even Coulson or the Avengers knew his true colors until he made the mistake of telling Rosalind about S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Tahiti program. Malick uses the fact that he was already one of these, in addition to his philanthropic work, to give himself credibility at the summit when framing Coulson for his own crimes.
• Villainous BSoD: He becomes a total defeatist after Hive turns on him.
• Villainous Breakdown: Malick has one when he sees all of his Inhuman subjects killed by Lash and hears that S.H.I.E.L.D. has taken over the portal chamber.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In Season 7, his younger self only has one scene before completely disappearing from the story, while his younger brother Nathaniel gets involved with the Chronicoms. It is implied that he would have taken over his father's position following the latter's death at the hands of Deke.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Malick really gets into it when equipped with a high-tech exoskeleton.
• Would Hit a Girl: Gives a nasty No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to Daisy once he gets his augmented strength harness.
• Would Hurt a Child: He kidnaps Talbot's son to force the general to betray Coulson at the summit to talk with world leaders about the Inhumans.

Nathaniel Malick

Nathaniel "Nate" Malick

Species: Enhanced human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Joel Courtney (season 3), Thomas E Sullivan (season 7, pictured)

Voiced By: Alan Fernando Velázquez [Sony Dub] (Latin-American Spanish dub); Javier Balas (European Spanish dub)

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (first appears in Episode 60: "Paradise Lost")

"Nathaniel: You know all these rules, who’s given a gift, who’s given nothing. Who lives, who dies. It’s all written in the stars. I feel like we should shake things up. Give the world a little something new."''

"Kora: And what's that?"''

"Nathaniel: Anarchy?"''

A member of the HYDRA faction that worshiped the Inhuman Hive, he is Wilfred Malick's second son, and the younger brother of Gideon Malick. Originally sacrificed to Hive in 1970, his fate was changed via Cosmic Retcon when his father became involved with the time-traveling Chronicoms, leading to him forming an alliance with the alien robots in their goal to destroy SHIELD and take over the planet.

