Favorite Characters: Elena Rodriguez a.k.a. Yo-Yo (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

I’ve loved Yo-Yo from her first episode, and that love has only grown over time.  With cool powers, an awesome connection with Mack, and a great characterization, there’s a lot to like about her.  And now, season 5 has brought it with an upgrade from recurring to regular status – it’s high time!  (Yo-Yo-related spoilers.)

First of all, I love her powers.  Super-speed is a neat power, but it’s very prone to narrative problems, because it often seems the only to keep the speedster from solving all the episode’s problems in seconds is to make the speedster stupid and have them opt not to use their powers at key moments (hey there, Barry!)  And sure, there are times when Yo-Yo is taken out of the equation to prevent a quick fix, but at least the parameters of her powers themselves place limits on her:  she can use her speed for one second at a time, going as fast/far as she can but then snapping right back to where she was when she started.  So she can, say, speedily steal dangerous weapons or needed access cards from bad guys, or she might be able to knock them out or tie them up, but she can’t run away, because she’ll always “yo-yo” back.  It’s good for powers to have rules like that – there’s plenty of room to play around within it, but she doesn’t become an all-purpose speeding Deus ex machina.

I also love that she loves her powers.  It seems like, particularly with female heroes, we’re more likely to get a story – at least in the beginning – about someone who’s afraid of her powers, can’t control them, and/or just wants them to go away.  That’s how Daisy’s Inhuman story begins, and I’ve seen it play out elsewhere, too.  It’s not as often as we see a woman acquiring powers and immediately start using them for the greater good.  Granted, we don’t see Yo-Yo’s earliest time as an Inhuman, so she very well may have freaked out at first, but that’s not the story we’re given.  Instead, we start with Yo-Yo already at work, using her powers to clean up the streets of her city.  I like seeing her eagerness to use her powers, her swagger when she pulls off something incredible, and her insistence that she can handle herself.

We’ve mostly gotten to know Yo-Yo through her relationship with Mack, a by-product of her up-till-now place on the show as a recurring character and his love interest – all roads generally go through Mack where her storylines are concerned.  But still, we are getting a chance to learn a little more about her.  She tends to be wary in giving out her trust, especially on a more personal level, and she can be caught up in waiting for the other shoe to drop.  When she’s ready to give, though, to really go all in, she’s in it for the long haul.  In season 4, after what Daisy and Simmons tell her about the Framework and its dangers, Yo-Yo still doesn’t think twice before plugging herself in to save Mack.  Seeing the altered Mack inside the Framework, the one who doesn’t know her, kills her, but she still doesn’t give up on him, and she refuses to abandon him even as the world starts disappearing around them.  Yo-Yo can be very stubborn, which sometimes works against her, but it can also pay off in a big way because she’s more than ready to stare down death in order to bring her man home.

Relationship Spotlight: Alphonso Mackenzie & Elena Rodriguez a.k.a. Yo-Yo (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

Gotta love Mack and Yo-Yo, seriously.  I love them separately, I love them together – even though Natalia Cordova-Buckley’s recurring status means that their relationship is kind of backburnered by necessity, I enjoy every second we get of them and eagerly wait for more (a few spoilers.)

Given the setup, it could’ve gone in a very different direction.  These two come into each other’s sphere when Mack is investigating a potential Inhuman criminal who turns out to be Yo-Yo.  But Yo-Yo’s not a villain.  She’s a fledgling vigilante trying to take down the gangs making her city unsafe.  Despite a tense first meeting with Yo-Yo tying up Mack and the two of them stumbling to communicate across language, both are ultimately able to get a glimpse of who the other really is.  Just like Yo-Yo’s not really a baddie, Mack isn’t, as he initially looks from her perspective, a shadowy agent on a government payroll looking to lock her up in a hole somewhere and leave her there.  In both cases, the circumstances are more complex than they first seem.

Can we take a second to admire how cool it is that Mack falls for an Inhuman?  Between his burgeoning romance with Yo-Yo and his partnership with Daisy, Mack is a poster boy about how people’s biases can change through actually getting to know someone that they’re programmed to mistrust.  With Daisy, it was a matter of Mack discovering that someone he already knew and valued as a friend was an Inhuman, whereas with Yo-Yo, Mack meets her already knowing what she can do, already thinking a certain way about her, but when he gets to know her, he’s able to see and love her for the person that she is.  With both, he needs a little time getting there, but that doesn’t lessen what he feels when he does.

Since then, Yo-Yo and Mack have been equal parts awesome/badass and cute.  I love they they both simultaneously work on learning more of the other’s language (since TV generally doesn’t like a ton of subtitles, we usually get Yo-Yo speaking English rather than Mack speaking Spanish these days, but the fact remains that both of them put in the work to learn.)  Mack worries about Yo-Yo’s safety and she tells him not worry, she tries to protect him when he’s in trouble, and both will go to great lengths for the other’s well-being.

Things have been moving gradually between them, particularly since Yo-Yo is someone S.H.I.E.L.D. calls in when they need her rather than a full-time member of the team, and at first, both of them are too aloof to admit they want to see each other just for the sake of it, instead couching it all in a work relationship.  But they’re making progress, and more than just the physical side.  Yo-Yo learning about Hope this past season was huge – even though that reveal starts with a fight, after Mack has been keeping secrets and Yo-Yo’s been feeling distrustful, things are taken to a new level when Mack is able to be that open with her.  A lot of their relationship might have been inching along in the background, but there’s been enough movement that, by the end of the season, I can fully believe how much Yo-Yo is willing to risk on Mack’s behalf.