SPOILER WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for "The Devil Complex," the latest episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.


Leopold, the evil Hydra leader that Fitz became in the Framework, has reared his ugly head once again. In "The Devil Complex," the latest episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Fitz began to see Leopold in the Lighthouse and realized too late that Leopold was all in his head.

Leopold appeared as Fitz struggled to come up with a new way to use the gravitonium to seal the rift in space-time, which had opened a doorway into a fear dimension, but Fitz wasn't his first victim. That honor went to Deke, who approached Fitz as he worked on one of Hale's androids. As Deke rambled, Leopold knocked him out to use him as a hostage later on.

Afterwards, Leopold appeared to Fitz as he sat in the control room. Fitz was immediately distraught at the sight of his worse half. "There's work that needs to be finished," Leopold explained to Fitz. When Fitz asked what he was doing, Leopold replied, "What you are unwilling to do... I'm very real, and I am going to finish what you started."

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"You and I are the same, aren't we?" Leopold asked. "You couldn't stop me if you wanted to. The plans are already in motion." At that, both turned at the sound of a gunshot and Simmons' scream. "You can't escape me, Fitz," Leopold said as Fitz ran to check on his wife. "We're not finished yet!"

After he made sure Simmons was fine, Fitz realized that Leopold might go after Daisy next -- and he was right: Leopold had sent the android after Daisy while she was working on one of the lower levels. The android knocked her out and strapped her to a table, so that Leopold could operate to remove the power inhibitor device that the Kree installed in her skull after the events of "A Life Spent."

When Daisy woke up, Leopold advised her not to try and escape. "Your energy would be better spent making yourself as comfortable as possible," he said. "I'm afraid I didn't have too many painkillers."

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Believing Leopold to be an anomaly from the fear dimension, Daisy demanded to see the real Fitz. Unfazed, Leopold told her, "Oh, believe me. You're looking at him."

"My work helps people, which is precisely what I'm doing now by restoring your powers," he explained as she screamed in protest. "This rift could be what destroys the world. Your powers could be what save it. You are what's needed to repress the gravitonium and insert it into the device to shut the rift for good. My hypothesis has science to back it up."

Fitz then burst into the room and demanded to know what Leopold was doing to her. "What needs to be done," Leopold reiterated. When Fitz accused him of sending a robot to attack Yo-Yo, he added, "If the robot attacked, it must be because it was provoked. I simply programmed it to keep Mack and the others at bay while I set to work removing Daisy's inhibitor."

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"[Daisy's] powers are the missing key to manipulate the gravitonium," he continued. "You know that I'm right. You're what? Look at you. You are weak, but together we can fix it. Finish what we started."

Daisy looked on as Fitz and Leopold argued. "Fitz, who are you talking to?" she choked through her sobs, only for Simmons to show up. From Simmons' point of view, there was only one other person in the room besides Daisy: Fitz, holding a scalpel in his gloved hand. "It's not me! He was right here," he said, dumbfounded, then saw the scalpel.

Page 2: The Twist, Explained



"Fitz, it wasn't an anomaly. It was you, programming the robots, keeping everyone else occupied," Simmons said slowly, to which Fitz finished, "To isolate Daisy. All part of his plan. Of my plan."

When Simmons suggested letting Daisy go, Fitz resisted. "No. There's no turning back. He planned for that too." At that, Deke was shoved into the room by the android, who pointed a gun at Simmons. "He programmed it to make sure I would go through with it. He didn't want to hurt you, just like he didn't want to hurt Mack. I wouldn't have done any of this if I didn't believe it was going to work... The science is sound. There are always risks involved. You know that, Jemma."

"You're right, but potentially paralyzing Daisy or destroying the world are two massive risks, Fitz," Simmons pointed out.

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"Let's hope that that doesn't happen," Fitz responded. He finished removing the inhibitor from Daisy's head as she begged him to stop. When he finished, she told him she would never forgive him. "I suspect you won't be the only one," he said, defeated. He then guided Daisy through fixing the rift and surrendered himself.

Later, as Fitz lounged in a makeshift prison cell, Simmons tried to comfort him and explain the episode away, but Fitz wasn't having it. "It is me," he protested. "It's not an apparition. It's not some evil doppelganger. It was me... I don't deserve forgiveness, Jemma. Mack is injured. Daisy's traumatized. You know what the worst part about all of this is? I still believe that it was the right thing to do."

"Then you're right. It's such a confusing, gray area, but -- if we are going to change the timeline -- we have to do things differently. Make harder choices," Simmons said.

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"What does that make us?" Fitz asked, to which Simmons responded, "I don't know."

"I really don't know where we go from here," he whispered, then turned away.

As Fitz pointed out earlier in the episode, he left himself plenty of clues about Leopold's true nature. After all, the Framework's Leopold was a stone-cold killer who cared about no one but Madame Hydra and himself. However, in the episode, Leopold's intent was only ever to harm, not kill anyone who got in his way. The Framework's version of Leopold would never have hesitated to kill "extraneous" characters like Deke and Mack, who posed a very real threat to his goal. What's more, he had a noble endgame -- to save the world -- even if his methods were suspect.

That being the case, there may yet be hope for Fitz to reconcile both halves of himself into one, healthy whole. Indeed, there's even evidence that everything will work out between him and Simmons in the future, as Deke was recently revealed to be their grandson. This suggests that FitzSimmons' relationship will make it through the end of the world intact.

Airing Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on ABC, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5 stars Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Henry Simmons, Ian De Caestecker, Natalia Cordova-Buckley and Elizabeth Henstridge.