Sandbox / MCU Chronicom Altered Timeline Originals

Daniel Sousa

Agent/Chief Daniel Sousa

"You think because I'm wearing a suit and I got a clean shave, we're different? We're not. We're both people nobody cares about."

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Enver Gjokaj

Voiced By: Raymundo Armijo (Latin-American Spanish dub); Eduardo Bosch (European Spanish dub)

Appearances: Agent Carter | Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

An injured veteran working at the S.S.R., and one of Peggy's few friends in the department. Following the Leviathan incident, he becomes Chief of the LA office in Season 2, and would go on to become Chief of the nascent S.H.I.E.L.D.'s West Coast office.

Some time later after S.H.I.E.L.D.'s official formation, Sousa would go on to serve, and ultimately die in the line of duty, as the agency's first fallen agent— the victim of a HYDRA assassination plot... Or that's what's written in the history books, anyway.

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• Artificial Limbs: After years of living with a barely functioning prosthetic leg that was all the 1940s could provide, Simmons sets him up with a modern one, and he quickly loses the need for his cane as a result.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Thompson and Dooley are openly jerks, but their condescension toward Peggy causes them to often miss her covert actions. Sousa, however, is kind to her and believes she's competent, which means he doesn't underestimate her and thus is the one to discover she's a double agent. While normally he's the "good cop" during interrogation, he turns out to be pretty aggressive if he believes you personally betrayed him.
• Big Damn Heroes: After he and Daisy are captured by Nathaniel Malick, Sousa single-handedly deals with their captors and takes an injured and unconscious Daisy back to the team. Defiant Captive doesn't quite give him enough badass points for that one.
• Brainy Brunette: Sousa is a lot more competent than his colleagues give him credit for.
• The Bus Came Back: Makes an recurring appearance in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 7, 4 years after Agent Carter was cancelled.
• Canon Foreigner: There's no Daniel Sousa in the main comics.
• Cane Fu: Can use his crutch as a weapon.
• Cassandra Truth: Sousa had correctly developed suspicions that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been infiltrated by HYDRA as early as 1955 and tried to warn his superiors about it. Unfortunately his suspicions would get him assassinated that year, and history shows that his superiors didn't listen.
• Character Development: In season 1 of Agent Carter he is Peggy's ally, but still has trouble overcoming the sexism of the day, and has a bit of a Madonna-Whore Complex with her as a result. Flash forward 10 years, in Agents of SHIELD, and he has done a fair amount of work on himself, to the point where he doesn't bat an eye at having superiors that include an Asian-American woman and a black man, and is perfectly willing to be Daisy's support system.
• Deadpan Snarker: At times, mostly about his sexist coworkers.
  Sousa: [of Jack Thompson] Poor guy. I hear he got his personality shot off in Iwo Jima.
• Derailing Love Interests: Picks up the Jerkass Ball big time during Peggy's interrogation in season 1, revealing his hypocrisy much to her disgust in "SNAFU". While they've patched things up by the end of season 2, history dictates that it didn't work out in the long run.
• Death Faked for You: How future S.H.I.E.L.D. manages to avoid his death in 1955 while tricking out time.
• Disabled Snarker: He was injured during WWII, and as established, he's a Deadpan Snarker.
• Doomed by Canon: His relationship with Peggy, after Captain America travels back in time to be with her at the end of Avengers: Endgame. He seems to have already split with Peggy when seen in 1955 in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. also states that he was assassinated in 1955 for his attempts to expose HYDRA, and that he was historically the first S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to fall in the line of duty. Thwarted when future S.H.I.E.L.D. saves him by Tricking Out Time.
• Fair Cop: Former Edition. Daniel was a police officer before WWII; it's the reason he's a better investigator than anyone else in the S.S.R. New York Office (except for possibly Peggy). Might even be a Shout-Out to Enver Gjokaj's cameo role in The Avengers (he's one of the NYPD cops that Steve coordinates with during the Chitauri invasion).
• Fake Guest Star: He is given a special guest star billing throughout his run on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s seventh season to hide the fact that he joins the team very early on, and stays with them through the series' end.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: He's a man out of time almost as much as Steve Rogers was. After faking his death in 1955 and joining Team Coulson, he's completely aghast at how far technology has come. Hell, the now-primitive tech of The '70s leaves him awestruck.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop:
  • He's the Good Cop when interrogating a homeless bum in "Time and Tide". Sadly, he finds that being empathetic to the man's plight just gets him rebuffed over and over, while Thompson's bribery approach immediately gets the guy talking.
  • In "SNAFU", he instead falls into the Bad Cop trope when interrogating Peggy, as he feels personally wronged by her perceived betrayal.
• Handicapped Badass: During WWII his leg was injured to the point where he's permanently crippled, getting around with the aid of a crutch. That doesn't stop him from easily taking out a homeless veteran with said crutch when the latter becomes aggressive. He even manages to hold his own and survive against Dottie, the first character to do so in a straight-up fight. It gets even more impressive once he joins Team Coulson: after he and Daisy are captured by Nathaniel Malick and drugged to hell and back, he still manages to brutally kill his guards with a glass shard and carry an unconscious Daisy back to the Zephyr— and all without his cane.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Thompson and Dooley are the ones in charge, but Sousa surpasses them both in terms of detective skill and cunning.
• Insecure Love Interest: Sousa is hinted to have a crush on Peggy, but Krzeminski tells him to stuff it, claiming she'd never look at a cripple like him when she's dated Captain America.
  Gjokaj: I think there’s definitely a situation where... if she hadn’t dated Captain America, he might ask her out for a drink. It's like if your new girlfriend dated Ryan Gosling. It's going to make you sweat a bit.
• Inspirationally Disadvantaged: Deconstructed. Sousa tells a story of being applauded while entering a diner but another GI was not. That was when he realized they were applauding him out of pity for his disability.
  Sousa: So, I walk into this diner. This isn't a joke. I walk into this diner, and everybody starts clapping. And I look around at first, confused, and then I realize, oh, they're clapping for me, in my dress uniform, 'cause I served and came back alive, like you... So, I pretended to curtsy. Played it off as a joke, and then I'm working on my meal. I look up. I see another G.I. walk in. So, I put down my fork, put down my knife, get ready to clap. And nobody else does a thing. Silence. That's when I realized they weren't clapping for me. They were clapping for this and this. (gestures to leg and crutch) Clapping because I make them feel guilty, and they want to feel good.
