Will May Bring Danger To 'Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.'

It's going to be tough to top "4,722 Hours," last week's excellent Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. near-bottle episode that finally showed what exactly happened to Jemma Simmons during the six months after she was sucked into the monolith. After fighting to survive on a very inhospitable planet, she discovers she is not alone, and literally falls into a trap set by Will Daniels, a mysterious astronaut and the only other person in that dangerous new world. Jemma and Will get off to a rough start but eventually form a partnership, working together to survive. Naturally, it evolves into a romance as the two settle into a state of, well, not exactly domestic bliss, but some form of happiness. Since this is the first time we've seen him, it should've come as no surprise when at the end of the episode, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. revealed that Will is still on the alien planet.

Naturally, right as things settled down, everything changed completely. Fitz found a way to get to Jemma, but as she and Will rushed to reach him, the evil alien force intercepted them — clearly not wanting them to leave. Will pushed Jemma to Fitz, staying behind and allowing her to escape unharmed (physically, at least). It's impressive that after three seasons of building up FitzSimmons, someone could come in and change the game so completely, but Will managed to do just that.

Now that Fitz is on the case of getting Will back, I am confident that he and Jemma will launch a successful rescue, but that may bring a whole new set of problems. I think that if Will returns to Earth, there's a very good chance he will bring that evil alien force back with him.

That might sound dark, but I just cannot imagine a happy ending for Will that would also make sense on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. He's been stuck on that planet for over a decade, and knows the alien force better than anyone else. He once said that the planet has moods, and the landscape changed every time they were close to escaping. Whatever this planet is, it seems sentient and intent on keeping Will around. Maybe it's frustrated it got to all of his astronaut colleagues, but never managed to get inside Will's head.

The threat of the alien has been present from the very beginning when Fitz found the scroll that contained only one word: death. The alien seems to be a bringer of death, and it seems highly likely that if FItz and Simmons go off in search of Will, they won't be able to avoid the dark force. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Elizabeth Henstridge talked about if they could accidentally bring back the monster, and not Will. "That’s always a possibility," she said. "It’s definitely a worry. We’ve seen in the episode that Will hints that it drives people insane. We don’t know if the Will that we could get back is the same guy."

So, the portal is death, the planet is death, and the planet is hunting Will. This seems like a recipe for disaster. Even if they do manage to bring back Will himself, he may have already gone insane the same way his team did. I cannot think of anything worse than Jemma and Will reuniting, only to have him be evil, but that may be exactly what is coming on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Images: Tyler Golden/ABC; ritaamber/Tumblr