Dr. Holden Radcliffe was a major supporting character in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., appearing during the third and fourth seasons. He was a transhumanist who believed in developing scientific methods of improving the standard of human living, even if that meant crossing into morally ambiguous territory. Radcliffe originally encountered S.H.I.E.L.D. as an enemy, albeit an unwilling one, when he was forced to assist the Inhuman Hive in his plans for global conquest. Following Hive's defeat, the doctor joined S.H.I.E.L.D. as a consultant, only for his creation Aida to turn against him and almost cause the organization's destruction.
History[]
Season 3[]
Headhunted by S.H.I.E.L.D.[]
In early 2016, Dr. Radcliffe was located by S.H.I.E.L.D. members Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons, who had come to Romania to seemingly show him their own device, a robotic eye built by Cybertek. They were taken into a basement where a man (Radcliffe) was kept under a blanket, eye exposed; the challenge was for Simmons to remove the man's eyeball and replace it with the one they brought with them. Simmons eventually noticed the difference between a real eye and a fake one and, seeing Radcliffe's robot eye for what it was, stabbed a syringe into it; no blood came out and the man was unharmed. The man took off the blanket and showed himself to be Radcliffe, and was impressed by Simmons' attention to detail. He noted that the eye they brought was from Cybertek, which was owned by HYDRA, which had previously infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D.. They assured Radcliffe that they were not from HYDRA.
After noticing that they were talking to someone through a communicator device, he told his partner Anon to activate an EMP, only for the doors to burst open. In stepped Daisy Johnson and Alisha Whitley, Inhumans who were being mind-controlled by Hive, who wanted him to develop technology that could help him in his goal. Radcliffe was taken away and brought to Union City far away, where he met Hive's minions Giyera and Hellfire. Hive explained to Radcliffe that he wanted to recreate the Kree experiment that turned him into an Inhuman thousands of years ago. The doctor agreed, knowing that he would be killed if he did not obey.
Hive's experiment[]
The experiments that followed were unsuccessful, as Radcliffe lacked actual Kree DNA, and Hive's own blood was of no real help. Knowing what had to be done, Hive used a Kree Orb to summon two Kree Reapers. Hive ripped the heart out of one of them and gave it to Radcliffe, while the other was killed by Daisy and dissolved into a pile of dust by a Splinter Bomb, rendering it useless. Daisy's blood was thus used for the experiment, as she had been injected with Kree blood to save her life previously. When enough of her blood had been removed for the experiment, Hive kidnapped several Watchdogs to be used as test subjects, horrifying Radcliffe. Nonetheless, fearing what Hive would do to him, he filled the shipping container they were locked in with Terrigen Mist; when they stepped out, Radcliffe was horrified to discover that the subjects had become horribly deformed and had no free will of their own, only doing what Hive commanded them to do. Daisy was later rescued by the Inhuman Lash, who gave his life to save her and cure her mind-control. Radcliffe used this opportunity to escape from Hive, but was quickly found again.
Escape from Hive[]
At a missile silo owned by the United States Armed Forces, Radcliffe was forced to watch Hive and the Inhumans kill the soldiers there, as they prepared a nuclear bomb to be launched into the atmosphere and spread Radcliffe's corrupted Terrigen over Earth, turning most of the population into the "Primitives" that Radcliffe considered "abominations of science". When S.H.I.E.L.D. stopped the launch, Hive scared Radcliffe into fixing the situation, and he went down into a room with two Primitives, neither of whom could really do anything to help him. Melinda May found Radcliffe and he quickly surrendered to her. She killed the Primitives, and Radcliffe pointed a gun at her, demanding to know who she was with; she said she was from S.H.I.E.L.D., and he was forced to follow her out.
Hive was soon after captured in Suspension Gel and taken back to the Playground base, where Radcliffe told S.H.I.E.L.D. about his knowledge of the Primitives. He claimed that there was no way to return the Primitives to how they were, but was threatened by General Glenn Talbot into finding a way. Soon after, Terrigen Mist spread into the base through a bomb and several agents were turned into Primitives, who cut the power and freed Hive. Agent Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez was brought to him for a gunshot, and he was forced to use a blowtorch on the wound due to lacking other equipment. When the temperature rose from Simmons' use of the furnace, the Primitives left them alone, indicating that they could only see in infra-red. The agents followed after Hive on the Zephyr One and stopped him from releasing the Terrigen Mist.
