Deke Shaw has been missing in action so far in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 6. Actor Jeff Ward weighs in on what he’s been up to.
The location of everybody’s favorite lemon-loving, derpy-faced time transplant was one of the lingering mysteries heading into Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 6. Three episodes into the season, with hints building as to the identity of Sarge and Fitz having been found (well, more or less) “Where’s Deke?” remains one of the story’s last unaddressed questions.
But this week’s episode, “Code Yellow,” finally looks to break the seal on Deke’s secrets. So what can fans expect when this scion of FitzSimmons returns to the story? According to Jeff Ward, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
“Deke is definitely in this new world, and is a person that is very used to being able to take advantage of the world that he’s in, and make the world work for him,” he says. “So I think Deke is trying to figure out what makes this world tick, so that he can take advantage of it.”
“He’s good at that,” Ward muses. “He’s good at manipulating his surroundings and the people around him to work to his benefit. But… he’s in a completely alien, for lack of a better term, he’s in an entirely different world so he had to figure out what that world is in order to be able to take advantage of it.”
“But he’s from the future,” Ward laughs. “So he’s got some aces up his sleeve, I think!”
Not that being from the future can’t serve as something of a mixed blessing, of course. Deke, Ward says, “is still a fish out of water. But because he’s good at assimilating, he figures stuff out quickly — and then kind of takes to them maybe too quickly.”
Look for Deke to risk getting “a little ahead of himself, in terms of what he thinks something is, or does, or means, and how he employs [it],” Ward says.
“It’s almost like somebody that is 85% regular person, but then once a week says something that’s like, ‘What are talking about? Do you have any idea how the world works?’ It’s more of a thing that rears its head at random times… But it definitely comes out.”
But now that Deke has been unleashed in this new, un-wrecked reality of Earth, will he return to work with the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.? The preview for “Code Yellow” suggests so, at least for a while (and while a bit of danger is afoot.)
Don’t expect Deke to have been waiting for the call, however. Marvel recently revealed that Deke has made a new friend in the person of “Coachella-chic social media influencer” Sequoia, a guest role played by Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. showrunner Maurissa Tancharoen.
Jeff Ward thinks that Deke has potential to be a helpful asset for the agents, if only to a point.
“I think it depends if he believes in what is being done or not,” he says. “He is someone that is not used to playing by anyone else’s rules or moral compass. I think he has a very strong sense of that for himself, because he’s been on his own and has had to for so long. So if he agrees with what you’re doing, I think he’s a great asset. If he doesn’t, I think you want to be careful what you’re asking of him.”
“But,” he adds, “I also think that he’s getting closer and closer to these people because they are his family. I mean literally, and through the literal family, the extended family. So I think he has a vested interest in hopefully helping these people out.”
A vested interest specifically, perhaps, in Daisy. Though the superpowered hero is currently in the reaches of deep space recovering from a wildly hallucinogenic “girls’ night,” Ward teases an upcoming reunion between Deke and Daisy.
“They will definitely spend a bunch more time together, and their relationship continues to grow and evolve,” Ward says carefully. “But I don’t know. I hope something happens. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Ward won’t say much more on the subject, though he does promise that season 5’s running joke of lemons — a sign of amorous attention in the future Lighthouse that remains incomprehensible to Daisy — will return.
“There are ‘lemon moments,’ for sure,” he laughs. “And there are literal lemon moments!”
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 6×04, “Code Yellow, airs Friday, May 31 at 8:00 p.m. on ABC.
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