Gideon Malick

Gideon Malick is one of the heads of HYDRA. Originally one of HYDRA's infiltrators in the World Security Council, he broke ties with that organization after it became defunct. Six months after the fall of Wolfgang von Strucker's HYDRA cell, Malick was contacted by Strucker's son Werner, who was recently recruited to work for Grant Ward's HYDRA cell. He serves as a minor hidden antagonist in The Avengers, the true main antagonist of the first half of the third season of Agents of SHIELD and the secondary antagonist of the second half, being the season's main antagonist as a whole. He is also the secret employer of Rosalind Price (head of the ATCU).

He is played by Powers Boothe, who also played Ethan Roark and Joshua Foss.

History
Malick is a HYDRA head who infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. through the World Council. In The Avengers, using his position and taking advantage of Loki’s attack on New York, he convinced the council to launch a nuclear weapon that nearly succeeded in causing the deaths of millions of people. He used his position in the President's inner circle to stealthily take control of ATCU to take possession of all the Inhumans they captured to use them for HYDRA. He had HYDRA agents take the Terrigen infected pills by claiming they were a cure to breed his own Inhumans, knowing there was a 50% chance of death.

When certain HYDRA agents did turn to stone, he had their bodies hidden like failed experiments. He betrayed Werner von Strucker to Grant Ward both as a power play and to keep him out of the fold. He had Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons abducted, threatened and tortured in order to force them to help reopen the Monolith’s portal to Maveth, his greater plan to allow Hive, the destructive creature who inspired the creation of HYDRA, to be set free on the world. He sent Ward and several other men in there for it knowing full well that he didn’t expect them to come back. When SHIELD begins to overrun the compound, he flees with only a few HYDRA agents, leaving all the others to die. Later on, he takes glee in the fact that Hive did get off the planet and onto Earth using Ward’s body. It’s hinted that he expected Hive to take over someone’s body and use it to get off the planet.

Malick also had Inhumans and regular people sacrificed to Hive so he can feed off of them and has Talbot’s Inhuman son abducted and threatened to force him to not only gain the committee’s trust, but to frame Coulson as the head of HYDRA and discredit him too. His loyalty to Hive is not a redeeming quality as his worship of him stems from his radically fixated personality.

Trivia

 * Prior to the beginning of the series, Lash and Ward were main antagonists of separate plots, Lash was running the Inhumans storyline in the main plot, while Ward was running the HYDRA subplot. By Many Heads, One Tale, Malick brings two of the plots together by revealing HYDRA's goal of bringing the back the Ancient Inhuman; thus for the overall storyline of the first half of the season, Malick is the main antagonist, Ward is the secondary antagonist and Lash is the tertiary antagonist.