Of all the characters returning for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s sixth season, one of the most pivotal for the ABC series' future may be Elizabeth Henstridge's Jemma Simmons. A series regular ever since its premiere in 2013, the character is a biochemistry expert, who's recruited by Phil Coulson at the start of the show for her unrivaled expertise in life sciences. Over the course of the series, Jemma becomes more active with the team beyond the lab as well as falling in love with fellow specialist Leo Fitz.
Separated by time and space at the end of Season 5, Jemma's personal mission to reunite with Fitz will inform both her character in the future but also the rest of the series. With the Season 6 premiere less than three weeks away, here's everything you need to know about the character and what to expect from her in the upcoming season.
SIMMONS: S.H.I.E.L.D.'s TOP SCIENTIST
Portrayed by Elizabeth Henstridge, Jemma is an English scientific prodigy who earned two PhDs by the age of 17 and viewed S.H.I.E.L.D. founder Peggy Carter as her personal hero. Enrolling in the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy of Science and Technology, she meets fellow student Leo Fitz, an engineering and technology specialist, with the two starting as competitive rivals due to being the top of the class before realizing they are much better suited working together and quickly become best friends. Both recruited by Coulson for his top-secret team after his resurrection, the duo work out of a mobile headquarters providing the team with its scientific assistance.
After S.H.I.E.L.D. implodes upon the revelation that it had been infiltrated by Hydra for decades, Jemma takes a much more prominent position in the field, pretending to join Hydra at Coulson's request. Following her undercover work, Jemma served as the head of the science team investigating Kree activity on Earth. During Season 3, Jemma is transported to the alien world of Maveth for six months by a monolith where she meets and develops a romantic relationship with a man named Will Daniels. Ultimately, Daniels sacrifices himself to send Jemma back to Earth where she reunites with the team and begins a relationship with Fitz.
FitzSimmons
While Fitz had first confessed his romantic feelings for Jemma shortly after the exposure of Hydra within S.H.I.E.L.D., a traumatic brain injury had changed his personality before the two could properly react to his reveal. The two's dynamic fluctuated over the subsequent seasons as the team endured crisis after crisis requiring the pair to become more active in the field. Finally agreeing to a dinner date, their plans are cut short by Jemma's accidental transportation to Maveth, resuming their romantic plans upon her return, eventually moving in together.
After being sent into a post-apocalyptic future with the team by another alien monolith, with the exception of Fitz who has his body cryogenically frozen and revived decades into the future, the couple is imprisoned by the Kree and reunited. Upon their escape, the two propose to each other, getting married after they return to their own time, with Coulson officiating the ceremony. While working to avert the disastrous future they had just visited, Jemma and Fitz discover that their teammate recruited from the alternate future, Deke Shaw, is in actuality their eventual grandson.
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Brave New Future
While Jemma is caring for Coulson, who is succumbing to his mortal wounds inflicted by Loki years ago, Fitz is killed in a confrontation with a gravitonium-empowered Glenn Talbot while saving the planet from its nightmarish future. Devastated by the loss of her husband, Jemma realizes that a cyrogenically frozen version of Fitz is drifting in space, waiting to be recovered and revived in the post-apocalyptic future they had just escaped. After bidding Coulson a final farewell, Jemma sets out to find her husband, even though this version of Fitz was frozen before even being engaged to his partner.
With Season 6 taking place approximately a year after the events of Avengers: Endgame, the upcoming season is the farthest story within the chronology of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date. Jemma is still searching for Fitz, somewhere drifting in deep space and unaware of the larger events of Season 5 including his eventual engagement, marriage, and death at the hands of Talbot.
With the team's two greatest scientific minds off the board currently, the intelligence agency will have even greater challenges with its transition under new director Mack MacKenzie. Jemma's reunion with Fitz is something of an inevitability but she will have much to catch him up on for everything he has missed while frozen. And when Jemma does return to the team, she will come back much harder-edged than ever before having scoured the cosmos for over a year for her husband.
Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is set to return to ABC on May 10 with 13 new episodes. The series stars Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Henry Simmons, Iain De Caestecker, Natalia Cordova-Buckley, Elizabeth Henstridge and Clark Gregg.