'Agents of SHIELD' Season 7 Episode 11: Is Grant Ward a good guy now that Garrett's life has been changed?
After last week's explosive episode of 'Agents of SHIELD' Season 7, the timestream has been irrevocably changed in many ways. The team's earliest foe, John Garrett (played by James Paxton), now has the powers of the Inhuman Gordon (Fin Argus) and is Nathaniel Malick's (Thomas E Sullivan) right-hand man.
Of course, with this change, Garrett's life has been drastically altered and he may now never get the chance to recruit one of Hydra's most prominent double agents: Grant Ward (Brett Dalton). The reveal that Ward was working for Hydra was one of the most devastating reveals that hit the audience early on in the show's history but since Garrett was the one who recruited Ward into Hydra, having him play a different role in the timeline could mean that Ward is now a good guy in this timeline.
If that is true, it's a minor plus point to a timeline full of negatives. Jiaying (Dichen Lachman) is dead, Daisy Johnson (Chloe Bennet) never existed and Alphonso "Mack" MacKenzie (Henry Simmons) lost his parents early in life. Having Ward become a good guy seems like a really small consolation, especially since Malick and Garrett are currently on their way to kill Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and they've got Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) as their prisoner.
Back to Ward, we're not quite sure how differently his life would play out without Garrett to guide him into the path of villainy. For all we know, his life might still follow the same patterns, becoming a SHIELD agent, being recruited onto Phil Coulson's (Clark Gregg) team and having a whole lot of crazy adventures. Two major differences would be that since Daisy doesn't exist in this new timeline, Ward would never have that relationship. Also, since he's no longer a double agent who will betray his friends for an evil Nazi alien cult, he'll probably be around for much longer as a member of SHIELD.
Though one thing is yet to be made clear on the show. We do know that SHIELD has been accelerating many of its projects like the Triskelion and Project Insight. What we don't know is the status of Hydra's infiltration of SHIELD. Does Hydra still control SHIELD from the shadows? Or has Malick turned them into annoying agents of randomness like himself? We'll just have to watch and find out.
'Agents of SHIELD' Season 7 airs Wednesdays at 10 pm ET on ABC.