Character Highlight: Grant Ward (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

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.