3. Melinda May: Life Model Decoy
The echoes across the twitter sphere were wide and wild, “Melinda May is a life model decoy?!” That was one of the biggest twist in the third LMD pod of the fourth season of Agents of SHIELD. The eventual replacement of almost every character on the show was on the horizon (showcasing some great visual effects by Mark Kolpack and co), but Melinda May the Life Model Decoy was an incredible surprise for fans. May is unstoppable, one of the few unbeatable characters in the MCU, and it was hard to face the fact that she’d been taken by Aida and her team of robots.
The LMayDecoy quickly gained a fan following and lived Melinda May’s best life, helping capture and replace most of the rest of the team. She ultimately sacrificed herself to save those who weren’t yet plugged into the framework proving that there was more to humanity then Aida understood and that not all robots in the MCU deserved recrimination.
It’s another testament to Ming Na Wen’s incredible acting ability that she was able to play so many different variations on the character. The Melinda May Bot was a sign of the eventual arc to come for everyone’s favorite superheroine. Without the Maybot, she wouldn’t have been plugged into the framework, faced her past in Bahrain and come out to help Robin in season 5 finally giving herself a degree of healing. It’s redemption well deserved that couldn’t have happened without one of the craziest twists in the fourth season of the show.