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• Ambiguous Situation: Nathaniel's plan, laid out in Fake Ultimate Hero below, raises the question of whether he knows about the Chronicoms' plan to turn Earth into their new homeworld. If he doesn't, he's an Unwitting Pawn at best, and if he does, his plan is either the result of Suicidal Overconfidence or an astonishing lack of foresight.
• Analogy Backfire: In "Stolen", Nathaniel compares himself to the legendary hero RobinHood, specifically on how he saved individuals that were going to be taken out by SHIELD and redistributing the wealth from the rich and mighty to the more deserving. However, the deaths he prevented were people who posed dangerous threats to others who he then recruits to his team. Meanwhile, the rich and mighty he targets are the Inhumans, innocent people who he and his team hold captive for the purpose of transferring their abilities into his own subordinates. If anything, Nathaniel is more like the petty and ill-tempered Prince John, the main antagonist of Robin Hood's stories.
• Anarchy Is Chaos: Nathaniel's vision of anarchy certainly sounds like this, coupled with Might Makes Right.
• And This Is for...: Villainous example, as Nathaniel injures Deke with a powerful quake for killing his old man.
• Asshole Victim: In the alternate timeline, Nathaniel is depicted as a selfish, arrogant, and ruthless man who caused a lot of suffering for the SHIELD team with the help of the Chronicoms. This makes his death in the original timeline where Gideon rigged the stone ceremony to select him to be sacrificed to Hive feel a bit more deserved.
• Bad Boss:
  • When asked by Garrett if transferring Gordon's powers into him would also cause him to lose his eyes, Nathaniel states that he actually hadn't considered that as a potential side effect, yet doesn't even try to abort the transfer, even when Garrett tells him that he changed his mind. Fortunately, Garrett remained unaffected in the end, but still.
  • After chastising an underling for calling him "sir", lecturing him on how such power structures will have no place in his new world order, he would later kill the same underling on the spot when he called him "sir" again, visibly terrifying his other underlings and showing that he doesn't even understand the power structure he's building around himself
  • In the penultimate episode, he promptly abandons Garrett when the latter gets caught by Coulson, May and Elena at the Lighthouse, leaving him there to die in the explosion. He doesn't even know Garrett's been compromised, he's just unwilling to alter his timetable.
  • He also attacks Kora and has her power drained after she started to express doubts that Daisy wasn't bad.
• Bad Vibrations: When he steals Daisy's powers, he also inherits the resulting Power Incontinence. By 1983, he has much more control over them.
• Badass Longcoat: In the 80s, he starts wearing a dark one that is not to dissimilar to the one Hive wore.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Nathaniel says that none of Hydra's main branches interested him, not sacrificing members for a squid alien or taking over the world, but seeing Daisy's powers made him research Inhumans, eventually wanting to gain powers of his own. He decides to take one of the most dangerous powers in existence, and has no idea how to control them, much as Daisy did when they first manifested. This culminates in him demolishing his hideout, and almost killing himself in the process (after he broke almost every bone in his body from the constant vibrations).
• Berserk Button: For whatever reason, he doesn't like being called "sir". When he is in a bad mood, he kills one of his henchmen for calling him this after he asked him not to.
  • He is also prone to get violent when things don't go his way, as shown when he is unable to get into Simmons' brain implant.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Nathaniel is shown as the quieter of the Malick brothers, sitting alone during the S.H.I.E.L.D. celebration while Gideon tries to hit on Daisy. Underneath that quiet persona is a selfish, arrogant, violent young man, which he presents himself as throughout the remainder of the season.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: He and Sibyl are the two main antagonists of the second half of the seventh season. Malick provides Sibyl with muscle in exchange for knowledge of the future, and while he's little more than a useful pawn for the Chronicoms, he gains much greater prominence and enmity with the agents, even serving as the Final Boss.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Despite all of his grandiose posturing about balancing the scales by giving Inhuman powers to humans and averting deaths in the original timeline, as well as causing chaos for the sake of it, he actually just wants to Take Over the World and comes off as an immature entitled brat who is treated by Sibyl and the other Chronicoms as a useful pawn at best. That said, he's a much more direct threat, and S.H.I.E.L.D. beats the odds so many times he eventually deems Sibyl useless as an oracle.
• Blatant Lies: Most of what Nathaniel says to Kora in the penultimate episode is a big fat lie, particularly his claims that before her death, Jiaying expressed her hatred for Kora and regretted that she'd ever been born (which could not be further from the truth). Played with in regards to his claim that Daisy quaked the Earth apart in the original timeline; while it's implied to have been what happened before the team changed history, it was never firmly established whether Daisy or a Gravitonium-empowered Talbot was actually responsible, so Nathaniel's claim could be a deliberate lie (which would fit the narrative he's feeding Kora), or he could simply be misinformed. His insistent claims that Daisy is the villain and driven by The Power of Hate are unambiguously lies, though.
• Bomb Throwing Anarchist: His stated goals after being spared by a Cosmic Retcon are chaos and anarchy, wanting nothing to do with the structured societies HYDRA or S.H.I.E.L.D. would have, and going about what he calls a "redistribution of wealth" by stealing Inhuman powers and giving them to people history had previously seen as unfit to live.
• Broken Pedestal: In the flashback of Season 3, Nathaniel is devastated to learn that his beloved father wasn't the brave man he thought he was, having been informed of how the man cheated his way out of being chosen to go through the Monolith.
• Canon Foreigner: Like Gideon, he was created specifically for the MCU and has no comic book counterpart.
