Fitz and Simmons found the heart of darkness while Daisy found unity with Hive in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 3×18, “The Singularity.”
According to the writer Peter Brooks, Sigmud Freud believed that desire, in both narrative and in life, was an expression of the need for a controlled and careful ending. The ending, Brooks says, represents safety, home, a setting of return and belonging. This is the true principle of pleasure, the ultimate expression of sex — and the ultimate expression of death.
(Insert your own “le petit mort” joke here.)
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 3×18 paints with every color of desire in this spectrum, but it seems to me that the whole of “The Singularity” settles under the banner of belonging. After all, Singularity itself is a form of this kind of desire — an unbounded, all-consuming unity that too often manifests in destruction and disappointment.
Coulson and May, for example, are ostensibly bound by their desire to rescue Daisy from Hive’s influence, and restore the safe dynamics of the base. Unfortunately, Coulson’s single-mindedness blinds him to May’s own investment in Daisy’s safety, and leads him to saddle his right-hand woman with the darker elements of his plans. Daisy may be the fulfillment of Coulson’s desire for family (“She’s the closest thing I have to a daughter,” he says) but the Director makes a sobering realization. Subsuming the desires of others to his own, he comes to understand, makes him no better than Hive.
Hive, of course, is the ultimate Singularity, the ultimate fulfillment of desire. For humans, he is an agent of death (a fate which, along Freud’s lines, Ward is apparently glad to have met), but for Inhumans, Hive’s collective organism provides an unrivaled fulfillment. Under his sway, they are the Pleasure Principle exemplified, cured of unhappiness, longing, and the emptiness they carried within them.
Not exactly a psychologically healthy form of problem solving. Still, Daisy is an excellent example of just why it’s so effective.
If all people, as Freud believes, yearn for the safety of conclusion, Daisy’s desire — both due to her circumstances and her Inhumanity — must have been magnified terribly. Though this desire hasn’t exactly been highlighted recently on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (in fact, Daisy seemed pretty satisfied with her life within the organization), it isn’t difficult to see her actions with the Secret Warriors as an attempt to fill the gap left by her parents. In any case, Daisy’s desires have been forcibly fulfilled in the form of one of her earliest desires in the series: Ward.
But Hive is not Ward, and Daisy’s relationship with the creature in his body is not the same. Their bond, at least for now, seems divested of sexual desire, imbued instead with a paternalistic sensitivity that suits Daisy’s needs perfectly. The cruel brilliance of this mechanism is how it perverts the person within Hive’s grasp; Daisy is still in many ways herself, still able to recognize and act for the team she has cared about. She still wants to help her friends — she just wants to help Hive so much more.
It remains to be seen whether or not Hive’s fatherly benevolence truly satisfies his own desires; of course, we have no idea what those desires actually are. Hive makes Alisha happy to painfully sacrifice her doubles, fulfills James’ desires of becoming Inhuman (Hellfire!) and immediately lifts away both his pain and his agency. He speaks of a world made perfect, a safe home for Inhumans. And he buys a freaking town!
I can’t help but wonder if Hive’s desires lay somewhere closer to that odd Kree artifact, kept (unlike his Singularity) in two separate pieces. It is “the only thing that can destroy me,” he says, and there is no need to look to Freud to know this must be something very important indeed.
As noted above, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 3×18 removes the sexual element from Daisy’s relationship with Hive… but it is hardly forgotten. Instead, it is Fitz and Simmons who carry the banner of sexual desire — for the first time, and all the more impressively, to its conclusion. (La petit mort, kids.) Of course, the unlucky scientific duo have been icons of desire through most of the series’ run, but mostly in a romantic or survivalist context.
Now, and quite bravely, Simmons and Fitz charge forward into new territory. It is no accident that their mission takes them into a world of people defined by their elicit desires to transcend their innate humanity. Like Dr. Radcliffe, these people wish to create their own singularity, to pass an event horizon beyond which ordinary life disappears from view.
It is also no accident that, while Daisy offers Fitz her brutal warning, the sexuality of Hive manifests itself in front of Simmons. The scene between the scientist and the experiment might be one of the most viscerally terrifying of the season, as Simmons faces off with the horrifying singularity of Hive, Ward, and Will. Hive could kill her with a thought, Ward probably wants to, and Will loves her; it is utterly wrenching to watch Elizabeth Henstridge muddle through the messages (and Simmons’ painful desires) until she is able to recognize Will’s true… well, will, and break away from Hive.
(It is a horrifyingly narrow escape, and I personally don’t know if we can rely on Simmons being so lucky again, but why focus on that?)
In any case, after another harrowing wait for Fitz, the two star-crossed scientists reunite. Put aside the ominous phrasing for now, and just appreciate what happens. Fitz and Simmons consummate their relationship, acting out the truth that oneness can feel good, or it can be good.
Hive and his organism is the first. In a lovely, critical counterpoint, Fitz and Simmons prove the latter — by creating their own Singularity.