Agents of SHIELD: Daisy 'deeply broken' upon her return

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!

The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. struck a crushing blow to Hive’s plans during Tuesday’s episode, releasing Daisy from his sway in the process.

Though it seemed Lincoln (Luke Mitchell) wanted to escape S.H.I.E.L.D. with the help of Daisy (Chloe Bennet), it was all a ruse to trick her into flying a quinjet with Lash inside to face off with Hive (Brett Dalton). Lash was able to remove the parasites from Daisy, providing her an opportunity to escape back to the team.

But don’t expect her to be the same Daisy we’ve come to know and love, as the leader of the Secret Warriors battles an extreme case of withdrawal from the addiction that is Hive. “I was surprised with how angry and distant they wrote her, which I liked, because I was expecting an immediate, softened apology,” Bennet tells EW. “She’s so deeply broken up about it that she can’t even expose how she actually feels to her team. She’s so upset that she feels like she can’t even look at the team, let alone be upset about it in front of them.”

Given the lives lost and the damage done while Daisy was under Hive’s sway, there’s a mixed reaction to her return. Coulson (Clark Gregg), of course, is first in line to welcome her back given their father-daughter relationship. “It was excruciating for him to have her be swept up in this sway by Hive, a person that Coulson considers himself responsible for creating a window through which this creature could come back to Earth just makes it all the worse,” Gregg says. “He’s really trying to free her of what seems to be the worst poison that’s swirling inside her right now, which is self-loathing.”

But not everyone will feel the same about Daisy’s triumphant return. “Simmons [Elizabeth Henstridge] is quite harsh to Daisy, because she’s speaking to someone who is an addict and has experienced a high that has been taken away,” Henstridge says. “Simmons herself doesn’t judge Daisy, but the way that she has to approach it is very strict and not giving in to any sort of emotional empathy, which she finds hard to do, but she knows she has to do it. The bottom line is we have to get to Hive, and Daisy is our link. Daisy wants to be out in the field doing more, but she’s also secretly craving that feeling again.”

Which is part of the reason why Lincoln is hesitant to reunite with his lost love upon her return. “Daisy was addicted to that feeling that Hive gave her,” Mitchell says. “He knows what addiction is like. He’s been addicted to alcohol. He has an addictive personality. Essentially, he’s addicted to Daisy.”

Chief among the losses while Daisy was under Hive’s control was Lash, who was killed in the process of saving Daisy. Though Lash had fully made the transformation from Andrew (Blair Underwood) to Inhuman, “May’s very torn up about it,” Ming-Na Wen says. “In the end, she was able to forgive him and realize what his true mission was. But up until that point of losing him, she still held onto some anger about the whole thing, not just really toward him, but toward herself that this situation happened. She still feels that this situation happened because of her. In a way, she just always holds that against herself that if only they never got back together, she didn’t go and ask him for help, that perhaps he may never have died. That’s what she’s most angry about.”

However, May doesn’t direct that anger against Daisy, and instead tries to help her through the guilt, having experienced a somewhat similar situation herself. “May is concerned that Daisy won’t be able to forgive herself for everything that has happened when she was swayed,” Wen says. “Unlike what May went through in Bahrain, where she had to make certain choices and do certain things against every right and wrong in her bones, she had to make a really tough choice. She has to live with that. If anything, her desire right now is to continue to protect and guide Daisy so that she doesn’t suffer similar consequences and shut down the way May has.”

But the true extent of Daisy’s guilt cannot yet be fully understood, and will only be exacerbated by the events of the finale. “So much happens that I’m not sure we’ll even deal with that until next season fully,” Bennet teases. “You see in the finale that guilt weigh incredibly heavy on her shoulders.”

The two-hour Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. finale airs Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.