Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD: Eulogy For Grant Ward

We gather here at this article today to… well, I’m not quite sure. Celebrate Grant Ward’s death? Mourn? Shrug it off? After all, Grant Ward has been dead since the mid-point of season three, so it’s more of a eulogy for Brett Dalton than anything. But since we all have differing opinions, let’s recap the life of Grant Ward on Agents of SHIELD.

He started the show as one of the most disliked characters (outpaced by maybe Skye). Brett Dalton played him as a straight man, a bland SHIELD agent dead serious about his job (but not in a good James Bond-y way) and as expressive and likable as a piece of wood. No one seemed to care about him. If he was absent from a scene or episode, he wasn’t really missed until after the fact.

Agents of SHIELD then tried to spice up his character. They gave him a potential love interest. Unfortunately, that love interest was Skye, the other disliked character on the show. It never really worked despite how much the show pushed them together.

Then Captain America: The Winter Soldier happened.

Suddenly, Grant Ward got a heck of a lot more interesting. Turning the SHIELD agent evil was seriously the best thing that ever happened. Brett Dalton got to get away from that stilted, wooden dialogue and personality and go in a darker direction.

Of course, in retrospect, all of that bland acting made sense for a deep undercover Hydra agent. Even if that wasn’t Agents of SHIELD‘s plan for Ward from the beginning, it sure as heck paid off. His rise up the Hydra ranks with Garrett all the while attempting to recruit Skye to his side and get her back fit so well with his very dark character.

As an added bonus, once SHIELD had him in custody, he also had quite a nice physique. His emotional abuse and persuasive nature came out in tenfold as all he wanted was to get back in Skye’s good graces, trying to tell her about her father.

When he killed his brother, burned his parents alive in their house, and started his quest towards becoming the new head of Hydra, you could barely look away from the screen. It was all so horribly enjoyable to watch. Seeing him hold his dying love (Agent 33) in his arms and swear his vengeance on SHIELD, you still didn’t know if his feelings for her were genuine or if she was just a stand-in for Skye.

Plus you felt a swell of price and happiness when Skye finally shot him in the gut at close range. Yet at the same time, you didn’t want him to die just yet.

Brett Dalton played evil so well. Not an episode went by where you didn’t wonder what the hell Grant Ward was up to

The back half of season three gave Dalton even more room to move as he turned into Hive, an overpowered Inhuman bent on turning the world into Inhumans who would listen to his every thought and command. In the last handful of episodes when he ran back into his old SHIELD cohorts, Dalton got to stretch his acting chops yet again, playing Grant Ward, playing Malick’s brother, but even more disturbing: playing Will to Simmons. The nuances in his acting, the twitch in facial expressions made it so darn good.

But there was no way Hive would survive through the season three finale. There was no way his master plan would work without calling in the Avengers, even in the aftermath of Captain America: Civil War. An Inhuman threat on that large of a scale would call in anyone who sided with Iron Man, not to mention military force.

In the end, Lincoln sacrificed himself to save the world and take down Hive out in space (don’t worry, we’ll have a eulogy for Lincoln later). It’s sad to see him go, but what else could be done to stop an un-killable Inhuman? Brett Dalton will no longer grace our Agents of SHIELD episodes.

So rest in peace, Grant Ward/Hive. Your evil presence will be missed, and I seriously hope you show up in the future in either flashbacks or stress-induced nightmares.