Overview
A spin off of the popular Avengers movies, SHIELD (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division) is a bunch of people running around trying to protect everyone from crazy mutants and aliens. Only FOX has a lock on the term ‘mutant’ as it refers to this universe, so SHIELD calls them ‘inhumans’ and they’re not mutations and blah blah blah blah blah.
There’s always been something vaguely homophobic about that split in the Marvel world. Some people (Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Hulk) are turned into super-powered heroes, some people (Thor, Loki) are aliens, and some people (the X-Men) are mutants. Everyone hates the mutants, even the ‘turned’ heroes. There was a whole subplot at one point about how Reed Richards (from the Fantastic Four) was anti-mutant.
The show is also a paint-by-numbers Joss Whedon tropetastic adventure. Young brilliant girl who eventually becomes super-powered, is loved by all, and tries to save the world. Droll white dude as her mentor. Betrayal by a man she loves. Wacky genius sidekicks. Taciturn ass kicker. It’s not really ‘original,’ which seeing as it’s based on fifty plus years of comics is understandable. What Joss does do well is tell the story in an engaging way. But it’s not his best work and sometimes feels like he’s phoning it in.
In the comics, Victoria and Isabelle are a couple. Apparently ABC was afraid of backlash for killing off both their lesbians, so they omitted the relationship. Since they were explicitly gay in the comics, and they were meant to be gay on the show but they just didn’t want to address, we consider them so here as well.
It seemed like you were going to explore Isabelle being the late Victoria Hand’s (Safrron Burrows) love interest from the comics.
Whedon: There were versions, but it started to be irresponsible if we addressed it to not address it with more weight and time and energy.
Maurissa Tancharoen: And then we would’ve been known as the people who killed off two lesbians on the show.Credit: EW Interview
In season 7 they did finally add an actual queer character.
Characters
There are 3 queer characters listed for this show; 2 are dead.
