Agents of SHIELD: Season 3 - Discussion (SPOILERS LIKELY)

[Guy Gardener]

Hebrew for practically what they were already calling the place anyway.

Original Word Word Origin
twm from (04191)
Transliterated Word TDNT Entry
Maveth TWOT - 1169a
Phonetic Spelling Parts of Speech
maw'-veth Noun Masculine
Definition
death, dying, Death (personified), realm of the dead
death
death by violence (as a penalty)
state of death, place of death

http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/hebrew/nas/maveth.html

Although there is no Hell in Jewish lore.

 

[DEWLine]

"It probably also suits their purposes, since it removes SHIELD's only advocate in the legitimate government and therefore helps keep SHIELD as an underground organization."

Ummm...Glenn Talbot's still around. So are those generals and admirals Coulson's Crew rescued at the end of the first season. Who else?

 

[Christopher]

It also illustrates how I think this whole "Hydra-as-ancient-cult" thing just doesn't jive with what we knew of Hydra pre-"Many Heads, One Tale." What exactly would have been the point of Project Insight in terms of the ultimate goal of rescuing the Ancient Inhuman?

Well, the defining trait of Hydra is that it did indeed have "many heads," multiple independently operating cells. We've seen that different branches of Hydra had different, if sometimes parallel, agendas. Garrett was pursuing Centipede, Whitehall was obsessed with Inhumans, Strucker was experimenting with Loki's scepter, Pierce was behind Insight, etc. Malick is focused on what he sees as the original goal of Hydra, but others have branched out into agendas of their own.

I think it's fascinating to have a long-term recurring non-romanticized villain, through whom the audience does not get to vicariously live out its dark fantasies, who used to a trusted main character and friend and lover to the heroes.

I read an article the other day pointing out that Ward was one of the MCU's few villains who was more than just a one-dimensional, one-note conqueror/destroyer, the others being Loki, Kingpin, and Kilgrave. Those three villains and Ward, unlike villains such as Ronan or Malekith or Cross, have complex motivations and emotional lives and past traumas shaping their choices. (Although I guess you could add Dr. Faustus from Agent Carter too, though he wasn't quite as well-drawn.) And it's just occurred to me that Ward and Kilgrave are both essentially abusers and manipulators by nature, the kind of men who make a pattern of hurting others and denying their own responsibility, painting themselves as the victims as they victimize everyone else. They're both very creepy in that way, although the TV-MA Jessica Jones was able to take Kilgrave much farther.

Here's a question:

Fitz called Planet Hell "Maveth" in this episode.

When did the characters discover the planet's name? I must have missed that.

"Discover?" Nobody lives there except the Entity, so I doubt the name is indigenous. I'm sure some human assigned the name to it, just like the name for every other planet we know of.

 

[Sci]

What exactly would have been the point of Project Insight in terms of the ultimate goal of rescuing the Ancient Inhuman?

What could be a better "welcome home" gift than established world dominion?

I have a hard time seeing Hydra as being willing to devote the kinds of resources necessary to foment war and disorder while infiltrating SHIELD and the U.S. and allied governments as a prelude to worldwide takeover, if their actual goal was to bring back a powerful Inhuman who could presumably take over once he's here. That seems like an awful bad allocation of resources if Hydra's goal is to bring back that Inhuman.

"It probably also suits their purposes, since it removes SHIELD's only advocate in the legitimate government and therefore helps keep SHIELD as an underground organization."

Ummm...Glenn Talbot's still around. So are those generals and admirals Coulson's Crew rescued at the end of the first season. Who else?

Talbot's not actively hunting them, but I don't think he's an actual advocate for SHIELD to be brought back into the fold. Same with those other generals. If they were, I don't think Coulson's first chance to meet the President would have relied on Rosalind's good graces.

It also illustrates how I think this whole "Hydra-as-ancient-cult" thing just doesn't jive with what we knew of Hydra pre-"Many Heads, One Tale." What exactly would have been the point of Project Insight in terms of the ultimate goal of rescuing the Ancient Inhuman?

Well, the defining trait of Hydra is that it did indeed have "many heads," multiple independently operating cells. We've seen that different branches of Hydra had different, if sometimes parallel, agendas. Garrett was pursuing Centipede, Whitehall was obsessed with Inhumans, Strucker was experimenting with Loki's scepter, Pierce was behind Insight, etc. Malick is focused on what he sees as the original goal of Hydra, but others have branched out into agendas of their own.

