kitlee625

One problem that I have with the show and the writing is that the writers seem to know where they want to end up, but they don't know how to get there. So like with the Daisy & Coulson relationship. They want them to have a close father-daughter relationship, but the writing to build up to that is very shaky and doesn't explain why they picked each other to be their surrogate father-daughter. They rely heavily on time jumps to say "hey, so and so is different now because of reasons," but I'd much rather see why Daisy makes these huge changes to her life rather than just hearing that she did after the fact.

This. Skye/Daisy's character has been very inconsistently written on this show, as has most of the plot/character "development." I get that the show didn't want to change from "Agents of SHIELD" to "Agents of Nothing" after Cap2, but their explanation as to why SHIELD had to rebuilt and go into the extra super duper secret shadows, away from any and all accountability, was weak. And I certainly think that Skye/Daisy going from "freedom of information" to "protect SHIELD at all costs" made no sense at all. I almost feel like I'm watching a new character and a new show with each season.

She's positioning herself against Daisy. My guess is she'll be dead by the midseason. Too bad. I really liked her in Bend It Like Beckham.

What do you want to bet that Ghost Rider is going to be Daisy's latest love interest now that she's gone goth and is on the run from S.H.I.E.L.D.?

Technically he does discuss bringing Daisy/Skye onto the team at the start of the second episode. But that scene is just May and Ward giving reasonable concerns, and Coulson saying that he's going to do it just because. Then later in season 2, the writers floated the theory that Coulson found Daisy and brought her onto the team because getting resurrected via Kree blood gave him the mystical purpose of finding her and bring her to the temple to activate her Inhuman DNA.

This. I think that on the surface, Daisy is not that different than a lot of Heroes. The problem that I have is that it's very poorly executed. Instead of explaining to us why she's special, or showing us anything about her character, the writers just tell us everything. Daisy is so caring. Daisy is completely selfless. Daisy is the best agent in S.H.I.E.L.D. history. Daisy is the most special person Coulson has ever met. However, she rarely actually exhibits these traits. As I pointed out in another thread, despite being told many, many times that Daisy is an incredibly talented S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and leader, when we see her doing things, she almost always fails and needs to be rescued (usually by a man). It's almost like the writers don't want her to actually be a skilled agent. They want to show her being a damsel in distress so that Ward, or Coulson, or Cal, or Andrew/Lash, or Lincoln can rush in and save her. I think it's great that the writers want to tell the story of a young woman of color superhero. But I wish that they would actually let her be heroic, instead of showing her failing and needing to be rescued over and over again. (And then still be told that she's the best S.H.I.E.L.D. agent they have.)

So I've actually done some analysis of this (although I haven't finished incorporating season 3's data yet). IMHO, I care less about each individual death than I do the overall pattern. Certainly the show has a lot of violence and death across the board, but IMHO the concern is that this disproportionately affects white women and POC. There is still a lot of death among white men as well, but they are more likely to go through the show unscathed. For example, if you look at recurring characters with multiple appearances, ~55% of white men have died on the show, compared to 100% of white women, 65% of black men, and 88% of women of color. (Another thing to note with these numbers is that there aren't as many recurring women and people of color as there are white men.) However, I think that death is actually less different between groups than the incidence of torture, which disproportionately affects women of color. Despite making up only 11% of characters, women of color are 40% of the characters tortured. (Torture is much less common than death.)

Not only that, but Daddy and Brother said that the new director will be sending the National Guard after her, and didn't seem torn up about it, merely resigned. So I'm hoping that we can enter into a new phase of Daisy where she's my everyone's favorite little girl in need of sacrificial martyrs to rescue her.

I think the new director may be Talbot. They really were emphasizing his role as a liaison this past season, and in the flash forward Coulson mentions that the Director will call in the National Guard, which makes me think that SHIELD is going to be folded more into the US military.

I get the feeling that Daisy is going to be more Magneto like, focusing on protecting Inhumans no matter the cost. I definitely thought that was interesting too. Daisy doesn't need to physically destroy a bank (and endanger how many humans inside) to get money. Besides which, how much physical money is there, compared to how much you could get by hacking? I think though that it's about showing off her powers and creating a rep for herself as an INHUMAN. I normally don't like Daisy, but I too am interesting in Rogue Daisy. I think that this is an important step for her character. We've had two seasons of her being the good little girl of SHIELD and Coulson's daughter, but particularly at the end of season 3, we started to see how that doesn't really fit anymore. Like any child, it's time for her to grow up, leave home, and figure out who she is apart from Mom and Dad. I don't doubt that she'll go back into the fold, but I hope that this will allow for some interesting character development. Simmons is a PHD, not an MD. She has functioned as the field doctor in the past, but Lincoln actually has an MD. What's really odd/gross about the Yo-Yo scene, and Mack burning her, is that there was no need for any of that. In medicine, you use electricity to cauterize wounds. So Lincoln should have just given short controlled zaps rather than pointing a blow torch at her. Daisy certainly has collected quite a body count. I guess that's her superpower.

