Maria Hill deserves so much better than this
Basically a superhero without superpowers, Cobie Smulders' operative is the MCU’s most underserved character
TV Features Maria Hill
[The following contains spoilers from Disney+’s Secret Invasion.]
In every workplace, there are two types of people. There are those with impressive titles, whose clothes—be it their own or a uniform—are slightly flashier than everyone else’s, who are louder and more noticeable, and who always get, or take, all the credit. They’re the Avengers.
And then there are the people without whom the workplace would fall apart. They’re quietly brilliant at what they do, loyal, clever and work really, really hard. And they do it all day in, day out and almost invisibly. They’re Maria Hill.
Since her first appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2012’s Avengers, Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) has been seen in around half a dozen of the MCU’s films and TV shows, from Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. to Spider-Man: Homecoming.
She’s been essential during that time, from being trusted with some of Nick Fury’s (Samuel L Jackson) biggest secrets, like his use of Project T.A.H.I.T.I. to bring Phil Coulson back to life, to coming to the rescue of various Avengers, and just being an all around solid backbone through years of messy superhero/civilian politics and shenanigans.
Were it not for Hill’s rescue, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, and Black Widow might well have died at the hands of Brock Rumlow and HYDRA in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. She held her own during Ultron’s initial attack on the Avengers facility in Avengers: Age Of Ultron, being the first to load her gun and joining in as the Avengers attempted to destroy Ultron, even though she doesn’t have healing powers or super speed or incredible physical strength.
And there’s much, much more: She’s great at staying calm in fraught situations, she’s never afraid to get in the middle of a battle, and she can fight. She’s basically a superhero, just without superpowers.
Brave, loyal—and undervalued
Hill’s roles in the MCU’s various properties have generally been small, partly because for a number of years Smulders’ other filming commitments (like How I Met Your Mother) kept her from taking on something bigger. Even if she had been available to film a lot more, it’s highly unlikely in the early days of the MCU that she would have been given much more to do, given that, well, she’s a woman and the MCU hasn’t historically been great at valuing women (see: Black Widow) or showing us their nuances (see: also Black Widow).
But Secret Invasion was supposed to be the show that finally gave Maria Hill the development and due she should have been accorded, and for a moment, it seemed that it would come through. Hill was proactive and right in the thick of things (as she usually is) and taking on a leadership role. And then Fury happened.
While Hill has always been loyal to Fury, she’s never been afraid to question him, which makes her character even more essential and compelling. As far back as The Avengers, she was visibly skeptical of Fury throwing together a disparate group of superheroes in an unstable alliance. What’s more, she was perceptive enough to know that Fury was manipulating the Avengers with the (supposedly late) Coulson’s vintage trading cards, calling him out on it.
Years later, in Secret Invasion, her joy at welcoming Fury back to Earth is tempered by her concern for both an older, wearier Fury and the wider mission to stop a Skrull invasion.
“The Fury I knew was always three steps ahead,” Hill says to Fury over a chess game in episode one, revealing she only called him back to help at the request of Talos (Ben Mendelsohn). Fury, for all his talent and hard work, has been off-planet trying to come to terms with everything that happened before, during, and after The Blip. Hill has been on Earth, facing everything head on, and not afforded that time.
“Your lack of contact over the past few years sent a pretty clear message,” Hill continues in Secret Invasion. “You’re not ready for this, Fury. There’s a very real threat out there. You were never the same after The Blip. You always told me there is no shame in walking away when the steps are uncertain. So check your footing, otherwise someone’s going to get hurt.”
Marvel fridges another woman
Her words, of course, are prescient. Fury walked away, but his return does lead to someone getting hurt, and of course, it’s Hill. In the final battle of Secret Invasion’s first episode, Hill is shot by the Skull Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir). To make it all just that much crueler, at the time he’s disguised as Nick Fury: her mentor, her colleague, her friend.
