Relationship Spotlight: Melinda May & Phil Coulson (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

I’ve always known I liked the friendship between Coulson and May, but going back over the first couple of seasons again, it really stood out to me.  They’re spies, so there’s always going to be secrets and a mutual awareness that there’s going to be secrets, and he’s her boss, so he’s going to pull rank at awkward times, but when you get down to it, these two have each other’s backs and each generally makes the other better at what they do (a few Coulson-May-related spoilers.)

I like this dynamic within a team, two seasoned pros with a long history together.  At the start of the series, the team is a bunch of new pieces fitting together for the first time, and Coulson-May and Fitz-Simmons are the only ones who already know each other.  I’ve talked about Fitz and Simmons before, and May and Coulson are similarly close, but they express it very differently.

Because May is often laconic, both naturally and as a result of a harrowing past mission, Coulson is the only one who really knows her for a good stretch of the first season.  And even after she starts to open up a bit more to the others, no one can bring her out like Coulson.  He’s the one most likely to reach out if she’s going through something rough, trying to break down her walls when she’s pushing people away and not dealing with her problems, and when she gets too all-business, he can sometimes coax a little amusement.  To the extent that May feels able to be herself after Bahrain, she can be herself with Coulson.

Meanwhile, May isn’t a blind follower and definitely calls Coulson out when she doesn’t like his decisions, but she’s absolutely loyal to him.  When it comes out that, since T.A.H.I.T.I., she’s been keeping an eye on Coulson and reporting to Fury, it kills her to lose his trust in her.  The incident is a great demonstration of the differences between them – she’s nearly always laser-focused on the mission (if the director says don’t tell Coulson, don’t tell Coulson,) while he gets more caught up in the personal (she’s his friend, how could she not tell him?)  Though it’s important to pay attention to both the work and the people, both can prioritize one at the expense of the other, and it’s by working together that they’re most able to cover all their bases.

Tied up in this idea is a sometimes-troubling wrinkle to their relationship, rooted in Coulson’s position as May’s superior along with his perception of her as less people-focused than himself.  Coulson has a tendency to rely on May for the “hard calls” – not in making them, but in carrying them out.  In season 3, he instructs May to be prepared to kill Lincoln if Hive takes him over (even though that’s totally not his M.O. with a certain other Inhuman under Hive’s influence – playing favorites, much?)  Even worse, back in season 2, when he’s making carvings of the Kree temple and worried that he’s going to lose it like Garrett did, he tells May to kill him if he gets too far gone.  I know it says something about Coulson that he has this trust in May to do what needs to be done, but it’s also awful that he expects this of her.  With Lincoln, he’s the one making the ruthless decision but he doesn’t want to be the one to carry it out, and with himself, he doesn’t stop to consider what an act like that would do to May.  It’s fair to say he’s her closest friend, and asking her to kill him (even if he thinks it has to be done) is way too much to ask of her.  Whenever he’s put these things on her, she’s 1) refused to do it (there are some orders she does not follow,) and 2) confronted him about why he thinks it’s okay to ask her to do that.  While he at least has responded well, I hope in the future, we see Coulson examining this behavior and realizing he shouldn’t expect her to do what he’s unwilling to do himself.