Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Who Are the Traitors?

Tuesday’s episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., titled “Turn, Turn, Turn,” is described by ABC as revolving around Coulson and company being trapped on a moving plane with a traitor.Based on the end of last week’s episode, many fans would assume that’s Melinda May…but it’s more complex than that. HYDRA’s resurgence in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the subsequent collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D. presents a major challenge for a show called Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The fact that they’ve spent the first fifteen episodes chasing after an anonymous “Clairvoyant” and fixated on small-scale mysteries of their own past suggests a partial detachment from the organizational structure, but it’s impossible to ignore that they no longer have resources, commanding officers or backup.And, yes, Victoria Hand was seen ordering the execution of everyone on board Coulson’s plane at the end of last week’s episode…something that throws a lot of suspicion on her, but even that may not be definitive. The one member of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. cast that we know to be on the wrong side of the law was HYDRA Agent Jasper Sitwell, who met his end in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Sitwell appeared in last week’s episode, “The End of the Beginning,” and left to board the Lemurian Star, a S.H.I.E.L.D. ship that had been overtaken by Batroc the Leaper and his group of pirates, as seen in Cap 2.”That was our pitch, and that was a lot of fun, said McFeely of the decision to turn Sitwell, as well as Senator Stern (played in Iron Man 2 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier by Garry Shandling). “With Sitwell, we needed to reveal someone who was boots-on-the-ground, who you’d seen before, to shake you up. Short of bringing Agent Coulson back to life and turning him bad — and we didn’t know he could be brought back to life — we had to use some returning characters to make this conspiracy story ring true. It can’t be all new people where you’re suddenly saying, ‘And Bob from Accounting who you’ve never met, he’s HYDRA too!’ You needed one or two recognizable faces to make the reveal resonate.”Here are the names we’re considering, and just for fun, I’m putting them in order from least to most likely to be evil/HYDRA/Centipede, according to the complex math of my own opinion.