Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Are [Spoilers] Dead?

Last night’s episode Agents of S.H.I.E.D., “Ragtag” – the penultimate episode of the season – has gotten a lot of fans debating with each other. One of those debates is about Grant Ward and whether he is pure evil or the victim of circumstance and the teachings of his mentor, John Garrett. That’s not the debate we’re going to be talking about here, although it does tie in. Instead, we’re going to discuss the fate of two other members of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. cast.Fitz and Simmons were captured by Ward and taken on board the Bus. Garrett orders Ward to kill them. Fitz and Simmons try to make an escape and seal themselves off in the medical bay. Fitz tries to appeal to Ward. Ward finally admits that he does care about them, but says that makes them a weakness. He drops the medical bay out of the plane and into the ocean.So the debate now is, “Are Fitz and Simmons dead?” Real world physics aside, we have no real way to know. The last we saw was their sealed chamber being dumped into the ocean, but no bodies on screen. Obviously this is a bad position to be in. Either their chamber isn’t completely sealed and will fill up with water until they drown, or it is completely sealed and the pair will slowly suffocate to death. Most likely the latter.I don’t expect that the two are dead, at least not yet. I’m not ruling anything out on a show with Joss Whedon’s name attached in any way, shape or form, but if they are going to kill off a couple of main characters then they probably aren’t going to leave much room for debate about it. The scene where they were ejected simply occurred all too fast. If Fitz and Simmons are to die, then I expect it to be with a bit more drama and that it will occur in the season finale.Of course, that means there’s time for Fitz and Simmons to be rescued. Perhaps they have a tracker with them that will alert Coulson and the rest of the team to their whereabouts, or maybe Ward does still have some goodness left in him and placed one himself, or maybe even supplied them with a means of survival that we just don’t know about yet.