Elizabeth Henstridge offered a few hints about Simmons’ surprising fate in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 3 at the ABC Summer Press Tour.
In the last moments of season 2 finale, Henstridge’s plucky Agent Simmons was abducted by a sinister alien rock. Fans and cast alike have been speculating on the fallout for several months, but the actress tells Zap2It that the answer is “so much bigger than I thought it would be.”
“I thought about it and was like, ‘How would they do that? How would they film that?’” Henstridge says. “I just dismissed everything in the realm of this idea.”
And though she can’t approach any specifics, Henstridge promises that Simmons’ fate is “very cool.”
“I didn’t think that they’d go that far with it, honestly,” she tells TVLine. “I thought, ‘Shes probably just inside the rock. Stuck.’ But all my ideas are quite boring. [The writers’] imaginations are much better than mine.”
Henstridge’s co-star Chloe Bennet agrees that the revelation is both exciting and unpredictable.
“I didn’t guess it,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh, okay, we’re going there. That’s happening now.’ It will be good.”
In spite of their need to remain vague, both actresses offered more information on how the rest of the team reacts to the fact that their biochemist was swallowed by an alien rock.
“There’s a big time jump,” Bennet says, admitting, “I feel like everyone’s almost come to terms with it in their own way, except for Fitz.”
“It’s Fitz’s mission to get Simmons back,” Henstridge shares, adding that Simmons’ bereft other half will not have much help from the rest of the team.
“It’s a solo mission,” she says. “What happened was so crazy and there was no trace of her, that what do you do? She disappeared into this rock that goes to liquid sometimes, but we don’t know why and we don’t know when. I think that the whole team has tried and nothing has worked, so at some point you have to go, ‘She’s gone, we have to move on.’”
Fitz, however, “refuses to do that,” Henstridge says. And while she doesn’t blame the rest of the team for their reaction, the actress laughs, “I’m kind of mad!”
But hopefully the status quo of Simmons being “gone” will not stick for long.
“It’s not something that will be strung out too long,” Henstridge promises. “I think the repercussions of it will be a huge part of this season, and that will be a bit more of a slow burn.”
And while she can’t say much about what those repercussions may be, Henstridge is eager to explore the changes that her character will undergo.
“It will be interesting to see if her views on Inhumans have changed at all, and how that alters her relationships with the other people,” she says. “It’s going to be a really great thing for me to sink my teeth into!”
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 3 premieres on Sept. 29 on ABC.