• Characterization Marches On: In the Season 3 flashbacks, Nathaniel is depicted as a timid yet devoted believer of the Hydra cult that his family has been apart of for generations. He was very close to his brother Gideon, and was equally devastated by the loss of his father. He also notably rejected Whitehall's faction of Hydra, yet maintained a level of fear of the man. The version of him that appears in Season 7 is a cruel, arrogant, and outwardly violent young man who became disillusioned with Hydra due to its hierarchy and tradition, while showing more interest in Whitehall's experiments in transferring enhanced abilities. In addition, he doesn't have a lot of genuine care for his family, as he and his brother don't appear to be close, and the fact that his father's death had very little reaction from him, considering that he now viewed his father as a man trapped by Hydra's old school hierarchy and tradition.
• Chekhov's Gunman: He first appeared in Season 3's episode "Paradise Lost" via flashbacks, and was pretty much a plot device meant to further explore Gideon's backstory and the Hydra faction that worshipped Hive. In Season 7, his past self becomes one of the main antagonists, and the Final Boss of the series.
• Combat Pragmatist: As shown in the finale, Nathaniel deliberately confronts Daisy in the reactor room of the Chronicom ship so she won't be able to use her full power without destroying the entire ship. Daisy, however, anticipated this and actually intends to blow up the whole ship, only needing to stall until Sibyl's ground forces can be reprogrammed.
• The Corrupter: Manipulates Jiaying's daughter Kora into joining him after managing to interrupt her suicide attempt and destroy her gun. He also shows a young John Garrett his future which leads the latter to joining his team against SHIELD.
• Cosmic Retcon: He originally died in 1970, but due to the Chronicoms' interference, he survived to at least 1983 in the resulting timeline.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Nathaniel had a hard time finding his place within Hydra, having becoming disillusioned with the cult faction that worshipped Hive as well as his distaste for Hydra's whole hierarchy system, while showing a bit of interest in Whitehall's experimentation with enhanced abilities. This is a stark contrast to how he was depicted in the flashbacks in Season 3, where he considered it an honor to be a part of the cult, and had no interest in joining Whitehall's faction of Hydra.
• Despotism Justifies the Means: Like his father, Nathaniel enters an alliance with the Chronicoms to destroy the SHIELD team. When a captured Coulson LMD brings up that the Chronicoms are just using him and his resources to further their own goal to turn Earth into their new planet, Nathaniel is too arrogant to even consider this warning worth listening to. Later, he explains ot Korathat he does know about the Chronicoms, but believes that once the alien robots will dismantle SHIELD and every government branch on the planet, the world will be reduced to chaos and anarchy. Nathaniel seeks to exploit this, with his plan being to swoop in to save the day, and be hailed as a champion of the people. However, it’s not clear if he has factored how he’ll get rid of the Chronicoms.
• Didn't Think This Through: Nathaniel takes Daisy's powers, only to realize too late just how powerful she is when his bones crack under constant vibrations he can't control. According to Sybil, his plan only had a 22% chance of working anyway. He does manage to survive though.
  • He also didn't consider whether transferring the powers of Inhumans with deformities might also transfer the deformities, and Garrett didn't think to ask about side-effects until he was already undergoing the procedure. Luckily for Garrett, it turns out that doesn't happen (at least in his case).
• Dirty Coward: A recurring trait in the Malick family. When he realizes that he doesn't have the upper hand on Daisy anymore, Nathaniel starts backing away in fear, and when May arrives and shoots him in the arm, he turns tail and runs.
• Effective Knockoff: Nathaniel may have stolen his powers from Daisy, but thanks to an effective gap of several years due to him taking The Slow Path, he has much finer control over her power than she does. He demonstrates this by firing off a quake blast that also has rotational force, which hits much harder with the same amount of effort. However, he recoils in fear when Daisy threatens to let loose, hinting that despite his greater control, he may lack the raw power she can unleash.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Despite previously claiming to have had little reaction to his father's death, Nathaniel cares enough about the late Wilfred Malick to assault Deke for killing him, though he could have used that to justify this action. It's implied that he cared about his brother, but considering his views on Screw Destiny, any love he had for him would have been gone once he learned that he was sacrificed to Hive after Gideon rigged the stone ceremony in the original timeline.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He rebuffs Coulson's attempts to convince him that the Chronicoms are using him as a means to conquer the planet, and that whatever they are promising him is a lie.
  • He is also confident that Daisy won't kill him in their final confrontation since she would die as well. Daisy proves him wrong by unleashing a huge quake blast that detonates the reactor spheres around them, consuming Nathaniel in a massive explosion, though Daisy survives.
• Evil Counterpart: Becomes this to Daisy after stealing her powers.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • Telling Jiaying all about her future Face–Heel Turn and death is cruel enough, but doing it all in front of Daisy is a whole new low.
  • Slapping Jemma for mocking his failure to extract Fitz's location. When his efforts fail one last time, he offers her and Deke front-row seats to "the greatest show on Earth": the Chronicoms' massacre of S.H.I.E.L.D. and subsequent invasion.
  • Later, he needlessly kills one of his men for calling him "sir" one too many times while he's in a bad mood.
• Eviler than Thou: Out of the Malick family, he is by far the most sadistic, cruel, and bad-tempered. He's also the only one to not be a Non-Action Big Bad thanks to obtaining powers from Daisy.
• Expy:
  • He bears some similarities to the clone of Red Skull in the main Marvel Comics universe. He was affiliated with HYDRA, was a different version of his main counterpart, stole the powers of another by taking their body parts, and assembled a team of other enhanced villains. Also, both wore similar attire.
