‘Agents Of Shield’: Will Imaginary Grant Ward Be A Good Guy?

As noted by Deadline, Agents of Shield left us with Daisy and the others firmly inside LMD Ava’s now fully realized imaginary world where – just like The Matrix it seems to be based on – people can live out fantasy lives created by the computer program. But the most surprising aspect of this newly generated world is that Daisy is apparently in a relationship with – an imaginary – Grant Ward again. That was more unexpected than the Spanish Inquisition.

The Return of Grant Ward

In the closing scene of the last episode, we saw Daisy coming out of the bathroom – perhaps in a nod to the Dallas “Bobby is alive” scene – and finding that instead of Lincoln waiting for her, it’s apparently Grant Ward. Whether this means that the computer program has misinterpreted her desires or not is not clear. It certainly wasn’t what she was expecting, since she tentatively says, “Lincoln?”

The return of Grant Ward in this artificial world could be because of a “glitch in the matrix.” On the other hand, is it possible that Daisy/Skye/Quake still secretly harbored feelings for Ward despite his betrayal of the team and his multiple attempts to kill her and everyone else? Perhaps it’s on an unconscious level.

On the third hand, we haven’t actually seen Daisy’s full reaction yet to finding Ward in her bed. It could be that in the very next scene, she tries to beat him to a pulp. But of course, since this Ward is not the actual Ward from the series who betrayed everyone and was secretly a Hydra mole, it’s also perfectly possible that he could turn out to be an imaginary good guy.

In other words, maybe the computer running Radcliffe’s – and now Ava’s – simulated reality determined that a good guy version of Ward would be just what was needed to keep Daisy under control and happily enmeshed in this fantasy world. What could be nicer?

Daisy’s Addiction

Of course, there’s also yet another possibility. Maybe the computer generated Grant Ward waiting for Daisy in the bedroom isn’t the Ward from the team or even an imaginary version she might have wanted him to be. It could be the Ward who was taken over by the Hive alien parasite and who essentially tried to destroy the world – or remake it in his image, depending on your perspective.

The logic here would be that Daisy was infected by Hive and under his complete control for some time. And yet despite the fact that she attacked the Shield team and did Hive’s bidding like a slave, once she was actually freed from him she still knelt before him on the plane and begged to be under his control again. Essentially, she was an addict who wanted another fix.

#Marvel's #inhumans have found their Karnak portayed by Ken Leung! Plus a #BehindtheScenes look at #AgentsofSHIELD's Grant Ward and Daisy! pic.twitter.com/e1dH9dLULu

— ?T?H?E?O? (@Theo_G_S_) March 2, 2017

Because of this, it could be that the computer has interpreted this deeply buried addiction as Daisy’s deepest desire and is providing her with a version of Ward in which he is still controlled by Hive. If this is what the producers are actually planning for the show, it will help to explain the bizarrely dreamy expression she has on her face as she steps out of the bathroom and sees who’s on the bed.

But the more likely explanation for where Agents of Shield is going with this scenario is the first one in which Ava’s artificial world provides Daisy with the nice Grant Ward that the Hydra agent was actually pretending to be up until he was unmasked by Coulson and crew. Will the infiltrating Daisy be able to resist?

[Featured Image by The CW]