Each season of the ABC action series Marvel's Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. has introduced viewers to a whole new crop of characters. Obviously, in Season 1 we met the core team: Coulson, Skye, Ward, May, Fitz, and Simmons. Season 2 brought us both new team members (Lance, Bobbi, and Mack) as well as a whole spate of superpowered Inhumans like Jiaying and Lincoln. Now, Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 3 looks to be throwing a whole new organization into the mix, the Advanced Threat Containment Unit, led by Constance Zimmer's villainess Rosalind Price — as well as swelling the ranks of the Inhumans, including Juan Pablo Raba's Joey Gutierrez. But just who is Joey Gutierrez, and why is he important to the show?
If you watched the first five minutes of S.H.I.E.L.D. 's Season 3 premiere, then you've already met Raba's character. His is the very first face we see onscreen, following a trail of devastation from his kitchen (complete with a portentous bottle of fish oil pills) to a city street, where Joey seems to be creating quite the mess. Savvy viewers will remember that Season 2 ended with a briefcase full of Terrigen crystals sinking to the bottom of the ocean, where they were ingested by fish, which were in turn caught and manufactured into those innocent-looking capsules — all of which is to say, Joey's daily dose of Omega-3s has turned him into an Inhuman.
Technically, it's more accurate to say that the Terrigen-infused pills activated his latent Inhuman powers. Joey is one of thousands of unwitting descendants of the alien race scattered around the globe, oblivious to their true heritage until a bottle of fish oil turns them into novice superheroes. Hopefully not all the newly-patented Inhumans have powers as combustive as Joey's, since everything he touches appears to melt — or explode, if it's a car full of fuel. Thankfully, before Rosalind Price and her ATCU agents are able to abduct Joey, he's whisked away by Skye and her new "Secret Warriors" task force (also consisting of Lance, Mack, and Willy Wonka's great glass elevator).
Is Joey joining us from the pages of Marvel comics? It doesn't appear so. A search of the online Marvel database doesn't turn up any Inhumans with that name — or any character named Joey Gutierrez, for that matter. This isn't exactly surprising; although it pulls a few major characters and plots from preexisting storylines, most of S.H.I.E.L.D. is original material. (Remember when we were all trying to figure out whether Raina had transformed into Tigra, only to learn she was just... plain ol' Raina?) Instead of wasting time poring over old Marvel comics looking for obscure Inhumans with metal-melting powers, we should probably just accept that Joey is a fabrication for the TV show.
Of course, just because he isn't based off a Marvel character doesn't mean he's not inspired by one. While there are no Joey Gutierrez's in Marvel history, there are plenty of Joeys — including one who has a lot in common with our newest S.H.I.E.L.D. character. This Joey was a Morlock, one of a breed of mutants who lived in the sewers of New York City out of fear of anti-mutant persecution. However, when young Joey got sick, his parents risked exposure to bring him to a hospital... only for the boy's powers to manifest while they were aboveground, turning him into a monster. Joey rampaged through the streets of Manhattan, flipping trucks and generally causing mayhem, before Spider-Man and Beast finally managed to subdue him.
Two guys named Joey (one a grown man, one a boy) unable to control their own power, wreaking havoc in the streets of New York before being contained by other super-powered beings? Sounds awfully similar. If Raba's character is truly inspired by Joey the Morlock, what does that mean for the show? Will the midseason finale climax in the discovery of a whole group of recently-transformed Inhumans, so terrified by their own newfound powers that they fled below-ground and formed a makeshift community in the sewers of NYC? Or am I just reading way too much into things again?
Find out what S.H.I.E.L.D. has in store for Joey when Season 3 premieres on ABC this Tuesday at 9 p.m.
Images: Kelsey McNeal/ABC (3)
