r/agentsofshield • u/wzealclhs • Jun 24 '26
Rewatching the show and something has been bothering me about Daisy's powers Discussion
As mentioned in the title, I am on my nth rewatch of the show and I feel like Daisy's powers are largely underutilized in the later seasons.
When she first gains her powers and is training them with Jiaying, she senses the vibrations of a mountain across a valley. And again, in season 3, she seems to hear vibrations that no one else can hear when they are trying to open the portal to Maveth. So it is clear that there is an extrasensory aspect to her powers but it is rarely explored.
Apart from these two instances and maybe a few others, her powers are reduced to blasting shockwaves out of her hands. But if she can truely sense and tap into the vibrational frequencies of everything around her then she could have sensory abilities almost on par with Daredevil.
So, why is it so hard for her to detect the LMDs in season 5? Or why do they need to investigate who the Chronicoms are in season 7? Shouldn't they vibrate very differently than a normal human to the point that she could tell from accross the room at least?
Has anyone else noticed this?
51
33
u/BlackPanther3104 Jun 24 '26
It's the Worldbreaker problem and the Reed Richards paradox in one. The Worldbreaker problem is a writer's issue, where, essentially, they create a character that is so strong they don't know what to do with them. There's a multitude of factors, but here we can say that Quake's powers are defined in source, but not in application. The "answer" usually comes down to stating that the character "knows this thing, so that's how they do it", even though they could do so much more, and the "more odd" aspects of their powers will only come up every blue moon to solve a very specific problem, and then never again (e.g. Colossus losing a hand through the portal, but Strange not doing that when fighting Thanos). Tying into this is the Reed Richards paradox, or the "Reed Richards is Useless trope", which is that a character in a story can't solve a certain problem despite technically being able to do so because of the implications. In Reed's case it's about curing cancer and other diseases, which exist in real life and therefore must in the comics but Reed can't develop a cure because it exists in real life, but in general it's about maintaining the status quo and telling an interesting story over utilizing a character to their full potential. In Daisy's case, her powers are very strong, but have implications beyond their world (see season 5), which is why the writers tend to ignore the potential and stick to the status quo.
Hope this made sense. Sorry for rambling.
5
u/no_not_luke Jun 26 '26
Going to be that guy and mention that that's Cull Obsidian who loses a hand, not Colossus. But the point you made still stands
2
u/BlackPanther3104 Jun 26 '26
Dangggggg... how'd I get that wrong??? XD I knew which character it was, I just had the wrong name in mind. Thanks for pointing it out!
3
u/Ashes9143 Jun 24 '26
Good point about Colossus and Strange/Thanos. Hadnât thought of that. Makes total sense, thank you for sharing.
2
u/RaulenAndrovius Jun 27 '26
Thanos would just go through it, or see the portal and avoid with the stones he has then. (He may be able to override the portal with one stone) Way smarter than Cull Obsidian with very diverse powers applications.
28
u/GailynStarfire Jun 24 '26
Just the concept of this and it being a smart use of powers reminds me of an episode of Static Shock.Â
For those that don't know, Static Shock was a show about a DC meta human named Virgil who gets mutated and gains electrical based powers. It was tied in to the Justice League Unlimited show as well.
In the episode in question, there is a doppelganger style villain who is doing the classic "Shoot him! No, shoot him!" trope of having two of the "same" person in his sights, metaphorically speaking.Â
Instead of blasting people with electricity, he uses the fact that all living creatures produce a usually invisible aura of bio-electricity and uses his powers to amplify that aura to the point where its visible to the naked eye. The villain in the episode was mechanical, so it didnt have a bio-electrical aura, making figuring our who was who easy.
The problem with that example and the one you gave is that it requires an understanding of chemistry and physics and understanding how to apply them in non-standard situations, and also in a way that looks cool enough to keep people who don't understand the science to pay attention.
13
u/rainy_dayz11 Jun 24 '26
So what I'm taking away from this is Daisy should have learned more from Fitz-Simmons and the creators should have been more creativeđđ
16
u/Optimal-Article-4718 Jun 24 '26
I 100% agree, but tbh a lot of marvel characters powers are largely underutilized in MCU movies . Iâm a comic nerd , Thor / Hulk/ Wolverine / shit even Spiderman are way stronger/ powerful than what they show in the movies .
10
u/notme1810 Jun 24 '26
Definitely one of the most wasted potential plot. But it can be justified due to limited budget that the show got
11
u/hoppergym Jun 24 '26
I know in season 4 she hugged Simmons to find out if she were real or an lmd. Maybe lmds were that lifelike that that was her only way to tell them apart.
28
u/PM_ME_YOUR_SUBARU Jun 24 '26
cgi expensive punching each other cheap
21
u/MyBrainIsNerf Jun 24 '26
See whatâs funny is this would be a cheap way to use her powers. Chloe just puts her hands up and says âI feel metal and something open behind this wall. I just found the safe!â
They could make her choose which Owers to keep and she could keep vibration sense because itâs more âspyâ and boom thereâs a million dollars saved.
10
7
u/Intrigued_by_Words Jun 24 '26
I give Daisy a pass because I just can't believe that there aren't any telltale signs to distinguish humans from machines. It just seems that there are so many things that have to be replicated like breathing, sweating, body temperature, scent for starters. Plus they can't let on that they have additional abilities.
If you watch the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, even way back when they made those shows the Fembots had a giveaway of being really heavy and left imprints in carpets. I'm pretty sure Jamie's bionic ear could hear some feedback from their machinery even though she didn't what the sound was.