  • His whole idea of cultivating and redistributing powers from Inhumans to those he deems worthy makes him one to X-Men villain Mister Sinister, who sought to use the same method on mutants. Coincidentally, the two even share the same first name.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Nathaniel's plan for world domination amounts to this: as he sees it, after the Chronicom invasion, there will be chaos and anarchy, so when he and Kora swoop in and start saving people, they'll easily be able to take over for the benefit of all. How well thought-out this plan actually is a bit debatable, since he doesn't seem to have a plan for dealing with the Chronicoms if they don't let him have the Earth.
• Faux Affably Evil: Covers his sadism with a thin veneer of humor.
• Feeling Oppressedby Their Existence: As part of his alliance with the Chronicoms, Nathaniel targets the innocent Inhumans that live in Afterlife. As this was set before Jiaying changed, the Inhumans have lived a peaceful existence in hiding, their presence still a guarded secret to the rest of the world. While he was tasked to go there because Kora was essential to the Chronicoms’ plan to defeat SHIELD, Nathaniel also went there because he just can’t accept how these individuals got their powers, citing that they did nothing to deserve aside from inheriting the gene from their ancestors, while also viewing their hierarchy system and rules as no different than the likes of Hydra and SHIELD. He has his men take over Afterlife, and take the captive Inhumans to have their powers drained and transferred into his subordinates.
• Final Boss: He is the very last antagonist in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., trying to destroy S.H.I.E.L.D. once and for all with the help of Sybil. He even lampshades it in the finale, and claims to feel honoured to be their last opponent after researching S.H.I.E.L.D.'s past victories.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: He was originally a blip on the radar of history, nothing but a pawn in Gideon Malick and Hive's story. Come Season 7, he's stolen the powers of one of the most powerful known Inhumans, aligned himself with the Chronicoms, and is out to cause chaos.
• Green-Eyed Monster: "After, Before" hints that Nathaniel has some jealousy towards Inhumans, who were naturally gifted with their powers while he and other baseline humans were not. Whether this also held true in the original timeline is unknown.
• Hate Sink: Perhaps rivaling that of Daniel Whitehall. A Smug Snake who tortures and kills innocent Inhumans to steal their powers while gloating over it, all while justifying his sadism with an obviously thin story about 'redistributing powers'. It's implied that even the love for his family he had in the original timeline is gone, as he makes no mention of any desire to avenge his father and is heavily implied to have had his brother killed when he gave the command to the Chronicoms to start blowing up S.H.I.E.L.D. bases.
• Hates Their Parent: Well, hate is a strong word. That said, Nathaniel doesn't speak highly of his father after his death. While he does point out SHIELD's role in killing Wilfred and assaults Deke for it, he himself admits that the death of his father didn't upset him as much as it did, adding how he wanted nothing to do with his father's path, viewing his old man with disdain for following Hydra's old school traditions and rules.
• The Heavy: While most definitely a Big Bad Wannabe being played like a fiddle by the Chronicoms, Nathaniel is nevertheless the main antagonist of the second half of the season, as he does all of the work in assaulting Afterlife, corrupting Kora, and hunting Fitz. He even serves as the Final Boss, with Sibyl (the overall Big Bad of the season as the leader of the Chronicoms) being anticlimactically knocked out and killed offscreen.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In "Adapt or Die", he almost ends up killing himself when he is unable to control the quaking powers he had stolen from Daisy.
  • In the finale, he thinks throughout the whole fight with Daisy that he has the upper hand, not knowing that her team are taking out the Chronicoms. In doing so, he is left completely powerless to save himself when Daisy unleashes a massive quake to destroy the Chronicom flagship's reactors, blowing him up in the process.
• Human Sacrifice: He was originally sacrificed to Hive in 1970, after his brother rigged the ceremony to choose him out of cowardice. This is averted in the alternate timeline created by the Chronicoms in Season 7, as his father's death being prevented meant he and his brother did not have to take part in the ceremony.
• Hypocrite:
  • He claims that he wants nothing to do with Hydra, yet continues to use his Hydra connections and wealth for his own goals. For example, he has nothing but contempt for Daniel Whitehall, but is content with asking for his instructions for his method of transferring enhanced abilities for his own means.
  • He criticizes the leaders of Afterlife for picking and choosing who gets to undergo Terrigenesis to receive their enhanced abilities. His solution? Kidnapping a group of Inhumans, and subjecting them to a painful transference process that forcibly drains their powers so he can pick and choose who deserves them, reserving such power for his own allies.
  • For all his rants about chaos, he gets violent whenever people don't do as he says, which includes striking Jemma when she refuses to give up Fitz's location and killing one of his henchmen for calling him "sir". It's revealed he doesn't care about anarchy, and that it was cover for his real goal of wanting to rule everyone.
  • He feels justified in abusing Deke for killing his father, when he himself had just needlessly killed Jiaying when she tried to stop him from attacking Daisy.
  • He condemns the likes of SHIELD, HYDRA, and Inhumans, accusing them of committing unspeakable acts for world order and control...when he is actively helping an alien race in their goal to take over the planet, kidnapping innocent enhanced individuals so he can experiment on them for the purpose of transferring their powers into his subordinates. And in the finale, he lets slip that his entire motive is to Take Over the World.
