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‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’: Will Anyone Else On AOS Die In Radcliffe And Aida’s Hydra World Framework?

By Daniel Ketchum
Published on: 12:54 PST, Apr 23, 2017

Major Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. spoilers are ahead if you haven’t seen the last two episodes. Some fairly significant characters have already died inside the Matrix-like Framework created by Radcliffe and his android/LMD Aida on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. But is anybody else going to bite it before – or during – the season finale?

Already Dead

The first “real” person to die inside the Framework was the rather sad and pathetic Agnes, Radcliffe’s on-and-off girlfriend who was dying of cancer until her consciousness was transferred into the Framework. She and Radcliffe were living a relatively idyllic existence far away from the things of man as part of an agreement with Aida in which Radcliffe would leave her alone if she left him alone in turn.

The arrival of Simmons, Ward, and company apparently voided that agreement in Aida’s mind – and certainly in Fitz’s – since Fitz proceeded to murder Agnes right in front of Radcliffe and Simmons. Up until this point, the only “people” to die inside the Framework had been the artificial ones created by Aida, not the ones transferred in from the real world. But Agnes was hardly the last real person to meet her end inside the simulation.

Director Jeffrey Mace, who was living out his fantasy of having real powers instead of chemically induced strength, died during an attack carried out on a Hydra facility inside the Framework. As reported by Comic Book, the real Mace, who was in a pod tied into the Framework, died in the real world as well.

Once the Patriot/Mace was crushed under the falling building he was trying to hold up in the Framework, he flatlined in the real world. The last we saw of him, Aida was turning off his monitoring equipment.

Who’s Next?

An interesting thing about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D is that the show has never hesitated to actually kill off major characters. Last season, it was Lincoln and Ward/Hive. This year, the putative Director of SHIELD has already been eliminated.

This kind of thing actually makes the show much better than the average run-of-the-mill superhero series, since there’s a level of tension that you don’t get when your main characters are always going to come back for the next episode. Shows like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead have both benefited from this kind of dramatic tension.

We might want to assume that because Fitz has now committed murder and tortured his friends inside the Framework, he would be the perfect sacrificial lamb in the season finale. But on the other hand, Daisy did something similar in the previous season when she allied herself with Hive, but she’s back at SHIELD now. So apparently a little torture is easily forgiven.

Morally speaking, if any character was going to die it would seem as though it should probably be Radcliffe. After all, he’s the one that created Aida. He also aided and abetted the construction of the Framework, and without his assistance SHIELD would never have been penetrated or its agents captured and tortured. So a bit of poetic justice might see him die before the end of the season.

On the other hand, the point of the previous season’s deaths was to hit the audience hard by taking out someone they actually cared about. Given how Radcliffe has behaved over the last few months on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, his death is unlikely to have that much of an impact on the viewers. In fact, they might cheer his demise. So it’s far more likely that if there is another death of a “real” person inside the Framework, it will be someone who actually matters to the audience. Again, this makes Fitz the likeliest candidate.

[Featured Image by ABC]

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