After Hive's defeat, Fitz and Simmons worked with Radcliffe on some projects, and Radcliffe took a liking to them both. Several months later, Radcliffe spoke to his AI Aida about advancing his Life-Model Decoy project, as he was been working on them for a long time now. Aida's program was then placed into an LMD modeled after Agnes Kitsworth, Radcliffe's ex-girlfriend, and was programmed to observe human behaviour.
Season 4[]
Unveiling Aida[]
Shortly after Aida's first body was constructed, Dr. Radcliffe invited Leo Fitz to his home under the pretense of watching football together. As the two scientists sat in front of the television, Aida walked into the room, completely naked, and introduced herself to Fitz. However, she began stuttering and became stuck in a loop, repeating her incomplete greeting over and over. Radcliffe explained to the shocked Fitz what Aida was and asked for his help in fixing her and modifying her behaviour to appear more lifelike. Fitz was opposed to the idea, bringing up the Sokovia Accords, but Radcliffe explained that Aida could act as a "shield" for S.H.I.E.L.D. agents by putting herself in harm's way during dangerous missions and saving human lives.
Days later, Melinda May became mentally unstable after coming into contact with the ghostly Lucy Bauer. She began experiencing hallucinations in which she saw people around her turning into demons and entered a state of extreme panic, threatening her life. Radcliffe and Jemma Simmons attempted to save her by "resetting" her brain, giving her an injection that stopped her heart and attempting to revive her with a defibrillator. However, during the procedure, the power was knocked out by an electromagnetic pulse. Acting quickly, Radcliffe removed Aida's power core, using it to power the defibrillator and jumpstart May's heart.
While Radcliffe monitored her for any aftereffects, May spoke to Aida and quickly deduced that she was an android. Radcliffe scolded Aida for not lying about her origin, but she did not understand the concept of lying. Radcliffe explained that, in some cases, lies were necessary in order to protect others; her own in this case. Later on, Aida was introduced to Phil Coulson, and while Radcliffe had told her to pretend to be an amputee like Coulson was, she inadvertantly revealed her true nature.
Pursuit of the Darkhold[]
During a mission to stop Lucy Bauer from recreating the experiment that had turned her into a spectre, Coulson, Fitz, Alphonso Mackenzie and Robbie Reyes were struck by an energy wave that blasted them into another dimensional plane. While they appeared to still be in their own world, they were invisible and intangible to everyone else. S.H.I.E.L.D. had recovered the mystical grimoire known as the Darkhold from Eli Morrow and took it back to the Playground. After deducing what had happened to their missing comrades, May and Radcliffe debated on whether or not to use the book to find a way to bring the missing agents back. Radcliffe briefly looked into the book, but the sheer scope of the forbidden knowledge within its pages proved too much for him to bear. Aida, somehow able to hear Coulson and Fitz in the room despite being trapped between dimensions, suggested that she could read the book, which would work because of her electronic brain being able to process its contents.
Aida looked into the Darkhold, percieving its contents as binary code, and from the book gleaned a way to bring Coulson, Fitz, Mack and Reyes back to their reality. Using materials available within the Playground, she was able to construct an inter-dimensional gateway, allowing the missing agents to return before they were consumed by an encroaching darkness. However, unbeknownst to anyone, Aida's electronic brain would prove to be just vulnerable to the Darkhold's corruption as any organic mind. As Radcliffe celebrated the successful rescue of the agents, she secretly began working on developing a quantum brain for a new LMD.
Melinda May was sent to Dr. Radcliffe's residence in order to oversee Aida's deactivation. However, under Radcliffe's order, Aida knocked May out after she arrived and locked her in a closet. She then scanned May's body and brain, using her image and neural patterns to complete her new LMD. The new android, in May's guise, would then return to S.H.I.E.L.D. with none of May's colleagues being any the wiser.
