The mid-season finale answered a question that has been on the minds of every fan of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. since it premiered last fall, who is Skye? It was clear that she is not just another character on a show like AOS that has such a deep comic book history to dig into each week; to have such a large roll on the show she would have to be the character from the Marvel Universe. Skye has been every bit as important to the development and success of AOS as Clark Gregg’s Phil Coulson. Coulson was meant to be the anchor between the silver screen stories and the weekly TV drama but Chloe Bennet’s Skye could very well be headed to the silver screen in the future.
In the end, it was the moment when Skye’s father called her by her birth name Daisy that we all realized exactly who she, and her father are. This is almost a guarantee that Skye is actually a well-known Marvel character by the name of Daisy Johnson. Johnson in the comics is a super powered human who is the right hand man for non-other than Nick Fury himself. Fury recruited Johnson at a young age when her power over seismic vibrations manifested and accidently caused an earthquake. Fury makes Johnson a deal in the comics to become a Shield agent in exchange for her complete loyalty.
Daisy Johnson’s meteoric rise into shield is paralleled by the show with Skye. Skye was made a Shield agent with the now director Coulson’s pushing and she has been shown to have a very close relationship with him unlike the other agents. The final piece of evidence that Skye is in fact Johnson comes in the closing moments of the show when the rock that has covered Skye, Raina, and agent Triplett is shown exploding as if Skye is using new found powers to remove it.
Another vague hint at Skye’s true identity comes from the comics as well. Mr. Hyde is Johnson’s biological father in Marvels comic book universe and Skye’s dad has shown to have trouble controlling is rage. In the scene when he is operating on two criminals in an earlier show he is shown to transform almost before the scene cuts away. Once the team investigates it’s revealed that he brutally murdered the two men in a very unnatural way.
The biggest move for Marvel however comes in the form that Skye has obtained these new powers. They change the origin of her powers for the Cinematic Universe in a way that could have huge potential for future characters introduced. In the comics Johnson’s powers are a result of her biological father taking the Hyde formula and the altering of his DNA is what caused her to have powers, originally Johnson was thought to be a mutant. This is important for the MCU because of the rights to anything mutant related belonging to Fox, changing Skye’s story to her being an Inhuman (whose rights are still owned by Marvel) opens the door to introducing Mutants into the MCU with Inhuman backgrounds in place of their original comic book mutant background.
While by no means does this mean that the X-men could make an appearance, mutants that have less of an affiliation with them could pop up in the future as Inhumans in the show and movies. This move by Marvel seems to be a deliberate set up as a way to introduce more characters that are super powered while not breaking any of the rights owned by Fox. They already are introducing two of the most famous mutants in Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch in the upcoming Avengers movie. It will be interesting to see if they use this new aspect of the MCU as a way to explain their powers instead of just referring to them as Miracles as they have up to this point.
The rest of the midseason finale had a few surprising moments. Mack appeared to still be possessed by something inside of the lost city, only to regain his bearings at the very end of the episode. Agent Triplett was seemingly killed during Skye and Raina’s transformation, if this holds true it will be a great loss for the show. A spot on the team will once again be opened, presumably to be filled by another an alpha male personality in the same vain as Triplett and Ward before him.
Also, it would seem that Dr. Whitehall has finally been dethroned as the head of Hydra when Coulson put a few rounds in him apparently ending his life. The most important thing to remember in all of these seemingly life-ending moments is that this is Marvel and death rarely last forever. With all that in mind we all have to wait for the show to return in the spring. Only then will we finally see the culmination of all of the amazing events that lead up to the mid-season finale.
Episode Rating: 10+
