Aida the LMD is taking center stage when Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns, and I couldn’t be happier.
It wasn’t easy bidding farewell to Robbie Reyes’ tortured Ghost Rider in the winter finale, and like most fans, I cling to hope that his absence will be a brief one. But the shift to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: LMD is brimming with its own intriguing potential.
In focusing on Aida, the series transitions from darkness and flame to a chrome-colored palate of cool smiles and colder plans. Aida, percolating so long in the background of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 4, is not only a visual relief. She quite literally represents another dimension.
Of course, it’s no surprise that Aida’s machinations will take the spotlight in the the second phase of season 4. (After all, the new segment is subtitled “L.M.D.” They can’t fool me!) But after eight episodes of careful percolation, it feels past time for Dr. Radcliffe’s most recent well-intentioned catastrophe to discharge her devious potential.
We’ve all been around the sci-fi block before. The Robot Gone Rogue is a trope with a long legacy, and so it’s not surprising that Aida has begun taking matters into her own synthetic hands. (After all, as Director Mace said, some of us do remember Ultron.) Doppelgängers too have a healthy history; it’s not like this is entirely new territory.
As developed on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. though, Aida represents an intersection between the familiarity of fantastic science and a healthy dose of arcane magic. On one side of the equation, Aida’s status as a Life Model Decoy is the fulfillment of an old promise — the popular theory from the series’ origins that Coulson’s revival was LMD-related. And the doppelganger game, played so often in the comics, has finally begun on the small screen.
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But the injection of the mysterious Darkhold into Aida’s programming adds a profound dimension of the unknown to Aida’s existence. Aida has not spontaneously evolved into dark sentience. Rather, her evolution was co-opted by an object that, itself, straddles the line between magic and technology.
“They were giving an incredibly powerful piece of technology to someone who is an incredibly powerful piece of technology,” Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. writer DJ Doyle tells Hypable. “I think we’re going to have a lot of fun with that.”
While the promotional material for “Broken Promises” has been eager to cast Aida as purely villainous, it remains to be seen what track the new story will follow. Presumably, Aida will not be the humanity-wrecking Ultron come again — as we were so frequently reminded, her original programming posed her as “a shield” for living agents.
So far, Aida’s actions seem to be a profoundly perverted version of that original modus operandi. She is bizarrely polite and tender with the real Agent May, and her pre-murder apology to Agent Nathanson seems genuine, for all that it is, um, the opposite of helpful.
Could the Darkhold be responsible for Aida’s more villainous urges? Or was Aida’s Machiavellian nurturing always destined to warp into evil?
Either way, I can’t wait to enjoy Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. increased focus on the ambiguous LMD. Mallory Jansen has been revelatory in the role, evolving along with Aida’s programming from a malfunctioning set of code to an enigmatic, self-rationalizing being.
Both unnervingly mechanical and eerily human, Jansen brings Aida’s development to life (or should I say life-model?) with such delicate choices that she all but demands further attention.
And luckily, we won’t have to wait very long for that attention.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 4×09, “Broken Promises,” airs Tuesday, Jan. 10 at 10:00 p.m. on ABC.