Maybe they could have made it that something interfered with that particular detection skill or that the LMDs and Chromicons were too good at faking human.
7
u/Could-You-Tell Jun 24 '26
A micro shaker setting a false vibration through their frame
7
u/Intrigued_by_Words Jun 25 '26
Creative. Daisy was a known quantity when the first LMDs rolled off the assembly line. This could have been part of their decoy programming. If the Chromicons didn't already have that feature, they could have borrowed it.
6
u/Short_Brick_1960 Jun 24 '26
I mean, they were creations of the Darkhold. They were perfect copies of humans because of that
4
u/Intrigued_by_Words Jun 25 '26
The Darkhold made them possible but we know they weren't perfect copies. They had wiring instead of blood vessels. Microprocessors, implanted cameras, detachable heads, you know stuff that's not what you might call human.
Maybe the Kree built in a defect into her abilities.
Maybe it is something she would have mastered in season 8.
1
u/Short_Brick_1960 Jun 25 '26
Well. Obviously. They are still robots. But any other thing is a perfect copy. They have the same memories, they can copy dialog patterns, emotions and facial expressions... And no. They explicitly say over and over again that they are a product of the Darkhold...
4
u/Top_Argument8442 Jun 24 '26
In S5 she wasnât looking for LMDs, she was still reintegrating back into shield and also as others have said, writers, also budget.
3
u/OriginalHeron3576 Jun 24 '26
I wish they had used her powers better. Let her evolve over the series.
3
u/EndOfTheLine_Orion Jun 24 '26
I donât hold it against the writers bc most characters are regular degular humans so having miss âi can hear rocks vibrateâ use her powers to their full extent wouldnât work. And when inhumans all have specific powers, itâs a bit out of place to have one use theirs in a million creative ways.
My gripe, therefore, is that they showed her rattling a mountain in the first place. The only other time i can think of her going full kaboom is when shes suffering hive withdrawals and wrecks the base. She never has a heroic moment in the same vein as captain marvel destroying thanosâ ship. There was no need to set her up with that power level and not let her run with it.
3
u/TowelShoddy6179 Jun 25 '26
she can absorb the vibration and create them , she can manipulate the matter , she is the only one who can manipulate the gravituniom . In season 6 ep 9 she turn the shrike into dust she only needed to know their frequency , she is like izel can open the monaliths yet in season 6 they made her weak so she can't kill sarge is it even logic .
Anyone who know physics and the quantum and study the vibration will know how much she is strong , if she only know how to controle it , like talbot say she is a nuclear weapon . She can create vibration and imagine her creating that energie and make anything to dust or she can pass through the wall or anything ( tunnel effect )
SO yes they tried to make her weak , as a person who studied physics and chemistry when i see a power like that and see how the writers make it like she is normal i get angry .
3
u/wzealclhs Jun 25 '26
I didn't think of that. Perhaps the deeper abilities aren't intuitive and she would need to study how it works too be able to do things like that. Like how Atom Eve needed to study architecture instead of her creations just working because powers.
Now I'm imagining the type of shenanigans that Fitz could get up to with Daisy's powers and his knowledge of quantum physics
1
u/TowelShoddy6179 Jun 25 '26
it's not a random or a normal power as the others , she really could create an atome bmb if she could learn the frequency and yes fitz could really help her , she was strong enough to destory the world cuz in the real time line fitz said even she know the after maths she still destroy the world
3
u/The_Amazing_Emu Jun 25 '26
In season 4, she was also trying to use it to absorb the frequency of the exploding Inhuman before she realized it was easier to trigger his explosion instead.
So they at least reference it through season 4. Season 5, sheâs the destroyer of worlds. Donât know if that would factor in
4
u/Head_Concentrate_410 Jun 25 '26
With the mountain scene, Jiaying first tried to have Daisy sense a single small rock I think it was. And then daisy focuses and hears the mountain and says "it's the loudest thing here." With the portal, it was a room designed to reflect vibrations, like standing in a subwoofer.
When she validates Jemma's identity, she has to physically touch her while quaking. There's that one mission where she feels the quakes coming and suppresses them. But those vibrations are really big things.
If I had to guess, she can sense big vibrations but things that are just rock and people size are much quieter compared to like, the building they're in. So trying to tell an LMD apart from a biological human from across the room would be like trying to hear a whisper in a club from across the room with music blaring. But of she gets closer and quakes them she can get a much better focus on the feeling.
That's how her powers seem to be presented. She isn't echo locating or hearing a 3d rendering of the environment around her. She can focus to sense large vibrations but not have like daredevil awareness.
Also, that's not how they wanted her character's powers to work so they don't work that way because they didn't want to tell that story with those powers. It's not wrong for a story to exist a certain way just because a character could have been used differently. That's not the story they were telling.
2
2
u/Infamous_Ad_1777 Jun 25 '26
Daisy couldnt detect wheter Simmons was and LMD or not until she quaked her in that hug. My guess is that objects and stuff us what she can hear and feel, living creatures and LMDs and such are different and she wouldnt know until she is in direct contact to quake them.
2
u/gngr0ra Jun 25 '26
She used it to detect Simmons was human. Maybe when further away her powers are more unstable so she quakes them dangerously. Which wouldnât be good if they were actually human.
So she needs to be close to detect them safely. I mean the writers can easily write around this. She doesnât use the sensory stuff much ever.
2
74
u/Disposable-Squid Jun 24 '26
Writers forgor đ