'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.' star Chloe Bennet on Skye and Fitz's big secret

Warning: This story contains major spoilers from Tuesday’s episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Read at your own risk.

Though fans of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are excited about Skye’s transformation into an Inhuman, not everyone on the team feels the same way. In fact, Skye (Chloe Bennet) learned the hard way that, because of Agent Triplett’s (B.J. Britt) death, most of the team is pretty anti-superpowers at the moment.

After the events at the Temple, Skye was placed into quarantine as Fitz (Iain de Caestecker) and Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) ran blood tests to make sure she wasn’t affected by the mist like Raina (Ruth Negga) was. As the team’s emotions heightened in the wake of Trip’s death, and Skye slowly figured out stressful situations caused her to quake, Simmons implored Coulson (Clark Gregg) to put Raina down after their nemesis killed a team of scientists at the Temple.

Raina, meanwhile, was devastated after her own transformation left her looking like a glorified porcupine. When Cal (Kyle MacLachlan) offered her no solace, she planned to take her own life, but was rescued by that eyeless Inhuman, Gordon (Jamie Harris)—whom we also learned had been fostered by the Inhumans community as a child, guided by Skye’s mother (Dichen Lachman) through his own transformation.

Though Fitz’s brain is still damaged, he was the only one from the team to deduce that Skye had actually caused the earthquake in the Temple. But instead of breaking the news to everyone else, Fitz decidedly keeps Skye’s secret in hopes that, given time to heal, everyone’s anti-superpowers fears will quell. How long can they keep this secret from the team? EW pressed Bennet for the scoop: (And if you want scoop on that other midseason premiere secret, check here.)

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Fitz covers for Skye with the blood test. What does their relationship look like moving forward?

CHLOE BENNET: Fitz and Skye have had two episodes that really stand out to me in terms of bonding, which is the train episode last year where I got shot, and then definitely [Tuesday’s episode]. He sees a lot of himself in the situation. He feels that being outcasted after having his injury and being treated differently, what’s going on with Skye and her turning has really hit a chord with him. He stands up for her and it’s one of my favorite parts of the episode. It’s shocking at the end when he comes in and you think he’s running in to tell on her, but he really comes in to save her. I think people are going to fall in love with Fitz even more after that.

Skye is not just keeping this secret from the whole team, but she’s keeping it specifically from Coulson. How hard is that for her?

It sucks. Part of it is keeping it from him because there’s so much on his plate, this would make it 20 times worse. I don’t think she has the intent of keeping it from him forever. Her intention is to keep it from him so she can figure out what it is that’s going on with her. For the first episode, she’s really not sure for the better half of the episode what it is that’s causing these outbursts. She’s slowly coming to terms with the fact that, “Oh, that’s me doing this.” Every time this has happened to someone else, we’ve put them on the Index. What is Coulson going to think? It’s just her initial reaction of being scared.

Coulson is being really hardcore right now in trying to take out Hydra. Is Skye also scared of him in some ways?

I don’t think so. All I really felt was just so much guilt. It was an overwhelming process shooting that episode. A lot of death makes people act a certain way. We are a big family. When something happens in a family like that, people just react in different ways. She’s maybe giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. There’s that one scene where everyone is having an argument like a family, and she just cannot handle it anymore. I love this episode because it really brings out the family dynamic in every character. People can relate to that. These are everyone’s heightened emotions. I don’t think it’s everyone at their core. Everyone is just really dealing with the loss of Trip in their own special way.

Fitz says he’s keeping this secret right now until things are no longer heightened. Does Skye have hope that there will actually be a moment where everyone calms down and she can explain?

We will see this obviously unravel in the next couple of episodes. How it does, I cannot tell you. Things get interesting. We have some distractions in the next couple of episodes. Lady Sif (Jaimie Alexander) will be making an appearance, so that throws everyone for a loop. Yet, at the same time, it maybe ties some things together.

How does Skye feel about Simmons’ strong anti-superpowers feelings?

There’s definitely that one scene where Skye’s like, “What?!” Simmons is talking about how much they should not be here, and this is in the midst of Skye realizing that Simmons is pretty much talking about her. That instills more fear in her and makes her want to hide everything even more. It makes her even more appreciative of Fitz. We’ll probably see this unravel sometime in the future.

If Coulson has been a father figure, Agent May (Ming-Na Wen) has really taken on a motherly-type role being her S.O. May suspected something amiss, so what does their dynamic look like moving forward?

The thing about this is that these people love each other very much and they’ve been through a lot together. Things may come to light in the future. What I love about this show and what Joss [Whedon] told me, Elizabeth and Ming very early on is that he never wants this show to be about women being catty towards each other in any way. I haven’t really had a scene with Adrianne [Palicki] until this episode. It was nice to play that as well. At least for the women, everyone is supporting each other a lot. It’s great to see. It’s a rarity in TV these days. For some reason, it’s an obvious choice in lots of shows to just pit women against each other and watch them fight. But Joss made it very clear early on that that’s not the tone of this show. We’re going to have a lot of strong women who be kind to each other and fight alongside each other.

I did like that revolving door of everyone coming to visit Skye throughout the episode.

Yeah, it was a nice way to show them mourning in their own ways. It was everyone venting to Skye, in a way, and Skye venting to them. Everyone is in shock and not knowing what to say. It was very sad shooting that episode for me. It was a really, really difficult episode to shoot. We shot for two weeks or so, and it was kind of brutal from an actor’s standpoint. You have to get really emotional and seeing everyone really upset and depressed for the loss of both Trip and B.J. Britt. It was a pretty intense couple weeks to shoot. My therapy bill that week was very high. [Laughs]

Raina basically blames Skye for what’s happened to her.

Yeah, I would say she does. I can’t really reveal whether or not I see her or what happens, but I can imagine that neither of them would be happy with each other. Skye feels that Raina is responsible for Trip going down there and pretty much whatever happened down there in the tunnels. Raina is probably jealous a little bit because she’s been waiting her whole life for these powers, for her biology to change and to become Inhuman, and she got more of a change than she wanted. Skye pretty much got the awesome power.

We see in this episode that Skye’s mom was really apart of this Inhumans community. Once Skye eventually finds her way to them, will that be a chance for her to finally learn more about her mother?

I definitely think so. That would be a chance to find out where she came from and her parents. That could be a possibility.

Speaking of parents, Skye’s father seems to think this is his best chance at actually being a part of Skye’s life. Does she still harbor a lot of resentment towards him or might her new condition open her up to the possibility of letting him in?

I don’t think this is going to be some sort of tunnel in which she’s going to all of a sudden be enamored with her murderer father. What he did say was true and I don’t think there’s any denying that, but I can’t say whether or not we meet again or what happens. He is pretty knowledgable in that world because he’s been in it for a while. In terms of my relationship with my father, it’s an interesting one. It’s kind of sad. She’s been looking for him her whole life. He turns out to be a murderer. There are levels of kind of understanding why. In the finale, he’s telling her about how her mother died and what he had to do after that. You kind of sympathize with him in a weird way. At the same time, he’s still a murderer and you can’t. It’s really put Skye is a really tough position. We all know my real dad is Coulson, so that’s still her number 1 relationship on the show.

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.