With the Ghost Rider storyline seemingly finished, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will be changing pace and focus on a new threat that it's been building up for some time now: Life Model Decoys. The back half of Season 4 will finally bring the robotic duplicates into the light after introducing AIDA, a new form of artificial intelligence. The midseason finale ended with AIDA revealing her true colors, having somehow kidnapped Agent May and replaced her on the team with an identical Life Model Decoy. May actress Ming-Na Wen opens up about how May is taking this development and the answer is not well.
I think she'll be a little pissed, don't you? And a little disappointed in herself for having been imprisoned.
That's what Ming-Na Wen told Entertainment Weekly when they asked her about the latest hurdles life has thrown at May, namely getting kidnapped by AIDA and having her life stolen by a robot. You can't really blame her for being upset about that one, and this isn't even the first time May has had doppelganger problems.
For those who have not caught up on S.H.I.E.L.D., AIDA first premiered as an artificial intelligence, and then was placed into a robotic body called a Life Model Decoy designed to perfectly replicate human behavior -- except for the fact that she's 100 times smarter than a human and can use her math brain to calculate portals to open spirit dimensions. AIDA seemed perfectly normal for her situation, but a cliffhanger revealed that she has less than noble intentions, killing an agent and keeping a bleeding May locked away. Coulson and the rest of the team have no idea that the May they've been interacting with the whole episode was actually a Life Model Decoy, whose ultimate purpose is still unknown.
Ming-Na Wen will be pulling double duty for awhile playing Real May and LMD May, which presents its own acting challenge. LMD May was programmed with May's brain data, meaning that it has all of May's memories and acts exactly like her. That actually simplifies things for Wen, but the hard part is keeping track of what's happening and finding little ways to differentiate the two.
For me, when I was playing LMD May, it's not very different from playing the real May, so the challenge was keeping track of what's going on, who's who, and how to somehow find little moments [to differentiate her]. You could have twins that are identical, and yet you'll always find a little something that's a little different, so that's what I try to incorporate into it.
LMD May will no doubt cause some strife for the team, and it'll be interesting to see what the end game will be for a season that's tackled both the supernatural and sci-fi in one go. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns on January 10, 2017, at 10 p.m. EST on ABC. Because you like television so much, why don't you check out our midseason TV premiere schedule, and find out what else will be returning in the coming weeks?
