Going back through the older seasons of Agents of SHIELD and I have to say I really hate the writing making Jiaying into “a villain all along”. She had significant reason to be distrustful of any outsiders, especially a government organization. Not to mention she approached Raina and S.H.I.E.L.D with a level of hesitation, and Cal was the one to plant seeds of doubt in her mind about whether they could be trusted.
Jiaying was tortured and vivisected by HYDRA, which at the time was within SHIELD, just so her ability could be given to an old man who deserved to die. This same group took her baby away from her for years.
She also had Cal, her husband who she cared for despite the fact that he was clearly insane telling her that the register would be the end of their people. Even if SHIELD is no longer a part of HYDRA, they’re carrying a weapon on their vessel that is foretold to be the death of their people.
And to top it off, Gonzalez went in instead of Coulson. And even Skye visibly reacted because she was expecting Coulson, and knew Gonzalez was the leader of the SHIELD faction that ordered for her to be shot and killed, rather than brought in, and might have even put the order in. And Gonzalez openly tells Jiaying that SHIELD will be stepping in and taking authority of the situation, for no reason other than they can.
To be clear, most of what she did seemed in character. I think she panicked for good reason, because she was faced with a shadowy government organization that emerged from the smoking wreckage of the same organization that cut her open and stole her baby from her. and given the resources SHIELD had, there was nothing she could do except hope to take them down.
What I do resent is that season 2 had so many options for villains that they had been building up to. Hydra, an organization full of bonafide Nazis who don’t believe in freedom. Cal, a man who’s clearly gone insane from the loss of his daughter and wife who will do anything to keep his family together. Ward, a man who has never taken personal accountability for his own actions. Kara, a tortured woman being led by Grant into believing the only thing that will bring her peace is revenge.
Hell, in the scene where she gets her villain reveal, Jiaying isn’t even the shadiest person in the room. Gonzalez is a former SHIELD leader who was willing to tear apart the entire organization down just to prove a point. He and the rest of his faction were rambling about transparency, in a spy agency, even though the way he infiltrated Coulson’s faction was double agents and more secrecy. He had a clear bias against the Inhumans, going as far to reprimand Bobbi for Skye’s escape and injury of Calderon, when Calderon disobeyed Bobbi’s orders to use non-lethal force to apprehend Skye (that is, unless he had orders from higher up to just kill Skye outright). And then even when Coulson is cooperating, he goes out of his way to dictate every choice by arguing that Phil is too biased in favor of powered people, and puts it up to a vote to overrule Coulson. Then he waltzes into Jiaying’s home and tells her what is going to happen to her people regardless of whether or not she complies.
But the writers decided that nope, the BBEG for the two part finale arc is going to be the traumatized woman who appeared in like seven episodes for maybe 10 minutes total, several of which were flashbacks in which she was getting tortured or was dead.