• Irony: His brightness and willingness to see Peggy as the competent agent that she is, rather than dismiss her as just a Sexy Secretary... leads him to be perhaps the biggest threat to her cover when she's working to clear Stark's name.
• It's Personal: When Peggy was accused as a traitor in "SNAFU", he feels personally betrayed so he becomes the bad cop and is the most aggressive in interrogating her, while Thompson and Chief Dooley are more composed in doing so.
• Jerkass Ball: In "SNAFU", Sousa accuses Peggy of sleeping with Howard, saying that he's "as good as they say" and that he "scrambled her brain". This goes away again after Peggy comes clean about her own interrogation and possessing a vial containing Steve's blood, with him trying to convince Dooley to believe her. It comes back again in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as the stress of time travel is clearly taking its toll and he starts taking it out on poor Simmons. It gets to a point where he's about to ship off in 1976, but mellows out and decides to stay with the team after saving Daisy.
• Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: Was killed in 1955 for his attempts to unveil HYDRA's infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. Future S.H.I.E.L.D. manages to avert this with some Tricked Out Time.
• Madonna-Whore Complex: Peggy diagnoses him as having one regarding her; he idolizes her, but turns against her when she's revealed to be a double agent and accuses her during the interrogation of having been been seduced by Howard. (Though it's not clear if she actually believes this about him or if she's just trying to turn the tables on her interrogator.)
  Peggy: [To you, I was] the girl on the pedestal, transformed into some daft whore.
• Married to the Job: Implied to be why his relationship with Peggy didn't work out. Given that Peggy herself was also very career-minded, it may have been mutual.
• Nice Guy: Supportive to Peggy in contrast to his co-workers. This is initially averted in "SNAFU", however, with him being the most aggressive interrogator out of him, Thompson and Dooley.
  Sousa: You're an agent, but they treat you like a secretary.
• Not So Above It All: A rather depressing reveal. Sousa took Peggy's part against the rest of the S.S.R.'s sexism, but while his opinion of Peggy is more benevolent, it's just as sexist in a different way: by idolizing Peggy, he set himself up to be disappointed when it looked like she wasn't the perfect woman he envisioned, and he turned on her pretty viciously. While he was initially reluctant to believe she was a traitor, his assumption that she's only doing it because she's sleeping with Howard Stark is the nail in the coffin here. To his credit, though, the instant Peggy starts laying down all her cards, he believes her, so much so that Thompson says it's because of his crush on her.
  • It's possible he never actually believed she betrayed the S.S.R. because she was sleeping with Howard, and that it was just an interrogation technique designed to get a reaction. It's fairly common in interrogations to make their motive out to be something really bad so they'll correct you, and in doing so admit that they did what they're being accused of.
• N-Word Privileges: Freely jokes about his lost leg, but is annoyed when others make jabs about it.
• Official Couple: He is finally able to move on from Peggy by falling in love with Daisy Johnson. To everyone's surprise, the series ends with the two of them a couple, happily exploring the universe together aboard the Zephyr.
• Offscreen Breakup: He and Peggy broke up some time between 1947 and 1955.
• Only Friend: He's the only one to accept Peggy as a S.S.R. agent, mostly because of his feelings for her. Because of this, he feels particularly betrayed when he assumes her guilt in "SNAFU", leaving her with zero friends, until she was able to convince him and his colleagues of her innocence.
• Rank Up: Gets promoted to being chief of a new branch of the S.S.R. on the West Coast between seasons.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: To Peggy in season two.
• Retcon: Agent Carter implies that his injured leg is still present but irreparably damaged to the point that he needs to walk with a crutch. Agents of SHIELD changes this to him actually missing a leg and wearing a prosthesis and using a cane.
• Returning War Vet: Lost the use of his leg during the Siege of Bastogne.
• Second Love: Slowly becomes a contender for this for Peggy. In the Season 2 finale, they get together. It ultimately doesn't last, with them having split by 1955. During his travels with present-day S.H.I.E.L.D., he and Daisy Johnson become this for each other; Daniel finally gets to move on from Peggy, while Daisy finds love for the first time since losing Lincoln years earlier.
• Sixth Ranger: Joins present-day S.H.I.E.L.D. on their time-traveling adventures in the seventh season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..
• Throw the Dog a Bone: After losing his leg, his relationship with Peggy Carter ended, and he was supposed to be murdered by HYDRA, Team Coulson saved him from HYDRA, gave him a prosthetic leg that worked as well as a real one, and he ended up with Daisy.
• Took a Level in Badass: He was already a badass when he joined the SSR and then SHIELD, but his crutch and later cane had a tendency to slow him down. This changes when Simmons gifts him with an advanced prosthesis, and he graduates to full-on action hero.
• Transplant: From a series regular on the two seasons of Agent Carter to a recurring character in the final season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..
• Tricked Out Time: Unwilling to let a good man die but also trying to avoid changing the past, S.H.I.E.L.D. fakes Sousa's death in 1955 while taking him time-travelling with them. This way the world believes he dies as originally dictated, while he gets to live on without being around to affect the timeline.
• Undying Loyalty: Season 2 gives him this towards Peggy, even as powerful forces threaten both of them and Peggy herself tells him to save himself from the sure-to-come fallout.
  Daniel: I'm in this with you 'til the end, Peggy.
• Unfazed Everyman: All things considered, Sousa handles all the information dropped on him after being rescued from 1955 pretty well. Time-traveling S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, body-snatching alien robots, the fact that he was historically ordained to die that day? Just another day on the job for him. When Daisy later calls him out on this based on his non-reaction to them being trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, he replies that he is very fazed, he just doesn't show it.
• Utility Weapon: He sometimes uses his crutch as a weapon. It even gave him an edge when throwing down with Dottie.
• Walkingspoiler: Can't talk about his role in season 7 without spoiling that he cheated death and joined the time-traveling S.H.I.E.L.D. crew. The very fact that he's on the Team Coulson page is a spoiler for anyone who last saw him in Agent Carter.]]

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.
• Anti-Hero: Posed as one, as he acted 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.
• 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.
• 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 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.

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...

