These deaths can’t be (or “shouldn’t be”) faked - you fake a death when you’re leaving a body behind and leaving the scene - you can’t fake it in front of the ‘guy you want to join’ if the bodies are going to stay with you.
Not entirely sure what to think on Ward yet - him being a quadruple reverse agent (with a twist) would be to cliche, but perfect comic book territory - it would actually be refreshing that he is fully Hydra - but likely they’ll have him mind controlled.
I don’t completely buy Coulson to May - “we’re not friends, but you’re my ally” bit - felt forced - I get he feels betrayed and all - but…
That was my first guess as well. I think Agent Beefy McSwagger used a knockout pistol on her and is playing the long game to get inside HYDRA.
What a show. I’m a little disappointed to see Paxton’s character turn out to be a bad guy, but not surprised by it at all. There was a little complexity to it other than “Ha ha, I was bad all along!” and Paxton sells it well enough.
Too convenient and too off the wall. Hydra people need to be mind-flayed until they spill everything they know, and Hand knows it. I need to go back and check what Ward did with his gun before he fired. It looked like he checked the mag, racked the slide, then pulled the trigger on an empty chamber, then capped the guards and Hand. That can’t be right and wouldn’t work. So what did he do?
He (sound only) unholsters his gun, inserts a mag, then (on screen) pulls back on the slide and locks it back, then clicks down the mag release to let the slide forward and chamber a round. Which makes no sense from an actual “loading your firearm point of view”, and makes one wonder why he was carrying an unloaded gun, but looks cooler on screen I guess.
And as I said above - big blood splash on bald guys head, perfectly synched with the muzzle flash and the discharge, and then blood trickling down Hand’s hand in the very final scene, when Ward is looking pensive and Garrett is telling his flare pistol story again. I really don’t think there’s any way you could pull off a fake shooting of 3 people directly in front of an experienced field agent.
Now it could be that he, on his own, decided that Hand wanting to murder Garrett meant she wasn’t loyal to SHIELD’s soul either, but why that would mean he gets to kill HER doesn’t make sense.
There used to be a different exception to the “everybody eventually comes back from the dead” rule in the Marvel Universe… until he came back from the dead, too.
The two guards were early model non-speaking LMDs, so shooting them in the head would be no problem. Hand got the alternate ammo and a squib pack. After seeing the head shots, I don’t think they would spend too much time examining the “dead” Hand.
Agreed. Given that all of this is happening almost simultaneously with the movie, and apparently major battles going on at every SHEILD/HYDRA base in the world, the fog of war is in full effect. The status of the agent you mention is revealed in the movie, but word has not gotten around to our “team members” in this show yet.
I don’t think squib packs are that easily hidden from someone trained to spot anomalies, though I’m not an SFX specialist, so what do I know. And it is a comic book universe, so anything is possible. Hand, however, could be a LMD on the plane.
I haven’t seen this episode yet, or The Winter Soldier, so I’m not reading this thread. However, I do “need” to know if there’s any reason to watch The Winter Soldier before this episode?
Yes, there absolutely is. The episode reveals a lot of stuff that happens in the movie, and frankly it’s better and more fun to find out those things in the movie itself.
I disagree that the last minute reveal is implausible. I had two theories. First, he’s deep cover Hydra. Obvious, but viable. The second is that he isn’t Hydra, but he wants to be on Garrett’s side. He’s more loyal to Garrett than SHIELD. I don’t buy the theory that Hand and Ward coordinated to fake Hand’s death for reasons already given in the thread about three bodies in a plane with Garrett. Maybe they were the body double things from Marvel comics (which have been mentioned in passing in the Marvel movieverse), but that’s a long shot.
In high school, it was “No-one stays dead except Uncle Ben and Bucky.” Not to spoil a decade old comic plot, but Bucky came back.
I’m adding this to my list of plausible theories. It’s somewhat nonsensical, as you point out, but characters don’t always think straight. Maybe when combined with a little of the “Ward is more loyal to Garrett” thread, this one comes together more rationally. Ward is shocked to see his former commander is Hydra, but remains loyal to SHIELD because they’re the good guys and give people trials and all that jazz. Then Hand suggests executing Garrett without trial, showing that there’s nothing left in SHIELD to be loyal to.
Of course, it’s a comic book action series. It will be nothing so complex.
I don’t believe there are really Life Model Decoys in the MCU. It was a single throwaway line from “The Avengers” when Tony didn’t want to get cock-blocked by Coulson - “I’m sorry, you’ve reached the life model decoy of Tony Stark. Please leave a message.” I think the writers tossed that in to make Marvel fans squeal a bit, not as foreshadowing that they exist. There certainly have been times they would have been used in the movies if they did actually exist.
One thing that could be brought into play in some way:
(Captain America: The Winter Soldier movie spoiler)
The “mask” tech thing that Black Widow used to disguise herself. I don’t think we’ve seen that before, have we?
I wonder if someone on the show isn’t who they appear to be…