Agree with all of this. I think that Lincoln was a good choice to die, and I did enjoy his stuff. I rolled my eyes though when Daisy was begging Coulson to bring him back (and put the entire planet at risk), just so she could have her boyfriend back. I also liked Daisy as this more desperate, dark, extreme version of her character. The over the top 90s Goth look was a bit much, but I'm interesting to see where this goes. It's interesting that May had that whole speech about how Daisy is an agent because of who she is, not because of her powers, and that Daisy can make a choice to work through her pain and do good, but instead she's on the lam, using her powers to do whatever she wants.

Not surprised that Lincoln died, but really pleased to see Dark Daisy and her new Goth look. It actually has me interested to see season 4.

Radcliffe: It's not a hunch. It's science.... It's a science hunch.

Of course, all the hugs from Daddy Coulson and Big Bro Mack didn't stop Daisy from trying to get her fix the second she was near Hive.

I agree, but my gut says that they're going to move towards the simplest explanation so as not to upset the apple cart.

Agreed. Hived-Daisy was awesome, and I found her a lot more interesting than regular Daisy. I also thought she was more interesting than most of the antagonists they've had on the show.

Particularly because they have only two ways of beating us over the head that Daisy is GREAT: 1) Have someone (usually Coulson) give a long speech about how Daisy is the most talented person he's ever met, 2) have someone die to save her life because she's just that special (Agent Avery, Trip, Raina, Charles, Andrew). It's very heavy-handed, and IMHO poorly executed. As a side note, does anyone else think it's weird that despite being told how talented she is, she's always being rescued. She rarely does the heroic acts herself. Like in The Team, her success at leading a team is completely undermined by the writers by having her mission fail so spectacularly -- she's infected by Hive, destroys the team's trust, and then destroys the base.

I agree that the writers are laying it on heavily this idea of pre-destination and fate. Even back in season 2, they introduced Raina, who could see the future and used that power to see that her destiny was to die so that Daisy would turn back to SHIELD and away from Afterlife. Then we meet Charles, who can transmit visions of the future, and also has the destiny to die to save Daisy. And now Lash. This interview with Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen discusses the role of fate on the show (warning, it's also a little spoilery). But they do say that the Inhumans each have a purpose that they are powerless to resist.

Jed and Mo gave away a big clue in an interview recently: My money is on Elena dying. Ugh.

True, but say there's an Inhuman who didn't want to join the Secret Warriors? Would SHIELD really just ignore them? Because at the beginning of 3a it seemed like there were quite a few Inhumans - Alicia, Lincoln, Joey at first - who wanted to run from SHIELD or were running from SHIELD, and SHIELD kept keeping track of them and trying to recruit them.

On another note, maybe it's just because I skipped a few episodes, but what's the difference between registering/Indexing Inhumans and what SHIELD does? My understanding was that SHIELD finds new Inhumans, tracks them down, takes them to a secret facility for observation/training and recruitment into Secret Warriors, and then gives them a tracker so they can be monitored and activated. Aside from creating their own team, is this really that different than what Talbot was proposing?

Did anyone else get some serious deja vu while watching this episode? To me it was very reminiscent of the end of season 2b. Daisy is swayed away from SHIELD and towards Jiaying/Hive due to a special connection they share. A powerful but weird-looking Inhuman (Raina/Lash) turns her away from them and back towards SHIELD by sacrificing their lives. In both cases we get a cheesy line about how it's Raina/Lash's destiny to die rescuing her.

For one glorious moment I thought that Lash would kill Hive, but his parasites would have lived on in his minions, and Daisy and Hellfire would take up the mantle. Alas.

That's the logic of the show. Save the world? Nope! Not as important as saving Princess Snowflake.

The Lincoln escape really had me excited about the show. And then Princess Sparkle Snowflake was revealed to have another character who's entire purpose on Earth was to rescue her ... yet again. This show is just ridiculously, stupidly repeating itself. On a more meta level, can we please have a female hero who can actually save herself?