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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.
• 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 the Super Soldier serum, which in turn would allow for the rise of Red Skull and Captain America.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: 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 cheats during the ritual to choose Hive's sacrifice.
• Chekhov's Gunman: He was mentioned in Season 3's episode "Paradise Lost" via flashback, and like his youngest son, was a plot device meant to help further explore Gideon's past and the history of the cult that worshipped Hive. In Season 7, his past self becomes involved with the Chronicoms, and serves as one of the main antagonists.
• Cosmic Retcon: He originally died 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 becoming a sacrifice to Hive. His past self is also shown to be this, as shown he ran and hid from the Chronicoms, leaving his contact Viola behind after she was shot by the Chronicoms.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: After he and the Chronicoms sprung a trap decades in the making on S.H.I.E.L.D. 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.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Seemingly an innocent bartender, Freddy Malick goes on to become one of the heads of HYDRA.
• 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 sacrifices 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's. Later, he achieves a position higher than that of General Rick Stoner.
• Rags to Riches: His family lost everything due to the Wall Street Crash of 1929 but he managed to rebuild the family fortune after joining HYDRA.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: 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.

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 Realisation, 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.
• 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.
• 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: By himself, 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.
• 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. 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 the man.
• 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, just not enough to sacrifice himself. 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 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 insiginifcant. 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, Garrett being too narcisstic). 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 some greater deal.
• Faux Affably Evil: He speaks in a calm and friendly manner to everyone, but behind their back, he is plotting against them.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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: "Malick" sounds an awful lot like "malice". Also, 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.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Hive punishes Malick for his cowardice by murdering his daughter right in front of him.
• 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 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.
• 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.
• Villainous BSoD: He becomes a total defeatist after Hive turns on him.
• 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 positon following the latter's death at the hands of Deke.
• Would Hit a Girl: Gives a nasty No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to Daisy once he gets his augmented strength harness.

Nathaniel Malick

Nathaniel "Nate" Malick

Species: 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 Malick: Dad... he would swap in this stone during the ceremonies and feel for the notch to make sure he never drew it from the bag.
Gideon Malick: He would never do that.
Nathaniel Malick: But he did. It's all right here, Gideon. Dad was afraid to be the Traveler. He was a coward... and a cheater. Everything he said to us was a lie.

A member of the HYDRA faction that worshiped the Inhuman Hive and the 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.

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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.
• 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.
• 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 later killed 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 know Garrett's been compromised, he's just unwilling to alter his timetable.
• 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: He starts wearing a dark one in the 80s.
• 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).
• 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. By the end of the episode, Nathaniel kidnaps Sousa and Daisy, and is planning on using Whitehall's methods to acquire her powers through vivisection.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: He and Sibyl are the two main antagonists of the seventh season, Sibyl seeking him out and forging an alliance after his father's death. 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 penulitmate 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 (nothing could 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 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 Malick, he's an original character of the MCU.
• 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 cult 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 states that he really had a hard time finding his place within HYDRA, going as far as to call the cult ridiculous for worshipping the space octopus Hydra, though he was somewhat intrigued by Whitehall's experiments. 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.
• 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.
• 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: Perhaps the pettiest villain on the show.
  • 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: When compared to his brother and father, he is by far the most dangerous and mentally unstable member of his family.
• 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 plan of cultivating and redistributing powers from Inhumans to those he deems worthy is quite similar to X-Men villain Mister Sinister, who used the same method on mutants. 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.
• 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: Was originally a blip on the radar of history, nothing but a pawn in Gideon Malick and Hive's story. Now, 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, 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. He arranges for Gordon to have his powers transferred into Garrett, the former being an innocent man unlike Gordon.
• The Heavy: While most definitely a Big Bad Wannabe being played like a fiddle by the Chronicoms, Nathaniel is nevertheless the de facto main antagonist 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 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.
• Human Sacrifice: He was originally sacrificed to Hive in 1970.
• Hypocrite:
  • He claims that he wants nothing to do with Hydra, yet continues to use Hydra connections for his own goals. Notably, he has nothing but contempt for Daniel Whitehall, but is content with using his theory of transferring enhanced abilities for his own means.
  • He criticizes the leaders of Afterlife for picking and choosing who gets to undergo Terrigenesis. His solution is to forcibly drain power from Inhumans so that he can pick and choose who really 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, striking Jemma when she refuses to give up Fitz's location and killing one of his henchmen for calling him "sir".
  • He feels justified in abusing Deke as payback for killing his father, when he himself needlessly had just killed Jiaying for trying to stop him from killing Daisy.
• 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 head of Hydra, 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.
  • 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 mockingingly says that it looks like Jiaying won't live forever, and Daisy won't live at all.
• 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 a tantrum 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.
  • 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 altered timeline, he's not terribly interested in HYDRA's machinations, but is still willing to use his access to their resources (namely Daniel Whitehall) to further his own goals in 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, 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. ​
• 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 says it's because he's "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.
• 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 his only accomplishment in the episode is screwing up his ally's plan.
  • 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.
• 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.
• 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 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 affably young man, who respected Whitehall enough to not disobey his invitation to meet at the Rat. Come, Season 7 he is shown to be extremely rude to the authorites, describing Whitehall as having "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 antagonistical compared to Season 3.
• 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, and of course, killing Jiaying.

Victoria Hand

Agent Victoria Hand

"No single agent is that important."

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Saffron Burrows, Rachele Schank (in 1983)

Voicted By: Queta Calderón (Latin-American Spanish dub), María Jesús Nieto (European Spanish dub)

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (first appears in Episode 7: "The Hub")

A famous S.H.I.E.L.D. operations agent in charge of The Hub. She has a cold and secretive demeanor.