• I Am Not My Father: When Coulson made the suggested assumption that he was not so different from his father, Nathaniel furiously affirmed that he wants nothing to do with his father's ways. He speaks on how his father let himself be controlled by Hydra's old school traditions and hierarchy, to which Nathaniel much prefers the idea of anarchy.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Given that he is introduced as a meek young man who could never find his place in Hydra, and the fact that his brother was seemingly being groomed to take their father's place as a Hydra head, it's possible that Nathaniel's arrogant and entitled personality stems from low-self esteem issues.
• It's All About Me: The final episode reveals that he doesn't really want to make the world with no order, but rather rule it himself.
• I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: Nathaniel has Deke beaten up in front of Jemma to make her comply. When that doesn't work, he instead starts quaking Jemma's brain to make Deke talk, but he then discovers her implant on his own.
• Kick the Dog:
  • While Li is an Asshole Victim, draining the goodhearted Gordon is far less defensible, solely because he stood with Jiaying. Even Coulson defends the young Inhuman, pointing out that Gordon is just a kid.
  • He reveals, in gruesome detail, Jiaying's bleak future in the original timeline, up to and including her attempt to murder Daisy and her own death. After killing Jiaying, he mockingly says that it looks like Jiaying won't live forever, and Daisy won't live at all.
  • He needlessly quakes Deke against the wall after finding the implant in Simmons' neck.
  • He brings up Jiaying's death during his final fight with Daisy, specifically how she had to be rescued from the woman in the original timeline, while he snapped her neck.
• Make Wrong What Once Went Right: The people he's recruited for his team were all already dead or fated to die under ignominious circumstances in the original timeline, himself included, and he specifically recruited them to Screw Destiny. But at the end of the day, none of them were good people.
• Manchild: He is prone to almost throwing tantrums when things don't go his way. He even mentions that he is used to getting whatever he wanted.
• Miles Gloriosus: He taunts Daisy's quaking powers after she uses them on him, before boasting how he is better at using them than her before quaking her against the wall. After he kills Jiaying and Daisy starts to go berserk, he almost immediately turns tail and runs.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain
  • Nathaniel boasts that he has better control over Daisy's powers than Daisy herself, on account of having had them longer than she has in relative terms. When he snaps Jiaying's neck, however, Daisy loses her temper and the entire building begins to quake, with Nathaniel clearly terrified. Lucky for him, in a sense, May shoots him in the arm and cuts that potential battle short.
  • Dispatching Kora to kill Daisy results in Sibyl's plan being ruined and Kora pulling a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Him preventing Kora's suicide is ultimately what allows the Chronicoms to be defeated once and for all in the finale.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Come 1976 in the alternate timeline, he's not terribly interested in HYDRA's machinations, but is still willing to use his access to their resources (namely Daniel Whitehall) for the purpose of stealing Daisy's powers for himself. By 1983, his stated goals are pure anarchy, putting him squarely at odds with HYDRA's totalitarian vision. That said, he is content using Hydra loyalists and technology to help further his goals.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Nathaniel paints his goals as a noble defiance of the future fate laid out for people, but given that the people he's saving include mercenaries like Durant and future HYDRA leader John Garrett, his good intentions start proving more than a little shaky. He is also more than willing to facilitate the Chronicom invasion as long as he benefits from it. In the finale, it is clear he doesn't actually want to "balance the scales" of giving Inhuman powers to regular humans to create pure anarchy. He really just wants to Take Over the World.
• Obviously Evil: Starting in After, Before, Nathaniel's starts wearing in an all-black Hive-esque outfit, all while talking about power setting people above the rules and bringing chaos.
• Oh, Crap!: When Daisy is getting ready to unleash her full power against Nathaniel after he kills Jiaying, he defensively raises his hands and starts backing off, clearly terrified of what she'll do if she's not holding back.
• Posthumous Character: Like his father, Nathaniel had long since been dead by the time Gideon first appeared. While his father was only mentioned, Nathaniel did make a full appearance in flashbacks, which depicted how he died. And like his father, the SHIELD team would encounter a version of him in the past where he avoided his death due to the Chronicoms interference with the timeline.
• Power Incontinence: After successfully stealing Daisy's powers, he immediately has to suffer the same consequences she initially did as he quakes uncontrollably, shattering his own bones and bringing the roof down on his own head, allowing Daisy and Sousa to escape. He's gotten his powers under control by his next appearance.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He's extremely short-tempered and after he violently throws a fit. He does collect himself, and sarcastically apologizes before saying that he's just "used to getting what he wants". Given that he was born into and capitalized on (even if ultimately rejecting) a powerful HYDRA legacy, it's not too surprising.
• Psychological Projection: A lot of Nathaniel's lines about Afterlife and the people there (that it's a cult, that those in charge did nothing to deserve their powers, and that ancient rules are the only thing governing it), although not entirely off the mark, hint that he's projecting issues he has with his old HYDRA ties onto the place.
• The Quisling: The Chronicoms are out to conquer Earth and terraform it as the new Chronyca-2, and they've found a willing human ally in Nathaniel. However, it's also not clear if he fully knows of their plans.
• Rebel Prince: In a way, as he was born into a Hydra blueblood family. Unlike his brother, Nathaniel wants nothing to do with the Hydra cult, as he became disillusioned with the organization's hierarchy and tradition. During his conversation with Coulson, Nathaniel firmly said that he has no use for his father's thinking, preferring the freedom of anarchy.