Fridging, and the fridging of women characters especially, is a trope that should long ago have been left in the past. The idea that the MCU pulled it out again (after doing it to Scarlett Johanssen’s Black Widow in Avengers: Endgame) is anger-inducing. Dying in the way Hill did is a sad and unfitting end for a character who gave and gave and gave to Fury.
But perhaps it was inevitable. In the workplace, the loyal employees who keep everything running are rarely rewarded. Instead, they work and work and work until they burn out or come to the realization that they need to leave, because The Man is not going to value them unless they value themselves. Maria Hill was never appreciated enough within the MCU, and she never had the chance to get out and live her own life or show us who she was beyond work. And that? That will always be a tragedy.
147 Comments
More to the point, Cobie Smulders has been underserved by the entire entertainment industry.
Still salty about ABC renewing Stumptown for s2 & then un-renewing it, which shouldn’t even be legal
See also GLOW and People of Earth, both of which I still long for.
Me too! Cobie Smulders, Jake Johnson, Cole Sibus, Adrian Martinez, Tantoo Cardinal … it had a great cast.
Both she and Emmy Rossum always deserve better than the material they’re in.
if you’ve never seen results (2015) i saw it earlier this year and it’s a real hidden gem.
I’d not heard of that. Guy Pearce and Cobie Smulders? I’m sold.
She has? She was a lead on one of the most popular sitcoms of the decade. She was a lead on that Keegan and Fred Savage show. She was the lead on Stumptown.You can’t say the industry hasn’t tried. And will likely continue.People we like don’t have to be megawatt stars and if they aren’t you can’t always lay that at the feet of the industry.
I saw her in Present Laughter on Broadway several years ago. It was great to see her rock in a prominent scene with Kevin Kline’s lead character.
I mean, the MCU is basically the only thing I’ve really seen her in (was NOT a fan of that Mother show) so I guess that tracks.
Comic book death is always a cheap stunt to take characters off the table for years at a time. Willing to believe that was an LMD until proven otherwise…but if the season ends without proof, that will be quite the disappointing way for Agent Hill to go.
Or a Skrull. Or an LMD Skrull. Or an…oh, no, now I’ve gone cross-eyed.
Speaking of which, when are we going to get the classic villain Cross-Eyes in a streaming series?
LMDs haven’t been well established in the MCU (outside of Agents of SHIELD, which has a tenuous connection to canon) and I doubt Gravik would have killed a fellow Skrull. I sincerely hope she makes a return somehow, I just don’t know how it could be managed.
Tony Stark referenced LMDs in a movie, but I agree we’ve never seen one outside of the S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show.
They also established in the same episode that Skrulls revert to their original form if killed in disguise. She still looked like herself, so Skrull Hill (Skrill?) is off the table.
Yeah, I dont think she’s dead. One single bullet to the gut? That doesn’t kill someone in seconds.
Yeah… it can.
“But Secret Invasion was supposed to be the show that finally gave Maria Hill the development and due she should have been accorded”Did you just make that up? Because I don’t think that was ever stated or implied.
Secret Invasion is also supposed to give us the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, and Mephisto is going to be the secret villain behind everything.
I’ve been shipping Agatha Harkness and White Vision for a while now so if Secret Invasion doesn’t give us that couple like we were promised I will be VERY ANGRY and talk about it on TWITTER!
GALACTUS OR WE RIDE AT DAWN!
When will we get to the Mephisto factory!??!
DOOM LAUGHS AT YOUR PUNY PLANET EATER!
AND WHEN WE RIDE IT WILL BE ASTRIDE FIN FANG FOOM AND HIS PURPLE PANTS
Solomon Grundy want pants too!
Don’t be silly, that will be in the spider-verse style Nextwave that I hope someone is smart enough to make.
I do think there has been a bit of wishcasting in social media that Secret Invasion would do that for Maria Hill, but not based on any real information.
The squirrels in their heads all chattered at the same time.