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• Adaptational Heroism: In the comics, Victoria Hand is a My Country, Right or Wrong type of character, which leads her to become Norman Osborn's right-hand woman, although she ends up working with the good guys after Osborn's downfall. The TV version still retains some of the comic version's less pleasant qualities, which makes it seem like she would be revealed to be a villain, but she turns out to be Good All Along.
• Back for the Finale: She returns in the Grand Finale of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., stationed at the bar along with other agents after the Chronicoms attack their bases in 1983.
• Batman Gambit: Does this in "The Hub". She sends Ward and Fitz in there without an extraction plan, which hinges on either Ward and Fitz escaping themselves or, failing that, Coulson and the others finding about the extraction plan (or lack thereof, in this case) and moving in to pick them up once their job is done.
• By-the-Book Cop: In contrast to the more pragmatic, emotional Coulson. In fact, she suspects that Coulson is HYDRA because of all the rules he breaks.
• Character Death: Killed by Ward while trying to deliver Garrett to The Fridge.
• Commander Contrarian: Often against and obstructing most of Coulson's decisions.
• Double Tap: After seeing someone walk away from a double gut shot, Ward puts a bullet in her chest and then two in her head to to make sure she's dead.
• Embarrassing Nickname: She considers the nickname "Vic" (given to her by Garrett) condescending. Hartley later refers to her by the same nickname, but Hand isn't on-screen to complain.
• Good All Along: As Simmons is relieved to learn, she's actually hunting for HYDRA agents; however, she honestly believes that Coulson is with HYDRA.
• Good Is Not Nice: "HYDRA won't show mercy. Neither can we."
• Hide Your Lesbians: She is a lesbian in the comics, and lover of Isabelle, but here she is killed by Agent Ward before there is any in-universe confirmation that she is a lesbian.
• Inspector Javert: She has major suspicions about Coulson's allegiance because of all the rules he's broken in past episodes, not to mention his secretiveness and failure to be forthcoming with S.H.I.E.L.D. leadership.
• Meaningful Name: Roughly translates as "winning hand."
• Mentor Archetype: In the Framework, she was the one to recruit Grant Ward into S.H.I.E.L.D. instead of John Garrett. In both cases Ward was a Boxed Crook who developed Undying Loyalty to the person who spared him from prison, but while Real!Ward became a villain under Garrett, Framework!Ward became a hero under Hand.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: She's unhelpful at best, although outright lying about the extraction plan is pretty awful. It's a cover for even more ruthless behavior — for example, she orders the Bus to be taken down, so she can kill everyone onboard, because she believes they're all HYDRA agents. Mostly, it serves to set her up as a Red Herring as to being The Clairvoyant — she's not.
• Red Herring Mole: She's not the Clairvoyant, although she's set up to look like it.
• Sacrificial Lion: The first character of note to (indisputably) die in the show; the fact that Ward is the one to kill her hammers home just how deep HYDRA influence within S.H.I.E.L.D. truly is.
• Secret Test of Character: Her HYDRA mole act was intended as a test of loyalty. Her subordinates passed.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With Coulson and his team, due to her "by the book" way of doing things and their more maverick tendencies.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: She didn't bother giving Fitz and Ward an extraction because she thought Coulson's team wouldn't need one. It's not clear if she expected them to escape on their own or for Coulson to figure it out and rescue them, but either way Coulson wasn't happy that he wasn't told.
• We Have Reserves: Has no problem with sending Fitz and Ward on a dangerous mission without planning an extraction for them.

Rick Stoner

General Richard "Rick" Stoner

"This S.H.I.E.L.D. technology will make you think that the 1980s got here a bit early."

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Patrick Warburton

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (first appears in Episode 99: "All the Comforts of Home")

A S.H.I.E.L.D. leader who oversaw the construction and implementation of the Lighthouse.

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• Adaptational Job Change: He was SHIELD's first director in the comics, rather than an admittedly high-ranking agent. He also only made it as high as Colonel.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: He was something of a Neidermeyer who antagonized Nick Fury in the comic, but is much friendlier in the show.
• The Cameo: Stoner appears as a recording projection in the Lighthouse.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: While he is understandably dubious about Coulson and May's claims about sentient time-traveling aliens (S.T.T.A.s as he calls them), he immediately changes his mind after they save him from a Chronicom attempt on his life.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Only briefly appears and his current status isn't even known, but he's responsible for the construction of the Lighthouse, which becomes the much-needed headquarters for S.H.I.E.L.D. as of the second half of Season 5 after the destruction of the Playground.
• Unwitting Pawn: A loyal SHIELD agent who's being manipulated by Malick and the Chronicoms into building HYDRA's Project Insight decades early.

The Deke Squad

The Deke Squad

Left to right: Roxy, Mack (in foreground), the Chang brothers, Olga, Deke. Not pictured: Cricket.

Species: Humans

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Tipper Newton (Roxy Glass), John Yuan (Tommy Chang), Matt Yuan (Ronnie Chang), Jolene Anderson (Olga Pachinko), Ryan Donowho (Cricket)

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

A cover band formed by Deke Shaw while stranded in the early 1980s, as a disguise for his ad-hoc S.H.I.E.L.D. cell operating out of the Lighthouse.

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• Ambiguously Gay: Olga tells Roxy (in Russian), "My heart resides forever in your beautiful clutches."
• Broken Pedestal: The Chang twins are upset to find that Deke actually didn't write any of the songs they're playing, not even "Walk Like An Egyptian".
• The Bus Came Back: Three episodes after Mack and Deke leave them, Roxy reappears, having started training to become a legitimate S.H.I.E.L.D. agent (having found out that Deke actually didn't have the authority to recruit her into S.H.I.E.L.D.).
• Cloudcuckoolander: Cricket doesn't seem to be on the same plane of reality as the rest of the squad. Notably, he's the only one to not double as a secret agent.
• Demolitions Expert: Olga.
• Dirty Coward: The Chang twins, despite putting up a decent fight against Sybil's Killer Robots at first, panic and abandon their team when the bots start shooting lasers. Deke still forgives them.
• Egocentric Team Naming: Named for lead vocalist Deke Shaw.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: As Deke explains to Mack, the band is actually a good disguise for a S.H.I.E.L.D. faction, as they can move heavy equipment unchallenged and any odd behavior will be chalked up to drugs.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Roxy seems to think Alfie is Mack's son (when the former is the latter's younger self), implying that Deke either didn't mention Time Travel to them, or just kept the situation with Mack's younger self a secret.
• Made of Iron: Olga is seriously injured twice in a manner that might look like a Red Shirt going down, only for her to recover soon enough.
• Master of Disguise: The Changs, according to Deke. We never actually see them do it.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: We never learn Cricket's real name.
• Plagiarism in Fiction: Unbeknownst to the rest of the band, Deke is ripping off 80's pop songs that were (will be?) written by completely different people.
• Psycho Party Member: Olga uses live explosives during the team's training sessions.
• Pun: Deke's cover band is a cover for his operations.
• The Runt at the End: When Deke is telling Mack about the squad, he lists off their capabilities as agents... except Cricket, who's just a drummer and drug dealer.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Cricket doesn't get any noticeable development before one of Sybil's robots kills him.
• The Smart Girl: Deke seems to regard Roxy as this.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Roxy tears into Mack for cutting himself off from everyone and abandoning his "son" (read: younger self), even while Deke checks up on the boy.

