Daisy passed the point of no return with Hive, Lincoln took a terrible chance, and the Kree came hunting in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 3×19.
The religious overtones threading through this season are as salient as ever in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 3×19. Though “Failed Experiments” is impressed with the patterns of science (the Kree’s failed experiments, as well as those at play within S.H.I.E.L.D.), it is once again issues of faith that provide the episode’s fuel.
The parallels to religious faith are immediately apparent when they surface. Crucial scenes play out in an abandoned church, and Hive calls down “blue angels” from heaven like the answer to a terrible prayer. Dr. Radcliffe carries out the Inhuman experimentation based on the thrill of faith, not scientific evidence. And, perhaps most potently, Daisy approaches her former S.H.I.E.L.D. family with distinctly evangelical language.
“I really wanted to save you,” she tells Mack.
But more salient to “Failed Experiments” is a thorny side of faith familiar to all believers — the conflict of free will and determinism. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has considered the problem of free will before, but in a scientific context. Empirical determinism, the grand destiny of the Universe, was the subject of “Spacetime” several weeks ago. Spiritual free will is what concerns “Failed Experiments” — the inexorable influence of others, the push of other lives and other needs against your own.
That is the struggle which Daisy works through, to emotionally catastrophic effect, in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 3×19. Over the course of the episode, she progresses from a passionate believer in both her own cause and her own agency, to a frantic zealot playing out the violence prescribed to her by an omnipotent master.
Hive, a creature who truly lost his free will under the ministrations of the Kree, has now mastered the wills of the people who comprise his organism. But his actions in this episode are, if anything, even more insidious; playing the role of the benevolent leader, Hive tangles up the threads of Daisy’s free will. In the confines of that church, Hive convinces Daisy that their circumstances echo one another — that S.H.I.E.L.D. stole her free will in the same way the Kree stole his own.
So even as Daisy’s subconscious may be making unacknowledged choices, Daisy herself twists ever further into Hive’s web. Her desire to prove herself independent of S.H.I.E.L.D., master of a fate that was supposedly taken away from her, clashes like a sword with Mack’s own beliefs. For Mack, Daisy is sick, infected by Hive’s will and acting out his determinations. For Mack, it seems obvious that Daisy returning to S.H.I.E.L.D. would be the path of free will.
But this concept is intolerable to Daisy — in no small part because it is true. Mack forces Daisy to choose between two horrible truths. She can either face the “fact” (planted by Hive) that her free will was stolen in the past by Coulson, or she can come to the realization that Hive is stealing her free will with every beat of her heart.
When Mack makes his own sacrificial choice to destroy the Kree Reaper, Daisy makes her own choice — though of course, Hive’s influence had already predetermined her decision. Daisy’s violent assaults on Mack (not to mention her verbal evisceration of the S.H.I.E.L.D. team) are the actions of an addict faced with the truth of their ravenous hunger.
Daisy is not in control. Part of her knows this; there is a flash of terror in Chloe Bennett’s eyes when Mack raises the idea. But when escape seems impossible, the only choice may be to plunge deeper into the maze.
And, you know. Become willing blood sacrifice to fulfill the expansive desires of an ancient demigod who binds you so tightly, you can’t feel anything at all.
Lincoln also bears mentioning in the discussion of free will and faith — and he’s certainly tortured enough to fit into any religious paradigm you’d like. In “Failed Experiments,” Lincoln hits the end of a fuse that was short enough to start with, even without S.H.I.E.L.D. fanning the flames. Already intensely agitated by the loss of Daisy, Lincoln takes a leap of faith — propelled across the gap by May’s brusque behavior, and Coulson’s decision to nix testing on Fitz and Simmons’ anti-toxin Hive cure.
Lincoln’s free will may be compromised when he injects himself with the anti-toxin, but his faith is not. “It will work,” he promises Fitz. “I can feel it.”
Faith, after all, is something that must be felt. But what Lincoln will be feeling now is less clear. Looping back around to cold science, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 3×19 ends with the destruction of Lincoln’s faith as Simmons informs him that the anti-toxin has failed. Lincoln is left a prisoner in the isolation room, and in his own immunocompromised body — he, like Daisy, has no choices left.
And so the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. find their own paths narrowing, their own free will squeezed to threads. Pivotal choices will be soon made by Coulson and his team… but with so little room left, it doesn’t seem like they will be good ones.