Frankly, I've headcannoned this as, Schmidt took over the resources and some members of an ancient cult and brought them into the new organization he founded, Hydra, but Malick's claim that the cult and Hydra are the same thing is Malick imposing a false continuity on the two. That's not what's actually onscreen, but I can't really reconcile the ethos and goals of Hydra as seen in the CA movies and the earlier seasons of AoS with Malick's claim about its ancient age and agenda.

I think it's fascinating to have a long-term recurring non-romanticized villain, through whom the audience does not get to vicariously live out its dark fantasies, who used to a trusted main character and friend and lover to the heroes.

I read an article the other day pointing out that Ward was one of the MCU's few villains who was more than just a one-dimensional, one-note conqueror/destroyer, the others being Loki, Kingpin, and Kilgrave. Those three villains and Ward, unlike villains such as Ronan or Malekith or Cross, have complex motivations and emotional lives and past traumas shaping their choices. (Although I guess you could add Dr. Faustus from Agent Carter too, though he wasn't quite as well-drawn.) And it's just occurred to me that Ward and Kilgrave are both essentially abusers and manipulators by nature, the kind of men who make a pattern of hurting others and denying their own responsibility, painting themselves as the victims as they victimize everyone else. They're both very creepy in that way, although the TV-MA Jessica Jones was able to take Kilgrave much farther.

Absolutely.

Here's a question:

Fitz called Planet Hell "Maveth" in this episode.

When did the characters discover the planet's name? I must have missed that.

"Discover?" Nobody lives there except the Entity, so I doubt the name is indigenous.

I assumed this was the name the ancient cult-slash-Malick's branch of Hydra had given it. So by "discover," I meant, find out what Malick!Hydra was calling it.

I'm sure some human assigned the name to it, just like the name for every other planet we know of.

Sure -- but we never got a scene where they say, "Hey, this planet is called Maveth," that I can remember. They just started referring to it as Maveth like this was established information already.

ETA:

If Hydra pre-dated the Red Skull and had as its ultimate purpose the rescue of the Monster on Maveth -- then how come Schmidt used the Tesseract to try to defeat both the Allies and the Axis in WW2? Wouldn't it have been more sensible to use the Tesseract to try to rescue the Monster from Maveth while assisting the Nazis?

(I suppose one could argue that the Hydra agents inside SHIELD at the start of The Avengers had been hoping to use the Tesseract to open a portal to Maveth and that Loki had just usurped it instead. Though that does present us with the question of why Hydra apparently didn't try to get SHIELD to use the Tesseract to connect to Maveth any time before 2012.)

 

[Christopher]

Hold on... I looked up "Maveth," and apparently it's the Hebrew word for death. Wasn't there an episode earlier this season, perhaps the one with Peter McNicol, where they pointed out that the Hebrew symbol for death was inscribed on the parchment associated with the monolith? I don't remember if they actually used the word maveth there, but if they did, then the origin of the name has essentially been explained already.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Top of the page dude.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I have a hard time seeing Hydra as being willing to devote the kinds of resources necessary to foment war and disorder while infiltrating SHIELD and the U.S. and allied governments as a prelude to worldwide takeover, if their actual goal was to bring back a powerful Inhuman who could presumably take over once he's here. That seems like an awful bad allocation of resources if Hydra's goal is to bring back that Inhuman.

We don't know what the Inhuman's needs or expectations might be, but if he wants to rule and they want him to rule, then paving the way for his rulership hardly seems like an incompatible goal or waste of effort.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Is Malik Inhuman?

 

[Sci]

I have a hard time seeing Hydra as being willing to devote the kinds of resources necessary to foment war and disorder while infiltrating SHIELD and the U.S. and allied governments as a prelude to worldwide takeover, if their actual goal was to bring back a powerful Inhuman who could presumably take over once he's here. That seems like an awful bad allocation of resources if Hydra's goal is to bring back that Inhuman.

We don't know what the Inhuman's needs or expectations might be, but if he wants to rule and they want him to rule, then paving the way for his rulership hardly seems like an incompatible goal or waste of effort.

But then why spend 70 years infiltrating governments and fomenting war, but not using the Tesseract to open a portal to Maveth?

For that matter, again, why did Schmidt not use the Tesseract to try to rescue the Monster?

 

[The Old Mixer]

They didn't know how?

 

[Lyon_Wonder]

The didn't know how?

It's a matter of finding the correct coordinates to the planet, which were already incorporated into the monolith by whoever created it. And finding the inhuman might not have been the Red Skull's top priority.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The[y] didn't know how?