• Reminiscing About Your Victims: He does during his final fight with Daisy, bringing up how he had only recently snapped the neck of her mother when she tried to stop him.
• Rich Bitch: His father had managed to restore the family's wealth before he and his brother were born. It appears his father had spoiled him during his youth, which has led to Nathaniel developing an arogant and entitled personality,
• Sadist: He definitely enjoys inflicting pain on others, especially once he gets his powers.
• Screw Destiny: Nathaniel's new anarchic beliefs revolve around averting what fate had been previously laid out; having avoided his own death (by Hive's assimilation), he intervenes to prevent Kora's, and he voices an intention of "redistributing wealth" from Inhumans who he feels did nothing to deserve their power.
• Self-Disposing Villain: He seemingly does this to himself in Adapt or Die, courtesy of his own Power Incontinence after trying to harvest Daisy's powers for himself. The following episode reveals that he survived.
• Smug Snake: Nathaniel believes that the Chronicoms are either his willing minions or Unwitting Pawns. The reality is that Sibyl barely listens to him and once he starts deviating from Sibyl's overall plans in the final two episodes, his only accomplishment is screwing up Sibyl's last attempt to get Fitz's location from Jemma's memories.
  • In the finale, Nathaniel boasts that he's studied Daisy's past battles and that he'll be her last opponent, but even with both Daisy and Kora's powers at his disposal, he and Daisy are more or less evenly matched, and even that is at least partly because Daisy is drawing out the fight to ensure the success of the team's plan and because Nathaniel has confronted her in a location that limits her ability to use her powers to their fullest. Once she can stop holding back, she annihilates the ship (and Nathaniel) with one attack.
• Smug Super: He is almost always wearing a smug look on his face whenever he is using his powers against Daisy.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Nathaniel acts almost cordial when he is about to cut Daisy up.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: Nathaniel shamelessly smears Jiaying's memory to manipulate Kora into staying on his side, claiming that before she died, she regretted that Kora was ever born.
  • He even paints his recently deceased father in a bad light during his conversation with Coulson. Specifically, he says that his father let himself be trapped by Hydra's old school traditions and rules.
• Start of Darkness: Seeing Daisy’s powers being used on the Chronicoms is implied to be this for him, as it made him obsessed with getting powers for himself, knowing that Inhumans existed due to his family’s cult knowledge about Hive. This in turn would lead him to forming an alliance with the Chronicoms in their goal of wiping out SHIELD.
• Straw Hypocrite: All of Nathaniel's previous talk of anarchy (at least the implication that it was his end goal) is unsurprisingly revealed to be a pack of lies; his actual plan is to take advantage of the chaos to Take Over the World.
• Stupid Evil: He is so delusional thinking that the Chronicoms are working for him, when in fact they are using him as a pawn so they can take over the Earth, him included. He scoffs when the heroes try to bring this up, mocking them for trying to give him the "good guy pitch, appeal to his better nature" speech.
• Superhuman Transfusion: Nathaniel has refined Daniel Whitehall's process of transferring powers to the point that all it takes is about a half-hour of sitting in a machine which transfers blood and other fluids from the source to the recipient.
• Talking Down the Suicidal: Nathaniel convinces Kora to join him instead of taking herself out. Of course, his reasoning was far from noble, as Kora being on his side was essential to his plan to take over Afterlife and steal the Inhumans power for his allies.
• Tantrum Throwing: After being told that the implant extraction device won't work unless Jemma herself uses it, Nathaniel throws it through a window, then remarks that he did that because he's used to getting whatever he wants.
• Took a Level in Badass: Starting out as a normal powerless human, he steals Daisy's powers but immediately suffers from Power Incontinence and is left for dead. Except he didn't die, and in turn had years to master the powers before S.H.I.E.L.D. encountered him again, longer than even Daisy had herself.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: His first appearance in the flashbacks of Season 3 depict him as being a somewhat meek and affable young man who feared Whitehall enough to not disobey his invitation to meet at the Rat. Come, Season 7 he is shown to be very rude and aggressive, in addition to being quite arrogant, best shown when he speaks negatively about Whitehall, describing him as an old man with a "Mein Kampf" vibe.
• Unwitting Pawn: While he's willingly working with Sybil and the Chronicoms, it's implied he's not fully aware of their plan to conquer and terraform Earth as their new homeworld, as his own plans of redistributing Inhumans' powers and causing chaos for the sake of chaos would likely be at direct odds with it. However, the team bring this fact up to him several times, and he simply ignores their claims, suggesting that he is so full of himself that he thinks that the Chronicoms are going to help him with his plans.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: The version of him shown in Season 7 is more hot-tempered and outwardly antagonistic compared to his first appearance in Season 3.
• Villain Has a Point: When Coulson brings up how aligning with the Chronicoms didn't work out for his father, Nathaniel quickly points out that Wilfred was taken out by Coulson's team, not the Chronicoms.
• Villainous Lineage: His father started off a Noble Demon, but getting worse as the years went by while running HYDRA. His brother likewise is introduced in the present day as a major HYDRA leader. Given his familial ties to an awful Nebulous Evil Organization, it's unsurprising he turned out to be at least as bad as them if not even worse, despite his own rejection of HYDRA.
• Walking Spoiler: Pretty much impossible to talk about his role in season 7, where he cheats death thanks to a Cosmic Retcon and becomes a Big Bad, without spoilers.
• Would Hit a Girl: Nathaniel slaps Jemma for defying him, then threatens to quake her into a coma to coerce Deke. He also feels no qualms about experimenting on both Daisy and Kora for their powers, fighting dirty in his final battle with Daisy, and of course, needlessly killing Jiaying.

