Eric Koenig was a supporting character in the first season of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. He was a Level 6 S.H.I.E.L.D. operative that Nick Fury entrusted with some of his greatest secrets. He is also the brother of Billy, Sam, Thurston, and LT Koenig. He was portrayed by Patton Oswalt.
History[]
Eric was one of four identical siblings, three of whom worked for S.H.I.E.L.D.. Many times, when other agents met one of them to discover it was a different brother, the question "How many of you are there?" would come up.
Following the reemergence of HYDRA and the collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s infrastructure, Phil Coulson and his team relocated to one of Director Fury's secret safe houses located in Canada. Eric had been stationed at the Providence base for two years since the Battle of New York, having no other human contact other than by playing online video games with his brothers who were stationed elsewhere.
When Coulson's team arrived at Providence, Eric welcomed them and informed them of the current state of affairs, how S.H.I.E.L.D. had been labelled as a terrorist organisation and that its command structure had been dissolved. He also informed Coulson that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Fridge facility had gone dark, which came as a shock since Grant Ward was on assignment there escorting the traitor John Garrett to his incarceration. On a more positive note, Eric did reveal that Nick Fury had survived HYDRA's assassination attempt, but would only allow a privileged few to know the truth.
Ward would later rendezvous with the rest of his team at Providence, lying to them about how he had escaped. After learning that the superpowered inmates of the Fridge had been released, Coulson organised a mission to track down Marcus Daniels. First, Eric subjected each member of Coulson's team to a lie detector test to determine if any one of them had any connections to HYDRA. Ward was able to cheat the test by concealing a able wire beneath his fingernail and telling a plausible half-truth about how all of them were connected to HYDRA on account of HYDRA emerging from within S.H.I.E.L.D.. Coulson then took Melinda May, Leo Fitz, Jemma Simmons and Antoine Triplett on the mission to apprehend Daniels, leaving Ward and Skye at the base with Eric.
Death[]
Eric Koenig is killed off-screen by Grant Ward in the episode "The Only Light in the Darkness". While Skye was busy trying to hack into an NSA satellite feed, Ward cornered Eric in an empty room. Eric, unaware that Ward was working with HYDRA, updated Ward on Skye's progress. Ward locked the door and then attacked Eric, using garot wire to strangle him before hiding his body in a storage room.
Eventually, Skye used the tracker that Koenig owned to know the locations of the other agents and found Koenig's body, realizing that Ward was a member of HYDRA. When half of Coulson's team returned from Portland, they discovered the other half was gone. Simmons decided to make pancakes to calm everyone. While in the closet, she found Koenig's body and, after an autopsy, confirmed that "Ward is HYDRA" as written on the message left by Skye.