Later, as Eli Morrow used his new matter-creation powers to build a new Quantum Battery, S.H.I.E.L.D. would enlist Aida to help stop him. With the knowledge provided by the Darkhold, she built a new inter-dimensional portal directly beneath Morrow's Quantum Battery. When the portal was activated, Ghost Rider, Eli and his machine were pulled through and sent to a hellish dimension from which there would be no escape. During the conflict, Aida was shot by one of Eli's henchmen, revealing that Radcliffe had programmed her with the capacity to feel pain. After the battle, S.H.I.E.L.D. sent Agent Nathanson to Radcliffe's home to see that Aida was dismantled. However, Nathanson discovered May unconscious in the closet where Aida had put her. Aida then appeared behind Nathanson and killed him by breaking his neck.
While Radcliffe was appalled that Aida had become capable of killing, he kept her active in order to carry out a plan to obtain the Darkhold for himself. When Jeffrey Mace ordered for AIda to be deactivated and dismantled, Radcliffe played along, accompanying Fitz back to his home where they would shut Aida down. When Radcliffe and Fitz arrived, Aida greeted the pair politely and asked why Fitz looked so sad, at which point he claimed he was just dealing with a bit too much at work, which Aida sympathized with. Before their conversation could continue, however, Radcliffe touched a button on his control pad to shut down Aida while he and Fitz discussed if she was gaining even more emotional intelligence.
Aida, however, then revealed that she had not been shut down, asking why Radcliffe was doing this, to which Radcliffe then claimed he just wanted to install more upgrades while continuing to try and shut her down. Aida then informed him she had now upgraded herself before attacking Radcliffe and the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, revealing she no longer felt pain. With all of the other agents subdued, Aida then attacked Fitz, questioning why he would want to kill her as the Life-Model Decoys were meant to be a shield for him. Aida threw Fitz through a glass door into Radcliffe's office where he discovered the corpse of Agent Nathanson while Aida took the chance to escape.
While Coulson's team was tracking Ellen Nadeer, Aida managed to hack into the S.H.I.E.L.D. system. She then broke into the room where the Darkhold was stored and tried to escape with the book, but Jemma Simmons figured her out and removed the door pass she had coded into herself, making her incapable of escaping. She tried to justify her actions, even going against her programming by lying about why she killed Nathanson, saying she killed him because he wanted to reboot her, when it was really because he discovered that she had captured May. It seemed to her that she had justified everything she needed to, but was proven wrong when Alphonso Mackenzie used his Shotgun-Axe to cut her robotic head off, seemingly destroying her. What S.H.I.E.L.D. were not yet aware of was that Radcliffe had built a new version of Aida, which he would keep secret from everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. until the time was right.
Alliance with the Watchdogs[]
After Aida's failed attempt to obtain the Darkhold, Dr. Radcliffe knew he would not be welcome back in the Playground and expected S.H.I.E.L.D. would eventually come for him. He and Aida would secure an alliance with the Watchdogs, a group of anti-Inhuman extremists, promising to aid their agenda in exchange for safety. When S.H.I.E.L.D. later arrived at Radcliffe's house to arrest him, Radcliffe was already gone, having left an LMD of himself in his place.
Aboard Anton Ivanov's submarine, Radcliffe continued his work on the Framework, a virtual-reality simulation that could digitally preserve the consciousnesses of those who entered it. With Aida's help, he had managed to completely recreate modern-day Earth inside the Framework and had connected Agent May to it, allowing her to live her life free of her greatest regret. However, removing the source of May's regret would have a dire effect on the rest of the Framework as the virtual world would come to be ruled by HYDRA. Radcliffe, on the other hand, planned to live the rest of his life in the Framework on a peaceful island with his former lover Agnes Kitsworth, who was dying from an inoperable brain tumor in the real world. With the Framework completed, Radcliffe reached out to Agnes, telling her that he could save her. S.H.I.E.L.D. had attempted to reach Agnes too so that she could lead them to Radcliffe, but Agnes ultimately chose Radcliffe's offer. Radcliffe later plugged Agnes into the Framework, preserving her mind inside the virtual world while euthanizing her physical body.