Stephanie Malick

Stephanie Malick

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Bethany Joy Lenz

Voiced By: Liliana Barba [Sony Dub] (Latin-American Spanish dub); Ana Esther Alborg (European Spanish dub)

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (appears in Episode 57: "Parting Shot", Episode 60: "Paradise Lost")

Gideon Malick's daughter and heir and a member of HYDRA.

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• Bait the Dog: Stephanie apparently believed that Hive would kill her father for his cowardice. It killed her instead.
• Daddy's Little Villain: She has been raised to be a HYDRA leader and shares her father's vision.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Despite being a member of the aforementioned fascist cult, she genuinely cares about her father. That is until the Broken Pedestal moment in which she chooses Hive over her father after the latter is exposed as a coward who cheated his way out of being sacrificed to Hive all his adult life.
• The Fundamentalist: Unlike her father, who cares more about power than the HYDRA faith, she is a true believer in HYDRA's role as servants of Hive and chooses the latter over her father.
• Morality Pet: For Gideon. When Hive kills her, it drives him to help S.H.I.E.L.D. defeat the "devil".
• Sacrificial Lamb: She is killed by Hive to punish Gideon for having betrayed his brother instead of being willing to be sacrificed to Hive.
• The Smurfette Principle: The only member of the Malick family to be a woman.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: She's killed in her second appearance.