The 20 greatest women in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
By Mark Lynch
4. Melinda May
It would be difficult to find a person who’s done more on the battlefield than Melinda May. She’s fought beings all over the world and back. She’s battled humans, metahumans, and gods, andlived to tell the tale. She’s the mother hen to the ragtag group of SHIELD agents, always there to lend a helping hand and, more importantly, the brutal truth when they need to hear it. She was the perfect character to help make the MCU’s first TV show an almost instant success.
Why she’s top ten
Phil Coulson once said this about Melinda May, “Getting in trouble, pulling pranks, thought rules were meant to be broken.” All of this was true, until she was forced to fatally shoot a young girl in order to prevent her from killing innocent people. May left field work after that. However, when Coulson asked her to rejoin, she accepted. This showed two important things. First, that Melinda May had the mental toughness to overcome an incident that almost broke her and rejoin S.H.I.E.L.D. Second, Coulson trusts her. Like with Nick Fury, you can count on one hand how many people Coulson trusts and can rely on. Whatever happens over these next two seasons of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., this shouldn’t be the end of Melinda May.