Ernest Koenig / Gemini

Ernest Koenig / Gemini

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Patton Oswalt

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

The owner of a speakeasy during Prohibition and the grandfather of the Koenig siblings.

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• Bad Boss: Downplayed and ultimately averted with Koenig. Yeah, he let's Freddy sleep in his bar, but charges him rent, but also gives him a discount on drinks, which he deducts broken glassware from. In the end, he insists on going with the team to find Freddie, insisting the kid's his responsibility.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Koenig's casual sexism contrasting the heroes' modern sensibility is mostly Played for Laughs.
• Eat the Evidence: When the Hunters barge into his bar looking for Freddie, Koenig sees the bullet Jemma extracted and left in a shot glass, so he quickly takes the glass and drinks it, bullet and all.
• Hidden Depths: Grandpa Koenig is just the owner of a speakeasy, a very low level criminal and businessman, but it's hinted that he's pivotal to the development of SHIELD in general and its science division in particular.
• Identical Grandson: He's identical to his grandsons due to being portrayed by the same actor.
• Not So Stoic: Koenig is a low level crime boss and has handled himself incredibly well so far, but when he sees the quinnjet and a chronicom, he freaks out.
• Stable Time Loop: It's implied that Koenig and his descendants become involved in S.H.I.E.L.D. because S.H.I.E.L.D. involves him when they travel back, making him want to be a part of what they will become. He also takes an interest in the LMD project specifically after learning that Enoch is a Chronicom and becoming friends with him, since Enoch is left behind after he is unable to reach the Zephyr before it jumps forward in time. Averted however when it is revealed that travelling to the past creates a branching timeline.
• Sustained Misunderstanding: Despite finding out that they're from the future, Koenig still thinks S.H.I.E.L.D. are Canadians.

Jiaying

Jiaying Johnson

"We have to show them what we're capable of, it's the only way they'll never leave us alone."

Species: Inhuman

Citizenship: Chinese

Portrayed By: Dichen Lachman

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (first appears in Episode 30: "The Things We Bury")

"S.H.I.E.L.D. wants us to be afraid, to fracture. But we're all tied together, a history that goes back thousands of years. They will not take that away from us."

A young Chinese woman who was captured by HYDRA during World War II.

