Hydra’s Evil Plan to Change Fitz

Fans of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are still discussing the “Winter mid-season finale” and yet I haven’t seen anyone talk about the obvious switch that the episode pulled on fans.

Yes, everyone now knows that Ward is a zombie infested by some ancient Inhuman thing (is this starting to sound like the Goa’uld on Stargate or what?).

When Fitz led Grant’s team into the underground bunker we all thought he had found Will, Gemma’s other love.  But we learned at the end that Will was dead and his body was inhabited by the creature Hydra has been trying to bring back to Earth for thousands of years.

And we also know why Hydra has been sacrificing people for thousands of years, too.  The creature cannot keep a host alive.  It can only infest a dead body.  So it needed new hosts and Hydra found willing (or unwilling) sacrifices for it.

That makes Hydra look really evil.

Grant told infested-Will that he had brought the ancient creature an offering, and he glanced knowingly at Fitz.  From that moment on the creature took a deep interest in Fitz.  So Grant already knew what to expect: that Will was dead and infested.  And the creature had to kill Fitz because it apparently cannot inhabit a living human body.

Whatever else we think we know about this storyline, you have to admit that is all pretty creepy.  Poor Leo Fitz was never supposed to return alive to Earth again.  Malick even told Gemma as much, but he neglected to explain how that was supposed to work.

Malick’s surprised comment in the post-credits scene makes it clear he knew he wasn’t looking at Ward but rather at infested-Ward, so he knew the creature’s secret all along.  Coulson, on the other hand, knows none of this and that means he made a strategic blunder in killing Ward on the other side.  He may or may not have planned it that way.

But there was another interesting turn of events.  After Fitz destroyed host-Will’s body he told Coulson, “It’s done.”  Does that mean Coulson’s plan all along was to find and kill the creature?  How did he and Fitz have time  to communicate that?

And if that was not Coulson’s devious plan then was Fitz just being overlydramatic?  Maybe.

But now Earth has to deal with a creature that was so evil and deadly that the only solution thousands of years in the past was to exile it to another world, maybe one where it contributed to the destruction of the civilization that had once flourished there; or one where it had to survive on the ruins of destruction.

What remains unanswered is how Hydra knew so much all along and why they think they won’t fall victim to their own evil plan.  It’s not like they haven’t had thousands of years to debate on the consequences of unleashing this thing on Earth again.  How do they hope to contain and control it?

But the good news is that Fitz is alive and well and not possessed and he can go on being the only really cool character on the show (Coulson is cool, so is Mac, but Fitz is really cool because despite being the smallest guy in the room he usually packs the biggest punch).