Fan fic posing as thoughtful insight? Here?? on nuAVClub??NEVER!
She was all over the marketing, and was suggested she would be a prominent character in this tv series. She was present in interviews for this TV show. I was looking forward to her character developing and spending time with her. I was really disappointing when she was killed off in the very first episode.
This was the shit that threw me too. What the hell trailers was she watching?
Seriously the writing on this show is beyond stupid .Hill is an Ace Spy ,as is Fury ,they are hunting shape shifters and don’t have a code word or some way to ensure this does not happen ? She is too good at her job to get taken out in such a stupid way.Imdb has her list to be in 5 episodes so hopefully it Is a fake out
To your first and third point:1. In the moment there wasn’t time. They found each other and he shot her.3. D+ shows have a habit of going back and forth between the past and present. I could easily see them doing flashbacks as well as spending an episode showing what Hill and Fury were doing immediately after coming back from the blip.
Tropes are a useless perhaps even counter productive lens to use when evaluating art. They say nothing about the work itself just that humans love pattern matching so much they do it even when there’s no pattern sometimes.
“Art” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. As a devout, sincere MCU apologist, this show is a product, made to sell Disney+ subscriptions and tickets to The Marvels. And, honestly, tropes are an essential part of media criticism. Are you suggesting that one shouldn’t discuss the long history of female characters being disposed of to motivate the men in their lives?
My problem is that every time a female character gets so much as a nosebleed, someone uses the word “FRIDGE!!!!”
Of course it has been a major problem. 80s action movies are horrible about it.
Most Steven Seagal/Chuck Norris movies seem to involve a murdered and/or raped woman to motivate them. And then the hero ends up with another woman and you’re like, “Well, that was a quick mourning period.”
The James Bond franchise is notorious for killing the first woman Bond slept with (to be fair, plenty of male buddies get it too)
But I just refuse to put every female death/injury in that category and I definitely refuse to do it when there are still five episodes to go.
Yeah at this point it’s basically lost all the original meaning and is only used to stoke internet outrage when a female character dies.
This happens with all these phrases. Manic Pixie Dream Girl was coined to describe a paritcularly hyper and obnoxious Kirsten Dunst character in Elizabethtown and then just got applied to any moderately quirky female indie character after that.
Yea killing characters is a very important tool in a action/adventure writer’s toolbox. Fridging women can certainly be problematic, but that is mainly if their only role in the story is to die to motivate a man. But that doesn’t mean any time a woman is killed and a man isn’t, its fridging. In this case her death fits within the logic of the story. She’s an established character doing her job, and doing it well, so the bad guys need her gone, and they kill her. That’s way different than a burglar killing an action hero’s wife randomly to provide a story reason for revenge.
ValidPoint makes a CogentArgument.
And it really cheapens Nat’s sacrifice to call Black Widow’s death a fridgeing.
Ha. I almost put the word in quotes but I was feeling generous to the creative and production teams. Tropes are just people trying to categorise a piece of art/entertainment as if cataloguing this stuff is criticism.
Naming tropes isn’t criticism, but calling out weak writing that’s over-reliant on tropes can be.
See I’m not sure we can definitely say “reliance on tropes” is a thing. There’s only so many fundamental stories and only so many motivations e.g revenge, jealousy etc that have high enough stakes for genre fiction after all. I think the idea that tropes are building blocks is entirely wrong headed for thoughtful criticism that seeks to engage with the work as it is. It also makes writers etc overly self conscious (even moreso than creatives tend to be) that their exercises in creating work about big themes and innate human experiences might happen to have a part of a story line that a bit similar to another story someone else told.
Agree to disagree, I guess, other than to say that, of course, not every trope is a crutch, but some are. Deus ex machina and fridging are two that come to mind.
Art shouldn’t be discussed in the context of other art, got it.
You’ve made up a position to snark at. Enjoy that.
