The third season of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. promised to introduce viewers to the new recruits called the Secret Warriors, based on the team of young heroes from the Secret Warriors Marvel Comics series.
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We’ve seen the team take shape, as Daisy Johnson leads a largely part-time team that includes original characters Lincoln Campbell and Joey Gutierrez, and a version of Yo-Yo Rodriguez from the comics. There was also a sly Easter egg in the episode “The Inside Man,” where the real name of the character Manifold, Eden Fesi, was seen on a document concerning an imprisoned Inhuman. However, last week’s episode, “Paradise Lost,” may have one-upped “The Inside Man” by covertly introducing another Secret Warrior on screen.
The episode involved Daisy and Lincoln heading to South Dakota to visit a potential Inhuman Lincoln first met at Afterlife. Jiaying had caught the potential stealing from the Inhuman settlement’s archives. She forbade him from undergoing Terrigenesis, and banished him from Afterlife. However, he learned something in the archives about a powerful, ancient Inhuman who could reanimate the dead. At the time, Lincoln dismissed the potential’s rantings as the words of a disturbed individual, but Grant Ward’s recent resurrection, after encountering the powerful Inhuman on the other side of the Obelisk portal, seens to place rantings in a new light.
When Daisy and Lincoln arrive in South Dakota, we’re introduced to the would-be Inhuman in question, named James. James isn’t exactly a people person, having surrounded his solitary desert home with a barbed wire fence and planted landmines in his own yard. He also desperately wants to undergo Terrigenesis, so much so that he agrees to tell Lincoln and Daisy everything he knows about Hive, and even turns over a Kree artifact he took from Afterlife. Unfortunately for him, Lincoln reneges on the deal.
What’s may be most interesting about James is that he distinctly resembles a key member of the Secret Warriors from the comics, that being Hellfire, real name James Taylor James. Like the James we met in “Paradise Lost,” Hellfire is largely motivated by self-interest – the only reason he remains a member of the team is because of his romantic relationship with Daisy – and he has the same problems with authority and standoffish, rebellious attitude as James. They also look quite similar, as the image at the top of this article should show.
Of course, there are a few things that don’t lineup. For one, Hellfire inherits a mystically powered chain from one of his ancestors (The Phantom Rider, Carter Slade) that gives him the power to manipulate hellfire. We haven’t seen that from James yet. He also isn’t an Inhuman in the comics, but neither is Yo-Yo or Manifold, and that’s definitely changed. It’s entirely possible that if and when James undergoes Terrigenesis he’ll emerge with some form of pyrokinesis.
There’s also the fact that James is Australian, and Hellfire isn’t. This may just be a concession they made for the actor, Axle Whitehead, since Whitehead himself is Australian. It could also provide a connection to Manifold, if they plan to introduce Eden on screen. He’s also significantly older than Hellfire, who – like the rest of the Warriors – was a teenager, but all of these characters have been aged up from their comic book counterparts.
This is, of course, all speculation at the moment, but the similarities seemed pretty striking when watching the episode. We’ll have to wait and see if Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. takes the character in that direction.
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
