S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2 Spring Preview

AGENT COULSON is taken to task by at least one team member, for broaching the alien city in the first place. "When it is implied that Coulson doesn't know if he was following some internal dictate to take Skye there — and he certainly managed to effect her transformation, whether he knew it or not — that's a brilliant question to ask," Clark Gregg notes. As for what Skye is and the dilemma that reveal presents, he says, "The Inhumans in the comics... are a whole kind of separate, isolated, alien race where they nurture people when this change happens, and it's a ritual. But in our world, it's hard to imagine that Skye is having that same experience. She's on her own. So she and Coulson are there to figure out what this means, and the exciting and very scary part of it is it seems destined to challenge how real their connection is."

MACK, in the immediate aftermath of Trip's death and the earthquake, "questions, 'Why are we doing this? And at the cost of some of our team members being dead,'" says Henry Simmons. "There's a lot of emotion behind that, when you lose someone who's close to you, a brother, and you're wondering why." Then again, Mack isn't exactly being transparent with the team either, as evidenced by covert exchanges between him and Bobbi, revolving around some sort of thumb drive. "This secret that they have is going to have quite an impact on the team," Simmons teases. "You start seeing hints of it in the midseason premiere."

BOBBI, it's already been shown, is operating on a secret agenda with Mack — and some light is shed on it as the midseason premiere unfolds. Are they possibly HYDRA moles themselves? "I don't think you should assume anything, honestly," says Adrianne Palicki, now a series regular. "Mack and Bobbi do have a secret, but whatever they're doing they think is the right thing. It's not necessarily malicious." Even so, "When the secret does finally come out, it's going to have massive repercussions for the entire team, but especially for [Bobbi and Hunter]," she says. "This is definitely not going to help their trust issues!"

HUNTER not only will watch the team he only recently joined become "fractured" in the wake of Trip's death and the debates it stirs, he'll also come to wonder if rekindled love Bobbi is hiding something — this despite her extremely able covering of tracks." Oh, I think he knows her too well to believe anything she says, really," Nick Blood says with a laugh. "I think he's always, always on guard, always suspicious. And particularly with her, he's been let down too many times in the past to take it on face value." That said, love can blind the best of us. "You know what you do when you care about someone," Blood notes. "You want to believe that they're telling you the truth."

MELINDA MAY's backstory — The Cavalry's origin included — will be explored during Season 2B, including via the introduction of the badass' ex, played by Blair Underwood. But Ming-Na Wen also will be extra-busy playing May's HYDRA-trained lookalike, AGENT 33. As Brett Dalton explains, after ward was shot by Skye, "To my rescue came Agent 33, who just lost her mentor [Daniel Whitehall] as I had lost mine in Season 1. So what we're seeing now is an unlikely duo, who have both lost someone who gave them orders. Because of that, we're forced to answer: Who are we when someone's not telling us what to do? I wrestled with those demons for six months in a padded cell, and now Agent 33 is in a similar position."

WARD plays "an important part" in the back half of Season 2, Brett Dalton says, despite having escaped (with Agent 33) to parts unknown after he was shot by Skye, and with boss man Whitehall now dead. Teasing Ward's eventual resurfacing, Dalton teases "a different kind of action," in that "I'm not riding motorcycles and punching everybody every episode. But I'm still moving things forward. As we can see, this guy has a skill set that's insane. He's the biggest Swiss Army knife in the world, so we're seeing him do things a lot."

SIMMONS won't know it, but by the end of the spring premiere, Fitz will be hiding a secret from his onetime BFF. And that could drive an even greater wedge 'tween the estranged colleagues. "I don't think they fully realize the implication of how far apart they are," says Elizabeth Henstridge. "There's so much hurt there." As such, if/when said secret slips out, the actress ventures, "It pains her that he would have to carry a burden and she wouldn't be able to ease that pain. So, it's going to get muddier before it gets clear — but this is potentially the first step at trying to figure their relationship out."

FITZ may have made some progress from the physical and psychological setbacks incurred by his near-drowning, but "there's still a very long road to recovery," says Iain De Caestecker. "Everything in his head is being processed differently. So when the realization comes that he'll never be the same again, he has to accept a different side of him and try and make that better." That change in process, though, will lead Fitz to make "a big decision" at the close of the spring premiere, to conceal something from those closest to him. "It's not something that's taken lightly," his portrayer assures.

CAL skedaddled, at daughter Skye/Daisy's command, after she compelled him to not kill Coulson in the winter finale. His mission now? "There's an episode where he finds similar people on the index" — including one played by The Sopranos' Drea de Matteo — "who aren't happy with S.H.I.E.L.D.," says EP Jeff Bell. "And what I love is how endearing they are all treated. They are all misfits and they're really fun together." In fact, show brass would think nothing more super than for Kyle MacLachlan to score an Emmy nod for guest actor. As EP Jed Whedon raves, "He breaks your heart. His performance is constantly riding that edge of 'I don't know what he's going to do' to 'Oh, I should probably take him in and feed him.'"

RAINA, when last we tuned in, had been exposed to the same Terrigen Mist as Skye, but with yet-to-be-seen repercussions. Says exec producer Jeff Bell, "Raina's a character who seems to have gotten everything she every wanted through the first season-and-a-half — she successfully manipulated or moved everyone quietly. But when she finally got what she wanted, it turned out to be wasn't what she wanted. So we thought it was interesting to take a character who had always succeeded and give them an apparent setback and see how the character reacts in those situations."

LINCOLN, played by Luke Mitchell (pictured on The Tomorrow People), is an Inhuman. And that's pretty much all we know, for now. Upon landing the role, "I quickly went to the comic book store and got a couple of origin stories. I very quickly discovered the history and it was all very cool," Mitchell says. "I was pretty ecstatic to join a cast like S.H.I.E.L.D." Scene partner/fellow Inhuman Chloe Bennet offers a smidgen more intel on Lincoln, saying: "He helps Skye adjust to her new powers in a way that makes her more comfortable with them. And they might kind of like each other maybe at some point."