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• Adaptation Name Change: In the comics, Daisy's mother was (at the time of season two's airing) a prostitute named Kim Johnson.
• Adaptational Villainy: Neither Kim Johnson or Jiaying's later-introduced comics counterpart committed the same kinds of atrocities Jiaying attempts on the show.
• All-Loving Hero: She's a zigzag on this trope. She has endless compassion and care for Inhumans regardless of their deformity or what misdeeds they may have done, but she has a rocky relationship with her husband and killed Gonzales in cold blood during a diplomatic meeting out of a mixture of hatred towards him and fear for her people. In the end, not even her daughter is safe. Cal insists that she used to be a genuine example before Whitehall tortured her and flashbacks support this. When she is later met in 1983 before Whitehall got to her, Cal is proven plainly correct, and she is horrified to learn that Daisy's abusive mother was her own future self.
• Alas, Poor Villain: It's hard not to feel sorry for her when Cal kills her to protect Daisy, considering how broken her mind became from Whitehall's torture.
• Apologetic Attacker: Whenever she uses her power to drain people's life force, she apologizes. Cal mentions that in the past she was truly distraught that people would sacrifice themselves to prolong her life, but after what happened with Whitehall she slowly stopped meaning it, especially against humans who she actively hunted for their life force.
• Ax-Crazy: A cold, clear version after her resurrection. She hides it through a Faux Affably Evil act, but you can tell through the Moral Event Horizon she crosses that her mind has become warped and twisted from anything reasonable and sane by sheer hate.
• Ascended Extra: Her comics counterpart Kim Johnson was a random prostitute who was unwittingly impregnated by the supervillain Mr. Hyde, and immediately gave the baby up for adoption. Here, she's the leader of the Inhumans of Afterlife.
• Bad Powers, Good People: In the past, though not the present, where she's become a case of Bad Powers, Bad People. She has always had the power to prolong her life by sucking others dry, but before her Start of Darkness she truly was a compassionate guardian of others who hated using it and hated even more that people were willing to let her use it in on them to let her work continue. Nowadays, her use of it only shows that deep down she's now a hateful sociopath who would easily sacrifice others to advance her own ideals.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Seriously, for literally being vivisected, the one scar on her face is quite the trade-off.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: You can thank Daniel Whitehall for her starting a war against S.H.I.E.L.D. at the end of "Scars". Cal says her good heart was ripped out of her that day.
• Berserk Button: She snaps when Gonzales tries to compare his wounded leg to her being tortured by Whitehall. Although it is ambiguous, the real button Gonzales may have pushed could be asking for personal information on Inhumans to put on the index.
• Big Bad: She becomes the ultimate villain of Season 2 when it is indirectly revealed that she had Cal commit the crimes that he did. She takes the role of direct antagonist after she starts a war with S.H.I.E.L.D. by murdering Gonzales.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: She's the greatest threat of the second season, while her husband Cal is the most consistent threat. She's clearly the dominant one in their partnership, and most of Cal's actions are taken with the intent to appease her, but they still act as the overall joint main antagonists once Whitehall dies.
• Big Bad Slippage: Subverted. She appears to start off as the benign leader of the Inhumans in the second half of Season 2 only to slip into a villain for the season finale by murdering Gonzales. But then it turns out that she's The Man Behind the Man to Cal, making her the Big Bad of Season 2 the whole time.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She initially appears to be Afterlife's Reasonable Authority Figure and gives Daisy a saner and less dangerous parent than Cal. However, "Scars" proves she's a vengeful sociopath and whilst Cal may be violent and unpredictable, Jiaying is willing to murder her own daughter.
• Came Back Wrong: When Cal stitched her back to life her caring heart didn't make the return trip.
• Canon Immigrant: A version of Jiaying was introduced into the comics in November 2015, several months after her debut on the show.
• Composite Character: A somewhat retroactive example. It has long been known that Quake's mother in the comics was a prostitute frequented by Calvin Zabo and was a distant Inhuman descendant, and then an Inhuman woman named Jiaying was introduced in the comics based on this character, who knew Daisy Johnson as a young child.
• Expy: With the X-Men off limits at the time of her debut, she has shades of several characters from that franchise. Her backstory of suffering under Nazis and leading a war of (perceived) self-defense against non-powered humans calls to mind Magneto, while her role as a leader and mentor within the Inhuman society and her pre-vivisection personality resemble those of Professor X. Her powers echo those of Wolverine, who can regenerate from any wound as long as he's not beheaded (though they are powered through a Vampiric Draining Touch of Death, similar to Selene).
• Faux Affably Evil: She apparently loves to talk smooth with her enemies, only to murder them in cold blood and with satisfaction moments later.
• Final Boss: After the trouble with Arc Villains Whitehall and Gonzales, she emerges as the final villain of season 2 after she murders Gonzales to start a war with S.H.I.E.L.D.
• Freudian Excuse: Whitehall hounded her throughout her life which culminated with him vivisecting her for her rejuvenating powers, and although Cal brought her back to life, the experience warped her mind so that she couldn't tell right from wrong anymore.
• Healing Factor: The source of her Long-Lived ability is her slow rate of aging. After Whitehall vivisected her, her husband revived her by piecing her back together. It is later revealed that her ability is fueled by Vampiric Draining. She can't seem to recover from spinal injuries, however. Both her permanent deaths came about this way, and on the second instance Kora even tried to offer herself as a sacrifice to heal her, but it didn't work.
• Human Resources: Whitehall vivisected her and stole what was keeping her immortal to restore his youth.
• It's All About Me: Skye calls her out on her plan that was more about venting her anger on humanity for what Whitehall did to her than about helping her people. Her reaction to that statement is to (try to) kill her daughter.
• Irony: The actions she took to save her fellow Inhumans in the Season 2 finale ended up endangering them come Season 3.
  • Despite wanting Inhumans to hide and be left alone, her actions exposed Inhumans to the world at large and forced the governments to crack down on them.
  • After decades as a mentor for new Inhumans and ensuring only those who could handle the change underwent Terrigenesis, she unwittingly cause the greatest outbreak of new, untrained and potentially unstable Inhumans without any support network.
  • In her paranoia, she planted a Terrigenesis crystal in her Afterlife ledger, certain only humans are a threat to them. In doing so, she created Lash, who used that information to kill most of Lincoln's Inhuman friends.
• The Leader: She made the rules of Lai Xi and is responsible for approving which Inhuman can go through the mists. In the words of Lincoln, her role is "to be in charge".
• Life Drinker: This turns out to be the secret of her immortality and healing ability. At first she hated using it, but after suffering at Whitehall's hands she relished it.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: Thanks to her slow rate of aging, she was alive long enough to shepherd many generations of Inhumans through their mutation.
