*Spoilers for Secret Invasion, if there’s anyone who doesn’t know about this particular development.*
Maria Hill is a character I’ve always enjoyed in the MCU, even as I’ve also thought she could’ve been used better. Certainly never as egregiously as she is in Secret Invasion, but throughout the franchise, her presence is often more functional than anything else. Maybe a bit like Coulson in the Phase 1 films—mostly a tool for exposition, but with a performer who keeps fans’ interest despite their limited material. The only difference is, Coulson went on to get seven seasons of a TV show, while Hill never got her due.
Hill makes her first appearance in The Avengers, where she serves as Fury’s right hand. Steady and practical, she makes a good number two. Whether she’s briefing him on the Tesseract or running main operations on the Helicarrier in his stead, she can be relied on to get the job done, keeping her cool when otherworldly things pop off.
And by and large, that’s what Hill does across the MCU whenever she appears. She delivers exposition, she takes orders from Fury or gives orders to background characters, and she throws down on occasion. As I said, for the most part, she’s a functional character.
But even though her role never really rises above being tertiary, Hill is still a Marvel character with a long comic book history, which gives her a leg up on your average recurring character with limited screentime. Put that together with Cobie Smulders’ always-solid performance, and we get a character who makes the most of her brief chances for us to get to know her.
In my estimation, her best showing is in Captain America: The Winter Soldier—a great film all around, obviously, and even though Hill doesn’t have noticeably more screentime than in any other MCU project, I feel like we get a bit more of her rather than just her function. I love the scene where she frees Steve, Natasha, and Sam from Hydra loyalists within S.H.I.E.L.D., taking off her helmet to reveal herself after she takes out the commandos guarding them in the transport van. “That thing was squeezing my brain,” she remarks of the helmet before glancing at Sam. “Who’s this guy?” And it’s a tiny moment, but for whatever reason, I like seeing her pick broken glass out of her feet after Ultron’s attack on the Avengers Tower in Age of Ultron. It’s a tangible, human moment in the midst of lots of larger-than-life stuff.
When it comes to missed opportunities with this character, I was never hoping for a Hill-centric film or miniseries or anything. But there were places where we could’ve seen more from her. How I Met Your Mother ended in 2014, so Smulders could’ve been available to increase her presence on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. after the first season. It would’ve been nice to see more of her relationships with other MCU characters, especially women in her sphere like Natasha or Sharon. It can be tough to find much of female characters interacting organically in the big team-up films anyway, which is where a lot of Hill’s screentime is, but I would’ve appreciated it. Most of all, though, the franchise missed out on actually featuring her in Secret Invasion. I was looking forward to watching her with Fury and Talos throughout the miniseries, and as I’ve said before, fridging her at the end of episode 1—basically for nothing—was a bad move the show never really recovered from. And it still irritates me that Smulders was billed as a regular to preserve the “twist” of her getting murdered in the first episode, so we kept seeing her name in the credits for the whole season even though Hill was already dead. A thankless ending for a character who always pulled her weight.
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