Some time later, the Watchdogs would capture S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Billy Koenig, who was the only person who knew where the Darkhold had been hidden. When Koenig was brought aboard Ivanov's submarine, Aida plugged him into the Framework in order to find out where he had hidden the Darkhold. Billy would reveal that the Darkhold had been stored in a S.H.I.E.L.D. storage facility called the Labyrinth. When S.H.I.E.L.D. arrived to retrieve the book and relocate it, the May LMD suddenly turned on them, taking the book and delivering it into Radcliffe's hands. After doing so, the May LMD was abandoned, having served her purpose.
Director Mace was later captured by the Watchdogs and Coulson led a mission to rescue him. They tracked Mace to a facility in Russia, but during the operation, Coulson, Fitz, Mack and Mace himself were replaced by Life-Model Decoys during a brief period when the agents were all out of contact with one another. While Radcliffe and Aida escaped aboard a submarine with their captives, the LMDs infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. with a mission to round up and kill all known Inhumans as per Ivanov's agenda. Meanwhile, the real Mace, Coulson, Mack and Fitz were taken to Ivanov's oil rig base where they were connected to the Framework. Ivanov, who had been injured fighting Daisy Johnson, was retrieved by Aida, who would later build a series of LMDs in Ivanov's image. Ivanov's body would be carved up and his head kept alive within a chemical cradle, equipped with a device that allowed him to control all of his LMD copies simultaneously.
Dr. Radcliffe later expressed anger and disappointment in Aida for circumventing her limitations in order to satisfy her directives as well as for altering so much of the Framework. Aida became confused about Radcliffe's intentions for the Framework, having learned that if a person spends too much time in it, their body will "give out", which contradicted Radcliffe's early frustration at her for killing Nathanson and almost-killing May. He clarified that the Framework would keep a person sustained, and he'd been spending so much time inside it in order to build up a "perfect world" for himself, but became angry at Aida for failing to program the LMDs at S.H.I.E.L.D. to be unaware of their true nature. Aida, now having received clarification about this, realized that to keep Radcliffe safe, he must stay in the Framework, where he prefered to be; she slit his wrists with a knife and placed him in the Framework, taking his place of managing the Framework and the LMDs. While Radcliffe's body bled out and died, his consciousness remained alive within the virtual world.
Within the Framework[]
While the world inside the Framework was dominated by HYDRA, Dr. Radcliffe was granted respite from the evil organization's regime. He and Agnes Kitsworth resided on the isolated island of Ogygia, far from civilization, where the two of them lived a quiet, peaceful life together. Agnes' memories of her life outside the Framework had been erased, which Radcliffe considered a kindness as she no longer had a life to go back to in the real world. Though Radcliffe tried to make the best of his situation, he knew he was ultimately trapped in a prison of his own making.
After Simmons and Quake had managed to infiltrate the Framework and alert the captive Coulson and Mace to their situation, they later discovered where Radcliffe was hiding. Coulson, Simmons and a Framework simulacrum of Grant Ward visited Ogygia via a stolen Quinjet to confront Radcliffe, who was surprised by their arrival; Radcliffe had never met Ward before and initially mistook him for Hive, since the parasitic Inhuman had been using Ward's corpse as a host. Simmons and Coulson confronted the doctor regarding the state of the Framework, but Radcliffe assured them that he had never intended to build a world ruled by HYDRA where Inhumans were persecuted, insisting that these aspects came about because Aida had removed the greatest regrets of her charges and the Framework had rewritten itself accordingly. Simmons also asked Radcliffe if he had made a backdoor out of the Framework. He told her that a backdoor did exist, but HYDRA knew about it and had it heavily guarded.
Not long after S.H.I.E.L.D.'s arrival on the island, Aida - known as Madame Hydra within the network - arrived with an entourage of HYDRA soldiers as well as her partner and "lover", The Doctor. Simmons, Coulson and Ward took cover amid some foliage and watched as Madame Hydra spoke with Radcliffe. To Radcliffe's shock, the Doctor was none other than Leo Fitz, but due to Aida's tampering, his personality had been twisted from kind and empathetic to cold and cruel. When Radcliffe addressed Aida by her original name, she admonished him for it, having grown to despise her acronymic name and its meaning. She also convinced Fitz that Agnes was a clone of her that Radcliffe had created as part of a plot against her. Fitz drew a gun on Agnes and Radcliffe pleaded with him to spare her, trying to convince him that this cold persona wasn't who he really was. Fitz ignored Radcliffe's pleas, shooting Agnes and killing her, much to Radcliffe's despair.
