5 Inhumans We’d Like to See on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Sure, Inhumans is coming to theaters on November 2, 2018, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait that long to see them come to life. Thanks to Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which has its midseason premiere tonight, March 3, 2015, we will see at least a few Inhumans hit the small screen, broadening the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

We looked before about the big screen adaptation, giving a list of characters we want to see in the film, but who wants to wait three and a half years? Here then, are the Inhumans we think can join Skye and Raina on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and could fit right in on the small and big screen alike. Thanks to a comic book history rich with a variety of characters, not every Inhuman has to be a big-time heavy-hitter with glorious, glamorous powers that would be seen in theaters. Many are just a step or two from you or me, and outside of the Royal Family, there have been several newer Inhumans introduced in just the last decade or so that are worth another look. Here’s our top five.

Karnak

Somehow, Karnak didn’t make the big screen list, though it’s almost certain he will in real life. In fact, one ComicBook.com staffer said this list should just be his name five times – while that may have been a bit of overkill, he definitely deserves a slot.

Karnak has ever been by the side of his cousins, the king and queen of the Inhumans Black Bolt and Medusa. As an advisor to the royal family, Karnak winds up in the thick of things a little more than they do most of the time. His enhanced strength, speed, and reflexes make him easy to translate to the screen: he’s basically a little bit higher rating at those things than Captain America. His real skill, however, is the ability to see the weakness in anyone or anything around him. This allows precision attacks that can shatter or disable nearly any object or foe. Think about someone with the fighting style of a Krav Maga master, the strength and speed of Cap, and a slightly enlarged head, and you’ve got Karnak. Fun, right? Throw in the fact that he’s taken on and defeated nearly every major hand-to-hand fighter in the Marvel Universe, and you have a character who can fight against, for, and train our Agents like none other, all while providing an important link to the Royal Family that is sure to be in the film.

Reader

Easily my favorite new character to come out of Inhuman, the newest series starring these characters currently by Charles Soule and Ryan Stegman, Reader is incredibly interesting, and has a power with so much variety that he’s practically made for the serial entertainment of TV. Reader comes from an Inhuman city, where his power was deemed too dangerous to society; that power is to make anything he reads happen or come to being in real life. ANYTHING. After being blinded by his fellow Inhumans, he now carries around small metal sheets of brail words that give him some commonly-used abilities. He has an escape ability that lets him teleport out of danger, combat-ready abilities, and even the ability to temporarily see through the eyes of his seeing-eye dog (with a much more literal definition to that than usual). Now, we did see a blind Inhuman at the end of the mid-season finale, but that one had literally no eyes. Whether that’s the TV interpretation of this character or not remains to be… wait for it… seen. Special bonus reason: PUPPY!

They can’t all be good guys, right? Another of the more interesting new Inhumans introduced in the less than year-old latest series, Lineage was Gordon Nobili, the head of a crime family, before being exposed to Terrigen Mists (that transformative gas we saw in the mid-season finale) thanks to a bomb that Black Bolt let off. With a devlish look, nefarious intentions, and the ability to draw upon the memories and knowledge of every one of his ancestors, descendants, and relatives who have ever lived, Lineage could be a foil, giving little tidbits of information about the Inhumans to Skye while trying to manipulate her into playing for the wrong team. With not much done with the character just yet in the comics, it also gives S.H.I.E.L.D. writers a bit more to play with.

Jolen

Turning to the 2003-2004 series released in collection as “Young Inhumans” but originally called just Inhumans, we look at one of the new characters created by Sean McKeever and Matthew Clark for the book. Jolen is an interesting one, with an elven look and a power that hasn’t been used on TV yet (outside of Regina’s vines on Once Upon a Time), the control of plants. Jolen is ostensibly heroic, but has a darker side, and when he’s injured trying to save a friend, he loses control and heads down a path that could easily be described as villainous. This kind of morally ambiguous character is perfect for TV, as demonstrated by the popularity of Grant Ward, and the way others on the show have already skirted the line of hero/villain. Plants are all around, and not being able to trust what might happen if you simply walk between two trees is a surprisingly terrifying prospect.

Another “NuHuman” created by the Terrigen bomb (okay, that’s not going to happen on the show, but it’s a different medium and you can just have these characters show up, can’t you?), Nightfall would bring a visually interesting, and much-desired power to the show: teleportation. While that once was a difficult power to pull off on a broadcast TV budget, the show The Tomorrow People did it with ease for an entire season on The CW, so ABC, the gauntlet is thrown. Nightfall is another character with very little backstory or ongoing development as of yet, making her the ever-attractive nearly blank slate for the show’s writers. Her connection to another Inhuman city could be used to help continue to explore the strange mythology of the characters, and her Darkforce energy teleportation would open the door to many, many more Marvel characters who use the same mysterious force with their powers.

What Inhumans do you think would make it big on the small screen? Sound off in the comments below!