Why isn’t this symphony an impressionist sculpture!?
I don’t think Black Widow’s death qualifies as ‘fridging’
It definitely doesn’t.
If anything, Gamora’s death is more of an example – except you can’t really say that her death existed purely to motivate Quill (and Quill’s efforts to process her death happen over two and a half movies)
Yeah and even Gamora’s death was way more complex than a fridging. Kyle Rayner didn’t kill his own girlfriend to get a magic rock, after all.
It doesn’t. It is as useful a term now as “woke.”
A superhero/villain without any superpowers? NO WAY
lol okay after reading this there’s zero doubt in my mind she’s coming back later in the series
That would suck if only because now you’ve wasted her death for nothing.
Hot take: Does she really deserve more? I don’t mean in a mean way, but Maria Hill was a Z-level character, right above the guy playing Galaga. If she wasn’t played by the actress beloved for Robin Scherbotsky (especially at the height of 2012), I don’t think anyone would feel like her character transcended the 4 lines in 2 movies aspect.
If you had given me 1,000 guesses I would not have been able to tell you her character’s name before reading this article.
Plus, she absolutely sucks in the comics.
Only read a few stories with her but yes, she is incredibly unlikable.
When she was introduced it was as someone not qualified to lead S.H.I.E.L.D, who was hired to fail and be a yes man and basically be a hard nose that gets criticised for the kinds of things Fury or any other guy would get a pass for. And that was fascinating. And then suddenly they just decided along the way that she’d be basically evil in every way but call it “morally grey”.
What?! How could you? That we didn’t get a show about Maria’s homelife will always be a tragedy! A never ending tragedy!
In the workplace, the loyal employees who keep everything running are rarely rewarded. Instead, they work and work and work until they burn out or come to the realization that they need to leave, because The Man is not going to value them unless they value themselves. Ma’am, the machine is saying you can remove your credit card now…
That guy sucked at Galaga too.
Me, I always wonder what it even means for a character to “deserve better,” which has become a common critical/fan complaint in recent years. It’s not like a character is a real person who can feel the pain of their unfulfilled potential; better to say the actor deserves better, or the fans deserve better, or something else that more sensibly identifies a wronged party.Of course, saying that an actor or the fans didn’t get the portrayal they deserved exposes the relative triviality of the complaint, which is probably why the criticism so often gets couched in terms of how the character is such a great person who fights for freedom and justice, and don’t we feel bad that the writers screwed up their life.
Finally, someone who gets it! Agent Hill was never supposed to be a main or even secondary character. The only reason she got as much screentime as she did is because it was Smulders. She’s awesome!
Maria Hill also should have been the head of SHIELD instead of Coulson since she was Fury’s #2. Marvel is nothing if not consistent in screwing her over
Folks, stop trying to make Agents of SHIELD canon.
The “Rabbit Hole” device Fury used to escape Bucky in Winter Soldier was invented by Fitz.
Except it is canon.
Not to the sacred timeline
It’s one-way canon.
It’s one-way canon.
So it’s canon. Glad we can agree on that.
Yes, I agree that the Marvel movies are canon to Agents of SHIELD.
She’s basically a superhero, just without superpowers.I believe the word for that is “hero.”
Well, sure, but Batman is still called a superhero.
The press consistently calls Spider-Man a menace.
His superpower is insane wealth.
Batman is a vigilante.
The worst part was that they set up what felt like clear through line for the rest of the show.Fury and Hill playing chess, talking about how it’s the one time they NEVER lie to each other…seems like it’s setting something up for down the road.But I was absolutely loving the idea that you had these two agents who’ve been in the lying business for so long that there are times they may not be able to tell the truth even to each other.Which would have been a fantastic plot line to follow through the entire show. Fury and Hill, both not trusting each other entirely….but still having to trust each other almost entirely to get through this situation.
Fridging is so overused as a word now that it has lost any meaning. If everything is a fridge, nothing gets to be one.
