Melinda May

Melinda May is brought on to the recently resurrected S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson's team as pilot and field agent, to investigate superhumans and other related phenomena.[3] She is shown to be in a relationship with fellow agent Grant Ward.[4] Coulson tells agent Skye that May, during a mission in Bahrain in 2008, single-handedly took out a superhuman threat and several accomplices, saving a team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, though a young girl was killed in the crossfire. Left traumatized by the experience, May withdrew from field duty. Later, her trauma is shown to be gradually healing.[5] She also ends her relationship with Ward. Unknown to Skye and Coulson, May is monitoring their conversation, and reporting to someone else.[6] When the Hydra Uprising begins, May reveals that she knew the truth about Coulson's resurrection[lower-alpha 1] and was monitoring him on director Nick Fury's orders, and Coulson refuses to trust her any more.[9] Feeling unwanted, she leaves, searching to find out the truth behind Coulson's resurrection.[1] She finds the truth and brings it back to Coulson.[10] May later incapacitates Ward, who was a double agent for Hydra, and after Ward's mentor John Garrett's death, goes with the team to the Playground to help restart S.H.I.E.L.D., under the newly promoted director Coulson.[11]

May is Coulson's unofficial deputy.[12] She later meets her ex-husband Andrew Garner.[13] When another S.H.I.E.L.D. faction led by Robert Gonzales emerges and occupies their base, May helps Coulson to escape,[14] but later accepts a position on Gonzales' board.[15] It is revealed that in 2008 at Bahrain, the Inhuman Eva Belyakov and some gangsters took a S.H.I.E.L.D. team and several locals hostage, and May entered the building they were using to rescue the hostages. She found them acting out of character, and they attacked her, but she defeated them and killed Eva in a fight, before discovering Eva's daughter Katya was the real threat, having taken control of the hostages to feed on their pain. When Katya killed the Bahrainis she was controlling, May was forced to kill Katya. S.H.I.E.L.D. assumed Eva was the threat and Katya was caught in the crossfire, and May was lauded for saving the S.H.I.E.L.D. team single-handedly and given the nickname 'the Cavalry'. However she became deeply traumatized; her marriage to Garner also suffered, eventually leading to divorce.[16] When the two S.H.I.E.L.D. factions unite, May becomes a member of Coulson's council of advisors.[17] At the end of the season, May takes a break from S.H.I.E.L.D. to be with Garner.[18]

May has been on leave from S.H.I.E.L.D. for six months and is looking after her father (William May), who was injured in a car accident. Lance Hunter hopes that May will help him find and kill an absconding Ward, and notes that she suspects that Ward was behind her father's accident, but May is hiding from her life at S.H.I.E.L.D. and difficulties in her relationships with Garner and Coulson. May is eventually convinced by her father that getting back into her S.H.I.E.L.D. life by going with Hunter is the best thing for her, and the two leave to infiltrate the new ranks of Hydra.[19] She later learns that Garner is the Inhuman serial killer Lash.[20] May struggles with this revelation;[21] she continues to work in S.H.I.E.L.D. as the agency attempts to bring down Gideon Malick and later Hive, losing Garner in this battle.[22]

Following the re-legalization of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the appointment of Jeffrey Mace as director, May is given the task of rebuilding and training the new STRIKE team. During one of her missions, she is touched by Lucy Bauer, a woman with ghost-like powers,[23] causing her to become paranoid.[24] Agent Jemma Simmons and S.H.I.E.L.D. ally Holden Radcliffe "cure" May by killing and reviving her.[25] Prior to S.H.I.E.L.D. victory's on Eli Morrow, May was incapacitated and kidnapped by Radcliffe's android Aida and was replaced by an android decoy of herself.[26] After several escape attempts,[27] May's mind is trapped inside the Framework, a virtual reality where she lives as a Hydra agent.[28] With the help of Skye (who now goes by her real name Daisy Johnson) and Simmons, May eventually escapes the Framework,[29] only to face the threat of Aida, now an Inhuman.[30] Following Aida's defeat, May and the others are sent to the year 2091 by an unknown force.[31]

May and the others find themselves in the Lighthouse, a bunker used to contain the rest of humanity following Earth's destruction.[32] May is captured by the Kree who rule over the station and sent to Earth's surface.[33] There she meets Robin Hinton,[34] who had been raised by May in her past.[35] Discovering the way to return to the present,[36] May and the others return to the Lighthouse and manage to return to the present.[37] They immediately work to prevent the destruction of Earth,[38] come into conflict with General Hale's Hydra, and later with an extraterrestrial force called the Confederacy.[39] Following their victory over a gravitonium-enhanced Glenn Talbot, thus saving Earth, May joins Coulson, who is dying, on his final days on Tahiti.[40]

One year later, May assists in dealing with threats involving Sarge's group[41] and Izel.[42] She like Daisy believes that she can get Coulson back through Sarge, his doppelgänger, but gets mortally stabbed by Sarge and sent to a dimension where Sarge and Izel are trying to free their kind on Earth.[43] May survives as death is meaningless in this dimension, and prevents three of Izel's people from unleashing their kind. After returning to Earth, she kills Izel and collapses from her injuries, while Mack kills Sarge. Simmons arrives and places May in a stasis pod in order to recuperate.[44]

May is healed by Enoch, a Chronicom and ally of S.H.I.E.L.D., but she escapes from her stasis pod without his knowledge.[45] Following her recovery, she appears to have no emotions;[46] Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez and Simmons discover that May has lost her own emotions but instead can feel everyone else's whenever she is in proximity of them.[47] After infiltrating the Chronicom ship to save Daisy's sister Kora, May overpowers Sibyl, the leader of the Chronicom hunters, and combines her abilities with Kora's to magnify a beacon of empathy into the Chronicom army, stopping their assault on S.H.I.E.L.D. Following the defeat of Sibyl, a year later, May is a professor at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Coulson Academy.[48]

May made her Marvel Comics debut in S.H.I.E.L.D. vol. 3 #1 (Feb. 2015) from Mark Waid and Carlos Pacheco.[64] She joined Phil Coulson's team to regain the Uru Sword, an ancient weapon that belonged to Heimdall. She battled a group of terrorists who were in possession of it and was later debriefed by Maria Hill.

Her next assignment was protecting Wiccan from a man who had special bullets that could harm magic users. With Scarlet Witch's help, the team traveled to Antarctica to find the source and managed to defeat the people who were making the bullets. However, Dormammu took possession of Leo Fitz and shot Scarlet Witch.[65] May had to travel to the Dark Dimension with Coulson and Jeremiah Warrick, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent with the head of an owl. She fought off an army of Mindless Ones, but was outnumbered. She witnessed Absorbing Man defeat Dormammu afterwards.[66]

May later teamed up with Mockingbird to take out a surgeon who was doing illegal experiments.[67] She and Coulson were later contacted by Silk to aid her, Hulk, Wolverine, and eventually Ghost Rider into fighting an alien creature that was mimicking powers.[68][69]

Melinda May appears in the digital series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Slingshot with Ming-Na Wen reprising her role.[70]

• May is a playable DLC character in Lego Marvel's Avengers.[71]
• May is a supporting character to Agent Coulson's character in Marvel: Future Fight.[72]
• May is a playable character in Marvel Puzzle Quest.[73]