Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Nick Blood Talks The Aftermath Of Afterlife & More

Nick Blood, the actor who plays Lance Hunter on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., took time to talk to ComicBook.com about his character’s increasingly important role on the show.

In the first part of our interview, Blood discussed the war between Phil Coulson’s S.H.I.E.L.D. and Robert Gonzales’ S.H.I.E.L.D. In this, our second part, Blood discusses last night’s episode, “Aftermath,” the Avengers, and Lance Hunter’s comic book history.

In “Afterlife,” Lance mentions that he was off on “vacation” for a week. Will we ever find out what exactly he was up to? Is that something of significance?

I think it’s partly tongue-in-cheek, him having a bit of fun. I don’t think he was up to anything particularly interesting. He probably spent most of it in a hibernation pod, so it probably wouldn’t make for very interesting television [laughs].

Compared to the other characters on the show, Lance comes off as a character that’s a bit simpler than his comrades, being that he’s more of a soldier than a spy. In the comics, he’s more of a spy, heading up the S.T.R.I.K.E. organization. Might there still be some secrets to uncover about Hunter going forward?

I think we start to learn a bit more about their history – Hunter, Bobbi, Mack, how they got together and so on, and a little bit of the history of Lucy Lawless’ character, Hartley – we caught a bit of that in the last episode. But I think a lot of that is still to come, you know? I think there’s a lot about Hunter that we haven’t learned yet, and part of his appeal is that element of mystery about him. I think we’ll get to uncover more of that as the show goes forward.

At the end of “Afterlife,” we see that Coulson and Hunter are going to find Grant Ward. In some ways, Hunter has filled the tactical spot left on Coulson’s team by Ward’s absence. If Hunter and Ward come up face to face, how do you think that altercation goes?

Well, the interesting thing is that Hunter doesn’t have that history with Ward, so for him he’s just, like, another guy. Another guy who’s on their list that they need to watch out for. I kind of like that about the dynamic with those two, is they’re kind of anonymous with each other, to a certain extent. You’ll probably see a bit of them crossing paths. How that kind of develops is all to be played forward, because I think that’s a relationship yet to be explored.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.has been mostly in it’s own segment of the of the Marvel Cinematic Universe this season, even more so than the last, but if you had a chance to work with someone from the largely MCU…

It would have to be Robert Downey Jr., I think.

That seems to be the popular answer when we ask these kinds of questions.

[Laughs] Yeah, I like him a lot. He’s a great actor and always brings a lot of personality to any character he plays, so I think it would be a lot of fun to be on set with him and learn and everything, so, I’m definitely going to have to say Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr.

In the comics, Mockingbird’s on-again-off-again other half is Hawkeye. Were you given Hawkeye as a point-of-reference at all when you were preparing for the role?

No, I think they wanted to make Lance his own man really. I mean, obviously you’ve got the history from the comics, but this is the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. version of him and I think they wanted to keep the surprises there for the audience, and just making him a sort of independent, rounded character that could stand alone and bring something fresh to the character. A kind of unknown quantity.

Are there any last teases you’d like to leave for fans looking forward to the tail end of the season?

[Laughs] My lips are sealed. Just keep watching, and I hope you enjoy all the twists and turns that are coming.

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.