ā | Malick: So it's you. I was curious who Hive would send. I know what you're going to do. Daisy: We can't let you keep talking. Malick: And I won't be kept from my daughter. |
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~ Gideon Malick's last moments before his death. |
ā | We're at a tipping point, where humanity is going to make some difficult choices about the preservation for our very existence, and these Inhumans... these Inhumans are the key to our survival. | ā |
~ Gideon Malick. |
Gideon Malick is the secondary antagonist of Season 3 and a minor antagonist in Season 7 in the TV series Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..
He is the son of HYDRA leader Wilfred Malick and the brother of Nathaniel Malick, as well as one of the organization's heads and an infiltrator in the World Security Council. Even after its downfall, he continued with his plans to bring back the ancient Inhuman Hive back to Earth from the planet Maveth so they could take over the world.
He was portrayed by the late Powers Boothe, who also played Ethan Roark in Sin City, Roland Kane in Turok, Joshua Foss in Sudden Death, Curly Bill Brocius in Tombstone, Gorilla Grodd in the DC Animated Universe and Benjamin Travis in Hitman: Absolution. While in his youth, he is portrayed by Cameron Palatas.
Personality[]
ā | Sometimes you sacrifice a player to save the game. | ā |
~ Gideon Malick. |
Like most of HYDRA's leaders, Gideon Malick was a cruel, arrogant, traitorous, manipulative, unsympathetic, diabolical, ruthless, iniquitous, and cold-hearted pragmatist. Despite his friendship with the fellow HYDRA head Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, he did not hesitate to betray Strucker's son Werner to Grant Ward to please Ward and organize a meeting with him. For Malick, Werner (as an untrained operative who failed in his first mission) was a damaged good that could not be left to run around knowing HYDRA's secrets, and therefore had to be killed. At the same time, he would kill two birds with one stone because Werner's death would leave him the only one with the access to Wolfgang's secret vaults. Malick also intended to have Ward killed, because his campaign to remake HYDRA posed a threat to everything he built through Project Distant Star Return. However, he accepted Ward as HYDRA's second head when Ward proved himself in his eyes.
Another instance of his pragmatism was his joint decision with the World Security Council to have New York City annihilated by a nuclear bomb strike, in order to prevent the Chitauri invasion from spilling out of the city into the rest of the world, while completely disregarding that the Avengers had a fighting chance against the alien invaders.
In spite of his cruel, ruthless attitude as a member of HYDRA, Gideon was also a loving father who cared deeply for his daughter and only child, Stephanie. Though strict and ruthless when telling Stephanie to man up after his wife's death, he cared deeply for her wellbeing and they shared a close father-and-daughter relationship, Malick showing pride in his daughter's skill and cared for her more than he did for anyone or anything else. Stephanie's death was the final breaking point of Malick's loyalty to Hive and after it, Malick was left a heartbroken man with nothing left to lose or gain, blaming himself for Stephanie's death and feeling he had failed her when it had been her Hive had killed, rather than himself, wishing he could have taken her place, proving he would have preferred to face death himself than see her die and welcoming death gladly, knowing it would reunite him with his child.
While Malick prefers to present himself as a brave man who is willing to sacrifice his own life to HYDRA's cause, in reality he had never taken a life before Hive ordered him to kill Rowan Hamilton and had spent much of his life avoiding death at all costs, by cheating at the conventional and ritualistic ceremonies where a tribute was sent to Maveth as a sacrifice to Hive.
His need to survive led him to allow his own brother to be selected as tribute in his place. When Charles Hinton gave Malick a vision of his own death at the hands of Hive, Malick put all of his effort into trying to find a way out of his situation until finally he was confronted by his brother's memories, living on within Hive, at which point Malick accepted his fate but was forced to watch as Hive killed his daughter instead. When Daisy Johnson, who had been enthralled by Hive, was ordered to kill him, Malick did not even attempt to defend himself, feeling that his death meant he would be reunited with his daughter.
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Trivia[]
- Powers Boothe was asked to reprise his role as Malick in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but was unable to do so because of his commitments with the TV series Nashville.
- In The Avengers, Malick was credited only as "World Security Council" given that his name wasn't invented until his appearance on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..
- Malick is the first character introduced in the films to be killed on one of the TV series, followed by Phil Coulson who later died off-screen between Seasons 5 and 6.
- A variant of Malick in another timeline is one of the few antagonists to survive at the end of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. the others are Felix Blake (with his Watchdogs) and the remaining leaders of the Confederacy (Estella, Taryan, Magei and Joqo).
- Actor Powers Boothe was honored in an epitaph at the end of the Season 4 finale episode World's End after his death two days prior to its airing.