• The Lost Lenore: For Cal, who spent the last several decades trying to avenge her. Unlike most examples, she's actually alive, though they've split some time ago.
• Mama Bear: Claims that at least part of her vendetta against S.H.I.E.L.D. is to protect Skye, but her love is gradually proven to be surface-deep, as Jiaying eventually tries to kill Skye for getting in her way. Her past self, on the other hand, plays this completely straight, attacking Nathaniel Malick to protect Daisy mere moments after learning the latter is her Kid from the Future. Shame it got her killed, though.
• The Man Behind the Man: To Cal. Though it was built up that Cal was the one who wanted revenge, he was actually committing his crimes for Jiaying.
• Manipulative Bitch: She murders Gonzales and then shoots herself to trick both S.H.I.E.L.D. and her Inhumans into waging war on one another via a Wounded Gazelle Gambit. Classy.
• Mayfly–December Romance: With Calvin. She's led the Inhumans for generations, he's just an ordinary human.
• Meaningful Name: Jiaying sounds similar to "jiangshi," Chinese vampires which are reanimated corpses that drain life force to sustain themselves. Jiaying is Chinese, was 'killed' by Whitehall but came back from the dead due to her powers and Cal's intervention, and her power is draining life force to sustain herself.
• The Mentor: She was a source of guidance and support for newly mutated Inhumans, though Lincoln says he's never seen her personally take up the mentorship role, suggesting she stopped after losing Skye.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Played with depending on the student.
  • Played straight with Gordon, who was taught by her and then had to step into her shoes after Whitehall vivisected her.
  • Inverted with Skye. Instead of the mentor's death taking place after the tutoring as a "growing up" device, her disappearance before Skye got to know her underscores how lost and confused the student is without their teacher.
• My Greatest Failure: She has two: giving up looking for Skye and being unable to stop a rogue Inhuman who was driven mad by terrigenesis and was killed by May.
• Neck Snap: How Nathaniel kills her past self in 1983.
• Not Quite Dead: Despite being vivisected by Whitehall and buried by Cal, she later shows up alive (albeit with a few scars) when Skye is brought to Afterlife. Cal stitched her up and she drained the life out of a whole village to regenerate her organs..
• Obliviously Evil: Skye says it to her face that she can't tell right from wrong. In her mind she is doing the right thing by taking out S.H.I.E.L.D. before they can harm the Inhumans.
• Offing the Offspring: She's in the middle of trying to kill her own daughter when Cal stops her for good.
• Older Than They Look:
  • Whitehall first met her late into WWII, forcing her to touch the Diviner. She survived it, and when they're reunited in the 80's, he sees that she hasn't aged since. She notes in one flashback that she's not actually immortal, and was killed just a few years later. Or not.
  • Cal mentions that an elder of Afterlife would sacrifice themselves to prolong her life "every few decades," which implies that she's been around since before WWII.
• Properly Paranoid: The general population's scared reaction to the emerging Inhumans in Season 3 results in the formation of a government backed containment authorized to use deadly force is more or less what she thought S.H.I.E.L.D. would do to the Inhumans under her care.
• Race Lift: Jiaying is Chinese, while her comics counterpart at the time, Kim Johnson, was white.
• Really 700 Years Old: Her real age is unknown, but she survived long enough to mentor numerous generations of Inhumans around the world.
• Sanity Slippage: After coming back to life from Whitehall's vivisection, she had her husband kill an entire village while looking for Skye and to feed her bloodlust. However she did come to her senses and mostly kept her dark side in check. But when S.H.I.E.L.D. discovered Lai Xi, and asked for each Inhuman to be added to the Index she lost it completely.
• Scars Are Forever: She has prominent scars on her face from her torture and vivisection by Whitehall.
• Secret-Keeper: She knew about Hive, but made sure that nobody else in Afterlife knew, lest they get any ideas about bringing him back.
• Sickening "Crunch!": Cal killed her by bear-hugging her so hard her spine audibly snapped.
• Start of Darkness: Even more so than her husband, she was a wonderful person in her youth — a deeply compassionate woman who tirelessly sought out others to help. Now, even more so than her husband, what happened with Whitehall changed her into a murderous monster, willing to kill truckloads of innocent humans in order to merely find more of her own people.
• Touch of Death: The source of her regenerative powers. She used to hate doing it, but after she Came Back Wrong she enjoyed it.
• Tragic Villain: Like her husband, albeit for different reasons. She was a kind and sweet woman until Whitehall vivisected her. After Cal stitched back her up, she was never the same. She became unsympathetic to all life — save Inhuman life. Her immortality was fueled by draining the life out of other people. Before Whitehall, doing so would cause her to break down in tears. After Whitehall, draining people didn't cause her to bat an eye. The village of people that Cal killed after her death were sacrificed to fuel her regeneration. She spends decades believing that her daughter is dead only to find her again and then have to fight her a few days later. The cause of this is a deep-seated and well justified fear that the rest of her people will also be dissected.
• The Unfettered: There's nothing she won't do to ensure the Inhumans' safety — even killing a S.H.I.E.L.D agent to start a war, or, if need be, her daughter or husband
• Ungrateful Bitch: Zigzagged. Cal stitched her back up and then let her healing powers do the rest to bring her back to life. Presumably she was grateful at that time because they started searching for Skye together, but eventually she became more distant from him — especially when their pursuit became more brutal. Skye (and Cal himself) assume this is because she couldn't stand how monstrous he became, but when Coulson posits that most of their most horrible actions were probably her idea and she began using him as she would a tool, Cal realizes that in truth her indifference of humanity now included him, and no matter what monstrous things he did on her behalf he would never be good enough because he wasn't an Inhuman.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Cal said it best: "She had a good heart Phil, she did. It was just torn out".
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: She kept a ledger that recorded Inhuman genealogy that was rigged with Terrigen dust should anyone but her open it. Said dust is what transforms Dr. Garner into Lash. Not to mention, her war to protect the Inhumans ended with their sanctuary, Afterlife, being thoroughly destroyed. (As Skye put it in Season 3, "Afterlife is a pile of ashes.")
• Vampiric Draining: How her powers work, draining the life from someone else to heal her wounds and keep her young.
• Villainous Breakdown: Undergoes one that starts slowly when S.H.I.E.L.D. finally learns of their existence. Remembering what HYDRA did to her, she undertakes more and more extreme actions to protect her people, ultimately enacting a plan to murder everyone in S.H.I.E.L.D. who isn't an Inhuman unprovoked. It really starts to get bad when Raina reveals to Skye what she did: the more her daughter attempts to thwart her plans, the more she chooses her hate over the people she cares about, until Skye finally stops her once and for all and she loses it. By the end she is draining Skye's very life force, tearfully ranting about how it was her destiny to do so rather than reunite their family as she once thought. Cal is ultimately forced to kill her before she hurts anyone else.
• You Are What You Hate: She's the type of hateful person she fears that make up S.H.I.E.L.D., and the worst part is that she's completely oblivious to it.

