After my
write-up of Coulson, I remembered that there was another major Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. character I’d
left out: Ward. Like Coulson, the oversight was surprising,
not because he’s ever been my favorite, but because he’s been undeniably
important to the show (Ward-related spoilers – along with Captain America: The Winter
Soldier, by the way, although I think that cat is far more thoroughly out
of the bag at this point.)
When it
began, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was in
many ways a comic-book procedural, and while many procedurals are
ensemble-driven, they often have a few very definite leads at the center. If Coulson was the everyman Agent Dad who
assembled the team and Skye (now Daisy) was the audience surrogate experiencing
all this S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff for the first time, Ward was the square-jawed hero,
the slightly-gruff super-agent who’s used to hangling everything
singlehandedly. Over the first part of
the show’s first season, Ward’s story appears to be that of a man learning how
to move from being a lone wolf to a member of a team. He seems to realize that his idea isn’t
always automatically the best one, start caring about the geeky science duo
he’s often tasked to protect, and develop feelings for his leading lady, rookie
agent Skye.
And then,
in the back half of season 1, Captain
America: The Winter Soldier
happened, and the series stopped spinning on freak-of-the-week procedural wheels. Hydra had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. from its
inception, and the fascists were finally stepping out of the shadows. In the movie theater, Helicarriers were
exploding over the skies of D.C. and Black Widow was sharing Hydra’s secrets
with the world, and on TV, Coulson and his team were in the thick of this
madness, trying to combat it even as they’re still piecing together the
confused bits of half-conveyed intel they’re getting from inside the belly of
the beast. More serialized storytelling,
our heroes on the run, and high, high stakes.
Oh yeah, and double agent Ward.
I can’t
deny that it was quite the twist. I
certainly didn’t see it coming (and, based on a rewatch of the early seasons of
the show, my gut says that the showrunners didn’t either, at least not until
shortly before they revealed it. I have
no proof of this, though, and a quick Google search showed nothing
definitive.) It’s also, inevitably,
strong in that it gives the other characters some great material to work
with. I really like Skye wrestling to
keep it together when she finds out the truth, desperate not to let on to Ward
that she knows, and Fitz’s terror of and fury at Ward in season 2 is really
compelling.
Overall,
however, I don’t think it serves Ward particularly well. I mean, not that Ward was the most engaging
character to start with, but I think Ward as a villain benefits the plot more
than the character. When it comes to
Ward himself, we get some real villain sloppiness, like turning into a
psychopathic boogie-man-type figure popping up and thwarting the good guys in
inprobable ways. Like veering pretty
haphazardly between twirling his mustache and seemingly-earnestly trying to
convince Skye that he’s not all bad. And, one of my most annoying villain tropes, acting
super-shifty the second it’s revealed onscreen that he’s evil, despite playing
his duplicitous role perfectly before that.
I dunno – for me, it just didn’t work all that well. No disrespect to Brett Dalton, who’s fine,
but I became increasingly tired of seeing the character with each return
appearance to the show.
No comments:
Post a Comment