Are all female characters supposed to be immortal? Or if one does die, is no male character supposed to feel sad/angry about it?
Fridging is so overused
True and yet, this one would be perfectly correct. Her death was a plot motivator for the male protagonist.
He already came back. He was already fighting the Skrulls.
Hill’s death is no more or less of a motivation for Fury than Bucky’s death was for Steve Rogers.
“Her death was a plot motivator for the male protagonist.”Yeah, I definitely remember that he didn’t care about what was happening until she died.
Okay, stop using the word fridging, because I don’t think you’re 100% sure what it means. It’s not just a blanket term for literally every time a female character dies. Black Widow made a willing sacrifice for the whole universe, fighting her longtime partner all the way over who would get to make it, which is absolutely not fridging. As for Hill, I still have serious doubts she’s actually dead, and if she is, she still went down swinging, doing the job she’s always done, which is also not fridging. What The Flash does to Supergirl? That’s fridging.
There were two guest stars that were specifically brought in to raise the stakes in the first episode. this article is just dumb
I mostly agree, and that term needs to stop being thrown around so much. Which is why I wouldn’t call what The Flash does to Supergirl fridging either. It’s actually one of the few cases of the movie’s writing showing some integrity because her deaths aren’t cheap- They are making a point. Both in the limits of what Barry can do, and in upholding continuity with Man of Steel by reinforcing that only Superman could defeat Zod. (Instead of undermining that film completely by showing anyone can beat him.) And lest we forget, Batman is ALSO dying everytime. But we aren’t calling that fridging. Singling out Supergirl is doing the same thing the article is.
It does appear that Hill’s death is the “this time it’s personal” kick in the pants that Nick Fury needs to accept the call to action and come out of retirement. Meaning that Maria Hill was apparently killed for the sole purpose of raising the stakes for Fury and moving the plot along.Considering the character has been around since the beginning of the MCU, but never really received significant development, this series would have been a natural fit to expand Cobie Smulders’ screen time and give her some fun action beats. I get why she didn’t have a huge part when she was competing with Captain America and Hulk for attention, but this Secret Invasion series was apparently conceived to tell an MCU story focusing on the non-superpowered SHIELD characters.I don’t think every female death is a fridging, but they should have given her a few episodes and had her death be more than a plot device to get Fury angry.If she just faked her own death and reappears later in the series? Then it’ll just be stupid, approaching Fast and Furious levels of “every character death is faked,” given that Nick Fury previously faked his own assassination in The Winter Soldier.
Every good or bad thing that happens to a character is in service of moving the plot along, so that is meaningless.
I love that your comment basically talked your way into why fridging happens so often in the first place: Most stories are about men, and killing off their closest loved one (often a female romantic interest) is an easy and quick way to motivate them personally.
I dunno where this notion that Fury is sorta half-assing this Skrull thing until she dies is coming from. Is it Colman’s bit where she’s calling him kinda old? Seems like he was taking it seriously enough to me. It was already personal, he’s got a vested interest in Skrull stuff. If anything the first episode seemed like he was intentionally downplaying his capabilities because “Looks pretty old” is a new card he gets to play.
Right. It’s why I made the Bucky comparison. Steve was already fighting the Nazis. It’s not like he needed his friend dying to make him madder.
What? I can agree the term gets thrown around a bit too much, and I’d agree that Black Widow doesn’t really count, but this feels like a pretty straightforward case. Prominent female character gets killed as a plot device to motivate the protagonist. Unless Hill comes back fairly quickly (not at the very end of the season), it seems like it checks the right boxes.
“What? I can agree the term gets thrown around a bit too much, and I’d agree that Black Widow doesn’t really count, but this feels like a pretty straightforward case.”Yeah, this is classic fridging. Hopefully it’s a fake out, but it doesn’t seem like it. What a pointless death if it is permanent. I was really looking forward to Hill and Fury working together as central characters.
