Bill Paxton to start a month-long run on Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

By Mike Vago | January 15, 2014 | 6:45pm

Aux Features TV

Having taken on aliens, a predator, feuding hillbillies, tornadoes, and society's rules about only being married to one person at a time, Bill Paxton is now ready to face some supervillains as an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. In an arc comprising at least four episodes in late February or early March, Paxton will play John Garrett, a former partner of Clark Gregg's Agent Coulson, who's been promoted but nevertheless "wants to stay out in the field no matter how high-level he gets." That means he "refuses to sit behind a desk and doesn't like the formalities of S.H.I.E.L.D."

All of that makes it sound like there's a possibility — just a possibility, mind — that Paxton's character (who will also have "a little bit of attitude and cigar-smoking swagger") is the kind of agent who plays by his own rules, not S.H.I.E.L.D.'s rules, or your rules, or anybody else's rules. And yet—and, again, this is just speculation—despite his disdain for rules, he still manages to get results, dammit.