Yep. I think that could make sense. From what I recall, it was only shown that Zola knew how to tap energy from the Tesseract to power HYDRA's advanced weapons, and that only after trial and error. What looked like a portal opening up, at The First Avenger's climax on the bomber, appeared to me to have been triggered accidentally when the Red Skull touched the Tesseract.

On the other hand, I suppose it's possible that the Red Skull knew more than he let on to others (maybe even including Zola), and he used the Tesseract to escape.

 

[Star Wolf]

Is Malik Inhuman?

It does seem a major roadblock to loyal Hydra being leaders of the new world order rather than just the acolytes to an Inhuman master with the hope that they are also not just seen as sludges, if I remember my Andromeda slang correctly.

Part of me is worried that if Ward turns Inhuman why hasn't he yet. You would think that everybody not just ATCU redshirts have been given the treatments. At some point in their careers all the leaders take risk. Even a legacy like Strucker was finally forced to take them by Ward when he was pulled back into the game rather than just skimming profits for his yacht parties. Perhaps not all the fish oil is contaminated?

 

[Christopher]

And finding the inhuman might not have been the Red Skull's top priority.

Indeed. We know that Schmidt was not interested in following other people's agendas. He split from the Nazis and pursued his own independent goals; maybe he split with the original Hydra cult in the same way. Whitehall was one of his acolytes and shared his goals. Zola pioneered the infiltration of SHIELD that culminated in Pierce. Garrett and Strucker were both established as Hydra agents within SHIELD, so they were offshoots of the Zola-Pierce arm. So basically, all the Hydra factions we've seen to date have been descended from the Red Skull's faction. Malick is the first one we've seen that represents the older, pre-Skull version, so it makes sense that his definition of Hydra and its goals is different.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Part of me is worried that if Ward turns Inhuman why hasn't he yet. You would think that everybody not just ATCU redshirts have been given the treatments. At some point in their careers all the leaders take risk. Even a legacy like Strucker was finally forced to take them by Ward when he was pulled back into the game rather than just skimming profits for his yacht parties. Perhaps not all the fish oil is contaminated?

While I'm indifferent to Ward being an Inhuman, if he is, it's easy to explain. It's clear they were using the resources of the ATCU and agents loyal to the Hydra in the ATCU on these particular experiments. Ward, on the other hand, has been essentially an independent agent since John Garrett died, so he wouldn't have had an opportunity to be exposed to Terrigen. This season, he's Hydra, sure, but he was the head of an independent part of Hydra. It's clear that Gideon Malick's Hydra remained separate until Malick threw his support behind Ward.

 

[Christopher]

^Exactly. Ward didn't approach Malick until just a few weeks ago.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Part of me is worried that if Ward turns Inhuman why hasn't he yet. You would think that everybody not just ATCU redshirts have been given the treatments. At some point in their careers all the leaders take risk. Even a legacy like Strucker was finally forced to take them by Ward when he was pulled back into the game rather than just skimming profits for his yacht parties. Perhaps not all the fish oil is contaminated?

While I'm indifferent to Ward being an Inhuman, if he is, it's easy to explain. It's clear they were using the resources of the ATCU and agents loyal to the Hydra in the ATCU on these particular experiments. Ward, on the other hand, has been essentially an independent agent since John Garrett died, so he wouldn't have had an opportunity to be exposed to Terrigen. This season, he's Hydra, sure, but he was the head of an independent part of Hydra. It's clear that Gideon Malick's Hydra remained separate until Malick threw his support behind Ward.

Agreed. Also, I'm not sure that Ward potentially merging with the inhuman on the plant necessarily even requires Ward to be an inhuman himself. It could just be something that Inhuman is capable of doing with anyone.

 

[Christopher]

I think having Ward turn out to be a potential Inhuman would strain credibility. Inhumans are a tiny fraction of the population, but two of them coincidentally ended up on Coulson's team? No way. It's even worse when you add in the fact that May's ex-husband was one too.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Also, I'm not sure that Ward potentially merging with the inhuman on the plant necessarily even requires Ward to be an inhuman himself. It could just be something that Inhuman is capable of doing with anyone.

This. I was never suggesting that Ward himself might be an Inhuman already...but as this is a superhero universe show, if they wanna go there, it won't be a dealbreaker with me.

 

[Christopher]

Possibilities:

The Evil Inhuman "merges" with Ward somehow.
The Evil Inhuman possesses Ward.
The Evil Inhuman is a shapeshifter who kills and replaces Ward.

I think the third prospect is plausible -- I'm already convinced that "Will" is actually the Evil Inhuman in disguise.

Or maybe the Evil Inhuman will be brought back as Will and become the big bad, and Ward will continue to have an ongoing role as himself.