Hey, thanks for a spoiling a major plot point in a movie that’s still in theaters in an article that has nothing to do with that movie. That’s class, that is.
And in an article that spoils a TV show that just released no less!
Clooney comes back.
and one that I had apparently somehow successfully avoided having spoiled for me thus far >:|
It’s a way to be lazy and not come up with anything new.
I’m so happy to read this comment because it means I don’t have to write mine.I really don’t believe Hill is dead but even if she is death…happens. Just because Fury is sad about it doesn’t make it fridging.
When you kill her off in the first episode of what’s basically the Nick Fury show as a way to make it personal and motivate Fury, it very much is.
I know what “fridging” means. It’s shoving aside (usually by murder) of a character. For example, in Cloak & Dagger, Tandy’s mom (boyrfriend?) was fridged. Like, literally.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Fridge
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge
Cool movie spoiler thanks.You should get a job writing article titles for AVClub.
next: Giant, obnoxious, unfunny, pointless fake obituary for the character in question
“What The Flash does to Supergirl? That’s fridging.”STOP USING TERMS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
There’s been so much meaning drift with the term “fridging”, it’s annoying as hell. Of the top of my head, IIRC the original meaning was a female character whose only reason for being created was to be killed to cause Our Hero man-pain and force him to start his heroes journey. The character typically was not given much development. Now, “fridging” seems to mean “A character I like died and I’m pissed”.Don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy with how they treated Maria Hill, but it wasn’t a fridging, she’d been around for years, and had character development. I think they never figured out what to do with her, and that’s a damn shame.
I think the only person not upset over Maria Hill’s death is Cobie. She seems pretty down with it and ready to move on.
It’s safe to assume of any actor who predates Infinity War.
So women are not allowed to die in media? How is that equality? Real feminists are turning over in their graves.
Wait, you’re positing that there are no living “real” feminists?
Alongside all those True Scotsmen.
There’s a difference between believing in equality and using social media feminism ™ to excuse ones own bigotry. Now it’s your turn to call me a Nazi or a basement dwelling virgin or something, right?
Well…. your words.
I’m just saying that people who uses the adjective “real” before whatever group comes after are usually pulling some No True Scotsman shit.
She wasn’t even the only fridged character that episode. (See: Soren, who also impersonated Maria Hill in Spider-Man Far From Home.) At least Maria got an onscreen death.
Cobie Smulders sounds like a smoked cheese.
She should marry Brie Larson and then be ‘Smokey Cheese Thief’.
Pretty gouda.
If you can’t edam, join ‘em.
Yes, I had hoped we’d get more of her on the show. But…The irony of bringing up Phil Coulson is that was the first example of a death being pointless in the MCU. Even now, there are fans suspecting Hill may have been a Skrull, and that’s because Marvel has conditioned viewers not to take deaths seriously. There’s always some sort of loophole. So even though I liked her, I don’t mind killing Maria Hill because it’s been a long time since Marvel made me go “Oh snap! Shit just got real!” Will Secret Invasion actually have stakes? Consequences? It felt bold in a way the MCU hasn’t felt in a while.
Smulders has given interviews already and confirmed she’s dead and isn’t in any other episodes or MCU projects. I mean, I guess she could be straight upl lying but it doesn’t seem that way.
Coulson’s death was basically the Whedon formula. The guy has an apparent need to always kill off likeable characters in his works. The one thing that bugs me about killing Maria Hill is that this was essentially the one Marvel setting where she’s actually a likeable character.
Maybe wait until the series is over before deciding if she’s really dead or not?
Double-tap to the head. Need to be sure.
Right?! Why are folks acting brand new?
All right, now that we’ve established this article is bullshit, can we move on to the REAL outrage against women today?
JUSTICE FOR VANNA!!!!!
