Agents of SHIELD episode 5

[psocoptera]

Evil hottie laying down the mindfucks! Well, this is relevant to my interests. Please feature this character in many upcoming episodes.

Breakout on Skye's plot! Mysteeeerious parentage, you say? Cue a hundred fandom theories, go! I'll start: if the character is the same age as the actress, she was born in 1991, making her young enough to be Tony Stark's kid, thus explaining the computer genius. (I don't think Tony would ever knowingly abandon his kid, but being careless with protection with a one-night stand?) Does not at all explain why SHIELD would be involved in covering up her origins, though - although that whole thing is weird, because you'd think if she was important enough to need to "hide", she'd be important enough to *keep track of*, perhaps on the very Index introduced in this very episode? Or at least in some other SHIELD department, which you'd think Coulson might have noticed, that she was already in their system? Which, I suppose, someone at SHIELD might be deliberately keeping from him... anyways. Three more theories.

2) She was found in a space capsule that crash-landed in a field in Kansas.
3) She was found floating in a tank in an otherwise-abandoned lab that SHIELD raided, meaning she really never had parents at all which would be excellent angst, and would allow her to appear to find some answers from SHIELD while actually still having just as many questions, always good from a pretending-to-advance-the-plot perspective.
4) She's Ward's sister, hahaha ew.

Anyways. Lots of excellent character interaction in this episode, May and Ward, May and Coulson, Ward and Skye, May and Skye, Skye and Coulson. (FitzSimmons maybe wishing they weren't quite so peripheral, the way Fitz is sad Skye didn't tell them she had a guy, and Simmons leans in to tell her she's buttoned up wrong, like, trying to offer sympathy but also get a little attention...)

Also, for anyone who can't recognize people - I have determined from the internet that the female scientist who gets toasted by "Scorch" (loved the whole "name" thing) is the same woman from the pilot who was experimenting on Peterson. Okay then. Please give recurring characters names and have them used loudly and often? Maybe identifying visual characteristics? Like if Raina always wears a flowered dress, that would actually help, although her supernatural hotness (and name) would probably be pretty obvious even after a gap of numerous episodes. Although I hope it doesn't come to that.

ETA: I am enjoying how SHIELD are not the good guys, they're just the less-bad guys. Seems interestingly nuanced and I'm curious where they're going with that. Also, I look forward to all the fanfic exploring the kink implications of Coulson forcing his collar bracelet on Skye. Some serious non-con squick potential (given that her choices were to take it, or be abandoned, completely helpless, on a foreign continent), but any story that took that seriously could be very interesting indeed.