#nathanial malick

[incorrectagentsofshieldquotes]

Nathaniel: I was FaceTiming with somebody.

Deke: Liar! No one wants to look at your face!

[natalierushmn]

I never thought I could hate Nathaniel Malick even more yet HERE I AM, in this very scene:

[ohifonlyx33]

Nathanial Malick: second most hated aos villain. Because he's not fitz.

(First is A.I.D.A. because that junk of twisted metal messed with fitzsimmons.)

[cinna-lin-roll]

I just wanted Fitz back...

[vampcoffeegyrl23]

So....I’ve been rewatching season 2 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. lately just cuz why not right. Well there’s a scene in 2.21 “S.O.S. Part 1″ where Skye/Daisy is talking to Raina. Raina says she had a vision and she’s finally figured out not only her purpose but Skye’s too, that it’s Skye who’s meant to lead the people at Afterlife.

Now here we are seasons later, and the Afterlife story is back again, and Jiaying is now dead (again) and they’ve gotta take Afterlife back from Malick. There’s not many episodes left, and there’s been a lot of speculation of what the end could bring. Will Daisy end up leading Afterlife after all? Who knows. I just thought it was interesting that Raina had that vision in season 2 and now the storyline is back again in the final season.

The youtube clip is above, but here’s some of the dialogue from 2.21:

Raina: Our paths have been intertwined since before we even met, and I'm not talking about DNA. You and I have spent our entire lives searching for our destiny, and I finally have the answer. I had a vision today, and it revealed the truth. I've seen it. 

Skye: Tell me. 

Raina: You wouldn't believe me. 

Skye: Raina. 

Raina: It is the thorn that protects the rose. Or, in this case, the Daisy. 

Skye: Please, stop with the metaphors. 

Raina: It's not a metaphor. That's the irony. My true purpose, my... destiny is to help you become... what you're supposed to be. 

Skye: Why the hell did I even come here? 

Raina: Because you want answers. You're just not willing to hear them. In fact, we'll never speak to each other again. But... you'll see. Your mother isn't leading our people ... she's misleading them. It's you who are destined to lead. Even in the darkness, you'll see the truth.

[incorrectagentsofshieldquotes]

[Daisy fighting Nathaniel]

Daisy: Pretty good.

Nathaniel:

Daisy: For a wounded tortoise.

Freddie, walking in: Hello, son. How about you and I work on our evil laughs together?

Nathaniel: Ugh, Father! Can't you see I'm a wounded porpoise?

Daisy: Yeah, I said tortoise. T. T. Tortoise.

Nathaniel: See, Father, how mixed up you make me?

[incorrectagentsofshieldquotes]

Now, the most important thing is, we have to work as a team, which means you do everything I tell you.

Nathaniel Malick

[meanderings0ul]

Nathaniel vs Sybil

Now that it’s done, I don't understand what the point of Nathaniel Malick being there episode after episode frothing at the mouth about anarchy was.

What they did to start things off with Freddy Malick worked, how he became worse and worse of a person over time, how there's not usually a convenient arrow reading evil pointing at people who will become so. It let the characters have some thoughts and conversations about the nature of time, some disillusionment, cameo Gideon whose actor has passed on. Nothing glaringly off about any of that.

But Nathaniel...when you add up all the tag scenes and intros and and everything else where that dude was just blathering about his hot takes, it probably took up around half an hour of screentime this season. 

And for what? None of the main characters were really tempted by aNarChY. He was never going to be a more serious threat in the long run than an invading army of Chronicoms. The idea that we were supposed to worry he’d be more powerful than Daisy or something is...laughable. Showing profound disruption to the timeline from someone living rather than someone dying, they’d already made that point when the Chronicoms ensured Freddy survived too long. He killed a bunch of people, but Hunters could have done that too.

The Chronicoms were the threat of the season, their self-centered arrogance and callousness towards other species leading to them being fine with wiping out the population of a planet if they thought they needed it more. Picking Earth as a convenient target to move to after Team bus kids-B squad escaped their ships and humiliated them in the process, that all works, and they had the intel stolen from Fitzsimmons to help them along. 

But we got hints of a fascinating three-type society with Predictors, Hunters, and Anthropologists that was never expanded upon. They made a point of telling us there used to be other Predictors guiding the species but now there’s only Sybil. Why were they the last survivor? What made Sybil so different from the Hunters and Anthropologists? Or Enoch as the last Anthropologist not reassigned and reprogrammed? 

A good portion of Nathaniel’s screentime should have gone to Sybil and the Chronicoms. That he was just their pawn was obvious to everyone but him and they never even had a real confrontation. The chess game arguments between Sybil and Coulson were great, especially with Sybil viewing him as someone she ought to be in control of. 20-30 minutes spent on the Chronicoms over the last 5 or so episodes instead of aNarChY would have made a big difference in selling them as the final Big Bad, even though this time it seems Team Shield was able to save more of the enemy in the end than they killed.