Favorite Characters: Leo Fitz (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

Come on – it’s been such a long time since I did Simmons.  Fitz is clearly overdue!  (Fitz-related spoilers.)

The second half of S.H.I.E.L.D. crack science duo, Fitz is the team’s tech expert, forever tinkering with alien gizmos, whipping up cool technology, and doing the typical techie-in-a-genre-show “typing vigorously to dramatic music” thing.  Coulson’s new hand in season 3 is a neverending Swiss army knife of sick upgrades, and I love the ICERs, because inventing a completely incapacitating but 100% non-lethal gun seems like such a Fitz thing to do.  Like Simmons, he delights in scientific discovery for the sake of it, and he’s always looking to come up with handier and more effective ways for the team to use technology in the field.

While Simmons is eager to get out of the lab and into the thick of things at the start of the series, Fitz is a lot more cautious.  An ungenerous description might be “fraidy cat,” but I wouldn’t use it.  I like that being in the field can freak Fitz out, because that makes it so much cooler when he keeps it together and cobbles together amazing tech solutions on the fly under extreme pressure.  It’s been fun to watch him grow by leaps and bounds in this regard over the course of the series.  While season 1 episodes that absolutely require Fitz to do his thing in a dangerous situation invariably give another agent the “babysit the lab geek and make sure he doesn’t get killed” job, he’s come a long way from those days.  It’s a treat to see him sneak aboard the Zephyr with May in the season 3 finale, holding his own fantastically well against a dangerous Inhuman bad guy.

Season 1 Fitz is entertaining and techie-adorable, but season 2 Fitz, who’s very slowly recovering from physical and mental injuries suffered in the previous season’s finale, really comes alive for me.  Yes, to look at Fitz now, you’d never know all he went through, but season 2 has him really messed up for a long stretch of the season.  He has difficulties thinking, remembering, speaking, and using his hands, virtually everything in his job description, and he doesn’t like the thought of being kept around if he can’t do what needs to be done.  He works his butt off to regain his full faculties and motor skills, and in the process, he also has to adjust to the way his friends and colleagues treat him differently, forging new relationships with agents who don’t have the same expectations of who he used to be.

After all he goes through there, Fitz comes out on the other side braver, more determined, and more resilient.  It gives him what he needs to weather all terrible crap that goes down in later seasons, making him a little steelier and more formidable.  However, he’s still not immune to all that life in S.H.I.E.L.D. has to throw at him – in particular, the last stretch of season 4 does a hell of a number on him.  The fact that it’s his scientific curiosity that enables Radcliffe’s work with Aida to go as far as it does is bad enough, but he’s wrecked by what he goes through in the Framework.  While many of his friends experience being part of the underground rebellion against Hydra, Fitz’s Framework self is on the other side.  And unlike May in the Framework, Fitz isn’t even a loyal Hydra soldier (albeit a high-ranking one) who doesn’t flinch from killing in the field – Fitz is running the show in brutal ways, capturing Inhumans to torture them in the name of science.  Yes, much of what he actually does is due to Aida’s influence, but it’s who he is in the Framework that allows him to do those things, and coming out of it again, it isn’t easy to dismiss that Fitz as “not him.”  I think we’re in for quite a heavy storyline with him going forward, as he tries to reconcile who he’s tried to be with the dark capabilities he’s discovered inside himself.  That’s a guilt that’s not going away anytime soon.