Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Midseason Predictions

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.has had one solid Season 2 so far. The midseason finale wrapped up many of the threads from Season 1, while still laying down the ground work the rest of Season 2's major mysteries.

So now that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.is on winter break, let's take a moment to catch our breath and think about what has come before, and what is yet to come.

Here are five predictions for the second half of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.Season 2.

Hi, I'm Reader, Your Guide to Inhumanity

In our interview with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s showrunners, Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen would neither confirm nor deny that the character in the final scene of "What They Become" is Reader, the blind Inhuman created by Charles Soule and Ryan Stegman in the pages of current ongoing Inhuman comic book series. We're sticking with the theory that he is Reader, for now, and we think he's going to play a significant role in the second half of Season 2.

Reader hasn't done much in the comics yet, but he has found and trained at least one Inhuman, following the Terrigen Bomb explosion in Infinity, and it's implied that he's done the same thing several times before. We expect this is exactly what he'll do with Skye: find her, train her, and serve as our window into Inhuman culture and current state of being in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Enter Ennilux

Another new edition to the Inhuman mythos is the Ennilux Corporation, a corporate entity with certain organized crime trappings, that is secretly run by Inhumans. In Inhuman, Reader is bringing the Inhumans he finds and trains to Ennilux for recruitment.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.is a spy show that builds a lot of its tension by constantly putting its characters' true allegiances into question. Their name may not be revealed for a while and they may continue to work from the shadows, but we're thinking it was Ennilux on the other end of Reader's phone call in "What They Become." This shadowy corporation will have Reader's ear, and have audiences wondering whose side he's really on.

What Raina Becomes

In "What They Become," we got to see Skye come into her full power after being exposed to what we presume was the Terrigen Mists. She wasn't the only one who got a taste of those mists though. Raina was also in the temple, and was encased in a cocoon just like Skye's. We only got to see a glimpse at Raina's eye, however, so what she becomes is a still a mystery. Based on our interview with Whedon and Tancharoen, we expect her transformation to be more noticeable, in the physical sense, than Skye's.

"We can't say much," Tahcaroen said in our interview, "but what we'll say is that, Raina has always been the kind of person who exudes confidence. She can walk into a room and play anything to her liking. And this is something that she has hoped for her entire life. She's the one who talks the most about evolution and destiny. She essentially has always chased what her 'birthright' is, and what she'll become."

"We're going to see how this process affects both girls differently," added Whedon.

We expect part of that difference will be in the physicality of it. Some Inhumans, like Crystal, can pass as human without problem. Others, like Triton, are unmistakably something else. We expect this dichotomy to be put on display when Raina gets out of her cocoon.

What's Up with Bobbi and Mack?

One underdeveloped plot thread from the first half of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.Season 2 is the conspiracy between Bobbi Morse, the underutilized Mack, and the now deceased Agent Isabelle Hartley. As mentioned, this whole plot thread is a bit underdeveloped, so we're swinging in the dark a little more blindly here than we are in other prediction, but Bobbi and Mack's discussion of Lance Hunter's involvement in their little conspiracy makes us wonder if there's a hint in Lance's comic book background.

In the comics, Lance Hunter is British secret agent and head of S.T.R.I.K.E. (Special Tactical Reserve for International Key Emergencies), a kind of British equivalent of S.H.I.E.L.D. We've seen Mack openly question the ability of Director Coulson to lead when he was so compromised by the GH 325 serum, and in the comics Mack leaves S.H.I.E.L.D. after becoming disenchanted with the organization and writes a tell-all book about his time serving as a member. Perhaps this will manifest as Mack, Bobbi, and Lance either working as double agents for S.T.R.I.K.E., or breaking off to form the organization themselves.

As an interesting side note, Hunter played a role in the Civil War comic book event, helping to craft the British version of the Superhuman Registration Act, something that could be used to tie Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.to Captain America: Civil War down the road.

SkyeWard Take a Dark Turn.

We've interviewed both Chloe Bennett and Brett Dalton, and discussed the shipping communities' attachment to the SkyeWard relationship, and they're both as into it as the fans themselves. However, after the events of "What They Become," it's pretty hard to see how the already troubled relationship between Skye and Grant Ward can't be headed for even darker places.

Expect to see Ward spiral in the second half of Season 2. Just when he thought he had found redemption, Skye did her best to show him that he can never be redeemed. Ward may be on the path to becoming a mast manipulator like his old pal John Garrett, and he's even picked up his first minion in Agent 33.

SkyeWard may continue to be a thing, but instead of trying for redemption, we expect to see Ward go to a place of violent obsession. It probably won't be pretty.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.return to ABC in March.