Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Did Last Night's Episode Give a Huge Clue Nobody Noticed?

Kevin Conn, creator of Lava-Roid and Unemployed Skeletor and an occasional contributor to ComicBook.com, reached out to us this morning with an interesting observation about last night's episode of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The episode, titled "The Magical Place," had promised fans a satisfying resolution to the question of Agent Coulson's resurrection between when he was killed in Marvel's The Avengers and his first appearance on TV's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. What we actually got divided audiences somewhat with regard to whether it was satisfying--but it wasn't complete, certainly. We got to see that Coulson was being kept alive far beyond what could or should normally have been done, and we got to see that there was some kind of machine apparently scanning his brain while he suffered through it all, conscious and begging for death.

The surgeon who worked on him told Coulson that the brain-scanning machine had been necessary so that they could remove memories of the physical and psychological trauma that his death and resurrection had left him with. We didn't see exactly what happened to him as a result of that surgery or how he's "changed," although it seems as though Coulson will look into that more in the next episode. All of that you saw on the screen, but let's back up to the moment when poor Coulson was on that operating table, being kept alive under Fury's orders for some as-yet-undisclosed reason. "Let me die!" Coulson begged over and over again. "Let me die, let me die, let me die!" It didn't particularly stick out at us--the phrase made sense in context, after all--but Conn pointed out that he and a friend had been discussing the episode and came to the realization that Coulson was screaming that one sentence over and over again--a three word sentence in which the words started with the letters L, M and D. An LMD, of course, is a life-model decoy--and it's been one of the most popular theories as to how Coulson would come back literally since rumors of his death started to circulate in the run-up to The Avengers. Thanks to Kevin for the spot; you should reward his eagle eye by liking Unemployed Skeletor on Facebook. You won't be sorry.