616 maria hill sucks though
I guess “fridging” is whatever you want it to mean that will cause the most controversy. Here’s my take:Fridging is the murder (the more horrific, the better) of a female character done in fiction solely to provide motivation for the male protagonist. She exists only to die; that is the extent of her character. She doesn’t or hasn’t contributed much to the plot, and she has little to no backstory. For example, Martha Wayne was fridged. (Thomas Wayne, by virtue of being a man, was not.) Maria Hill, Gamora, and Black Widow weren’t fridged. Neither was Aunt May in No Way Home. Personally, I don’t consider Sue Dibny to have been fridged. They had characters apart from their deaths; the fact that they died makes it extremely tragic, not evidence of a lazy patriarchal default way of storytelling. It could be argued that Soren’s off-screen death was an example of fridging, but her character had arguably meant more to the story than Martha Wayne. Now, should this word be used when male characters that get offed to provide motivation for the male or female protagonist, like Thomas Wayne, Uncle Ben, Phil Coulson, Jor-El, Jonathan Kent, Qui-Gon Jinn, Ben Kenobi, Charles Xavier in X-Men 3, Ned Stark, Robb Stark, Rickon Stark, etc…
Coulson is the ultimate fridge in that the circumstances of his death were manipulated by Fury in order to provide motivation for the Avengers.
“They needed a push…”
It was bad in 80s movies. Hell, Lethal Weapon 2 actually made a retroactive fridge. Instead of Riggs falling apart in the first movie because his wife died in a car accident – technically a fridge, but gets a pass from me because of how vividly it showed his trauma – they retconned it to an actual fridge by making her a victim of a drug cartel.
(And then they fridged ANOTHER woman…)
That first episode was bad, and she was the only reason I finished it. Once she died I cut it off and don’t really care to watch the rest. Pretty lame plot if you ask me.
That’s like saying you only watched Lord of the Rings to see what happened to Denethor.
I get the arguement, but I’m still on the fence. Now, we’re talking a universe where some seem to return from the dead – you mentioned Coulsen as a prime example. So, who knows what they may do…
It would be great if every character death was epic, where they get their moment and go out as a bad-ass. Then again, sometimes you need a surprise/shocking death. I’m trying to avoid spoilers for an older franchise, but one sci-fi movie had a very sudden death of a favorite character, totally out of the blue, just as the last stand is about to be made…. I hated to see that character go, but in the last fight, suddenly the viewer doesn’t trust that all the heroes make it, that when it looks like none of them may survive, it feels different, because you just saw this one go, no one is safe.I think that plays into why this happened in “Secret Invasion” – putting a clear mark and stakes on the idea that you can’t trust who anyone seems to be, that danger is right there. That any character could walk up to someone they trust only for it to be someone in disguise who just pulls out a gun and shoots them.
Perhaps they could have done more with the character… overall, I’d have liked to have seen more done… maybe that comes after ep 2… I don’t know the arc they have planned, but that would be the end of Act 1 since it’s 6 episodes. But maybe we’ll see her wake up in Tahiti.
“Marvel fridges another woman”STOP USING TERMS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
May be unpopular to say now but Joss Whedon deserves 100% of the credit for having Smulders in these movies, and she is only well “served” in the movies he wrote. After that, basically an afterthought
Maybe Cobie just didn’t want to do the whole series.
She can’t be dead. that would be rubbish narrative choice.
i’m sure this has been said already in here but given the premise of the series i would maybe wait to see if she’s actually dead before making big sweeping arguments
Maria Hill is a deeply dull, one-note character and Cobie Smulder’s performance has been flat and unimpressive from the first frame she appeared in.Bleh. Who cares? The character should be excised from the MCU, she brings absolutely zero to the table.
But think of all the limitless potential what with… er…. uh….
ha. 🙂
Almost as bad as the consistent misapplication of “gaslighting.”
Probably because almost nobody using it has actually seen “Gaslight”
What are you talking about? Everyone has seen Gaslight. Also, you’re crazy.