Gordon

Gordon

"Most gifts come with a price, but you could learn to manage it."

Species: Inhuman

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Jamie Harris, Phillip Labes (young, season 2), Fin Argus (young, season 7)

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (first appears in Episode 32: "What They Become")

A teleporting, eyeless Inhuman whose motives are unknown.

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• Ambiguously Evil: He makes a very unsettling remark to Cal about how his actions have sealed the fate of him and Skye. Turns out, he's not evil. At least at that point.
• Big Brother Mentor: He styles himself as a big brother figure to all the younger Inhumans. He greets Raina by calling her "beautiful" and assures Skye that she is more than "destruction". To both of them he promises safety, understanding, and a means of managing the cost of their gift.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • He rescues Raina before she could be captured or killed.
    Gordon: It's okay, beautiful. I'll show you the way.
  • He later saves Skye from the "real" S.H.I.E.L.D.
    Skye: Gordon...
    Gordon: [teleporting in] Hello, Skye. Ready to go home?
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He's very pleasant to Skye, but he's downright cruel to Cal (putting him in his place about his petty feud with Coulson was one thing, locking him in a room with no door or windows is another). He also snaps at Lincoln when he tries to help with Raina, bluntly saying that he wouldn't know what she's gone through because he didn't have to suffer a debilitating external transformation.
• Bizarre Alien Senses: Gordon has no eyes, but through some means can see as well if not better than a normal human. He's fully capable of perceiving people and objects as well as any sighted person, and can apparently sense his targets from great distances, down to knowing if they need his help. It has something to do with quantum entanglement.
• Call on Me: His senses allow him to tell when other Inhumans need him. He tells Skye that he will know when she's ready to go. Sure enough, only seconds pass between "Gordon, help" and his teleportation.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: By his own admission, he's terrible at telling jokes but it doesn't stops him from trying while breaking the ice with new Inhumans.
• Canon Immigrant: Soon after his first couple appearances in the show, he appeared for the first time in the comics' universe.
• The Champion: He is the defender of the Inhumans. He jumped in to save Raina from S.H.I.E.L.D. and then abducted Cal because his grudge match against S.H.I.E.L.D. was attracting dangerous attention. Then, when Skye was threatened by "real" S.H.I.E.L.D., he jumped in to help when she called him.
  Lincoln: It's his job to keep us safe.
• Composite Character: Although he's since been revealed as a Canon Immigrant, he has aspects of two Inhumans from the comics — the eyeless nature of The Reader (whose eyes were actually cut out due to his power level), and the power-set of Lockjaw (teleportation and force fields). His Teleport Spam powers also liken him to Nightcrawler.
• The Dragon: He's Jiayang's champion, so when she goes bad, so does he.
• Endearingly Dorky: His sense of humor really endears him to Skye.
• Eyeless Face: One of the physical features Gordon has as an Inhuman is a noticeable lack of eyes.
• Fantastic Racism: Shows shades of this towards Cal even though he's Jiaying's husband, since Cal's powers came from chemical experimentation, not from birth or genetics. He doesn't seem very trusting of regular humans, either.
• The Ferryman: He transports both people and objects (including pizza) to and from Lai Xi. He can sense when people call for him, which handily removes the need for any communication equipment.
• Heroic Neutral: He only acts to protect his fellow Inhumans; which ultimately steers him straight into villain territory when he wholeheartedly agrees with Jiaying over murdering S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in cold blood to 'protect' the Inhumans in the finale.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Gordon's 1983 self. After being drained of blood, marrow, and who knows what else was necessary for Nathaniel Malick to transfer his powers to a young John Garrett, he was left extremely weak and imprisoned with Coulson. Despite Coulson's warnings he teleported the both of them out of their cell to free Coulson so that could he save the rest of his people, and died from the exertion.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: His Teleport Spam fighting style is his undoing, impaling himself on Fitz's steel pipe when trying to teleport behind him.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Accidentally teleports into Fitz's steel pipe during the season finale.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Before he went through the mists as a tender young child, his eyes were visibly blue.
• Irony: He can teleport, but can't see where he's going. This is played up in a flashback to his childhood, where he smacks into numerous walls because he can neither control his power nor see the world around him to compensate.
• Kick the Dog: He really likes to push Cal's buttons (even though he's Jiaying's husband).
• Kirk Summation: He kidnaps Cal in the middle of a battle with S.H.I.E.L.D., then tells him in no uncertain terms that he's not one of the Inhumans and his attempts to "prove" S.H.I.E.L.D. is evil for their treatment of genuinely dangerous and unstable gifted people is only making them look worse.
• The Mentor: He's picked up the role for modern-day Inhumans after the non-permanent death of Skye's mother.
• Mundane Utility: Apparently uses his powers to bring Chicago deep-dish pizza to Lai Xi.
• Power Incontinence: Demonstrated in a flashback to his childhood. In the present, he's in complete control.
• Required Secondary Powers: His teleportation power comes packaged with the ability to "see" and "hear" via quantum entanglement. This is why he never teleports into solid objects and can use Call on Me.
• The Resenter: He shows shades of this to Lincoln, because while Gordon's gift came at the cost of his eyes, Lincoln didn't have to undergo a gruelling physical transformation when he received his gift.
• Superpower Lottery: He is the first recorded Inhuman to possess teleportation. He changed everything with his ability to travel great distances instantly and covertly. As seen in his fight with Cal, he also apparently got superhuman strength out of the deal.
• Super-Strength: Appears to be part of his powerset as he easily throws Cal into a wall.
• Taking You with Me: After being impaled, he drops a gem, intending to kill Coulson, Fitz, and Mack. Fortunately, Coulson caught it in time, though at the cost of his own hand.
• Tele-Frag: Dies when he accidentally teleports himself onto Fitz's steel pipe.
• Teleport Spam: His Inhuman ability grants him the gift of teleportation.
• Undying Loyalty: To Jiaying. This makes sense, as in a flashback it was shown that she was the one who mentored him and taught him to control his powers. He also appears to be one of the few Inhumans who is completely aware of and in fact aiding her False Flag Operation against S.H.I.E.L.D.

Li

Li

Species: Inhuman

Citizenship: Chinese

Portrayed By: Byron Mann

Appearances: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (first appears in Episode 131: After, Before)

Jiaying's second-in-command at Afterlife.

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• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: He's fits the image to the hilt.
• Asian Rudeness: He's a Jerkass Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy who happens to be Asian.
• Asshole Victim: After constantly mistreating Kora, always pushing for her death and even planning her death, leading to her to be Driven to Suicide and have a Face–Heel Turn, he has it coming when Kora kills him.
• Canon Foreigner: There is no Inhuman in the comics called Li. His power seems to be inspired by Hela from Thor: Ragnarok. However it is similar to the obscure X-Men character Clearcut.
• The Corruptor: It's possible his ruthless approach's influence on Jiaying played a factor in her turning villainess in Season 2 aside from Daniel Whitehall's torture.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of Season 2, even before Daniel Whitehall's torture of Jiaying, it's possible Li's corruption of his mistress with his influence stemming from his ruthlessness is what led her to become a villainess.
• Hate Sink: He's clearly made to be repugnant compared to the rest of the cast, he's even played by the turncoat General Ripper Tian Zhao, it's quite cathartic to see Kora Eye Scream him with her Hand Blast and later kill him. While Daniel Whitehall was responsible for Jiaying's torture that turned her into a villainess in Season 2, it's possible that Li's influence on Jiaying prior to her capture by HYDRA is what contributes her to taking on a darker path, only to be exacerbated by Whitehall's experimentation on her.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: He has the ability to summon a knife out of thin air.

Kora

Kora

Species: Inhuman

Citizenship: Chinese

Portrayed By: Dianne Doan

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

Jiaying's daughter, and Daisy's older sister.

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• Anti-Villain: Most of her villainy is the result of Nathaniel manipulating her, after taking advantage of her volatile emotional state at the time.
• Cain and Abel: In the altered timeline, she's the Cain to Daisy's Abel, despite them being temporally and emotionally distant from each other.
• Dead Alternate Counterpart: Inverted, as she's the living alternate counterpart to the original timeline Kora. She accompanies Team Coulson on their way back to the old timeline.
• Driven to Suicide: In the original timeline, Kora shot herself after suffering from Power Incontinence for an unknown amount of time. In the altered timeline, Nathaniel Malick interrupts and destroys her gun.
• Face–Heel Turn: In the altered timeline seen in Season 7, Kora joins forces with the still-alive Nathaniel in his mission of chaos. She later pulls a Heel–Face Turn when she realizes Nathaniel lied to her.
• Hand Blast: Had the ability to release destructive energy blasts.
• Healing Hands: Another potential application of her power. She initially tries to use it to bring back Jiaying, to no success. Her second attempt, to revive Daisy, works.
• MacGuffin Super-Person: It turns out that her survival was the crux of Fitz' time travel ploy, as her energy manipulation powers, along with May's empathy powers, were needed to create a signal that would give the Chronicoms empathy, leading to them standing down.
• Power Incontinence: Unfortunately, Kora couldn't control her energy powers, a fact that, in the original timeline, led to her suicide. In the altered timeline, she gains more control over them with Nathaniel's help.
• Psychological Projection: Her fear of her own Power Incontinence led her to believe that Jiaying was afraid of her as well.
• Walking Spoiler: Her role in the series is hard to discuss without revealing that Nathaniel Malick is still alive in the new timeline.