Radcliffe was then taken prisoner by HYDRA and taken to the Triskelion where he was beaten and tortured. While languishing in his cell following a beating, he overheard Daisy Johnson receiving similar treatment in the room on the other side of his cell wall. He listened as Daisy and Aida spoke, crying out that he never wanted any of this to happen, but Aida sent her guards to his cell to beat him into silence. Later, after Aida and her guards had left, Radcliffe sobbed in his cell and assured Daisy that he hadn't intended for things to turn out as they had. Daisy seemed to show no sympathy for Radcliffe, blaming him for creating the Framework and kidnapping her friends, and he said that he understood, but didn't feel much of anything now that Agnes was dead in both the Framework and the real world. He said that Fitz became the Doctor because Aida used the Framework to fix his greatest regret: not receiving any love from his father Alistair. In the Framework, however, Alistair was a leading man at HYDRA and friend of Aida. Daisy tried asking Radcliffe about a possible backdoor that he may have programmed into the Framework, and he stated that he did create such a backdoor, and that Aida couldn't destroy it, but warned that she would have kept it under lock and key for fear of anyone finding it and using it to escape.
Later, after Daisy had escaped with help from May, Fitz questioned Radcliffe about their plan to escape, but he refused to talk despite the threats made against him. Fitz stated that he knew the world around him was virtual and that use of the backdoor exit program would cause the Framework to destabilize, deleting everything within it, including Radcliffe. Radcliffe stated that he no longer cared since Agnes was no longer around to be deleted with him. Fitz offered to let him use Project: Looking Glass (Darkhold knowledge combined with his real-world technology) to create real-world clones of himself, thus achieving his goal of immortality; supposedly interested, Radcliffe told Fitz where he programmed the backdoor in the Framework, and where Daisy and May must be heading.
After Alistair was accidentally killed by Simmons, Fitzbecame enraged and swore revenge. He brought Radcliffe and a squad of HYDRA agents to Zephyr One, where Radcliffe learned that Aida had programmed the backdoor elsewhere to prevent S.H.I.E.L.D. from finding it. HYDRA agents headed to a steel mill where Aida had programmed the backdoor, and Fitz brought Radcliffe to the scene. During the resulting confrontation with the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D., Fitz put a gun to Simmons' head, but was disarmed by Radcliffe. He said to Fitz that he told him where the backdoor was so that he could send him back to the real world, and proceeded to push Fitz through the backdoor portal, causing him to wake up in the real world with his real personality restored. Radcliffe apologized to Simmons for his actions and told her to leave along with Coulson, May and Daisy. With no living body left in the real world, Radcliffe had no choice but to stay behind in the Framework.
Deletion[]
As Fitz had previously stated, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents' escape through the backdoor portal caused the Framework to destabilize. As Dr. Radcliffe wandered through the virtual world, he saw various objects, people and whole locations disappear around him. Oddly enough, some items were also materializing into existence as he discovered several yo-yo's suddenly filling his pockets. These yo-yo's were a message to Radcliffe being sent by Daisy, informing him that Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez had gone into the Framework to rescue Alphonso Mackenzie, who had previously refused to leave since he had a daughter inside the virtual world. With the Framework collapsing, Radcliffe knew that anyone still connected would have their minds erased along with the rest of the virtual construct, rendering them brain-dead in the real world, so he searched for Mack and Yo-Yo in order to help them escape.
Radcliffe returned to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s headquarters where he found Yo-Yo, Mack and several refugees packing up and getting ready to leave Washington. He joined them as they boarded a bus and made their way towards the Washington Bridge, only to find that the bridge had disappeared, followed shortly after by every Framework avatar on the bus except Hope, Mack's daughter. With nowhere else to go, the remaining group headed for the Mackenzie residence. There, they watched as objects within the house spontaneously vanished while a white door suddenly appeared within the living room. Radcliffe told Yo-Yo and Mack that the door was their way out of the Framework and that they had to use it immediately if they wanted to get out at all. Mack was only convinced to leave after Hope suddenly disappeared whilst he was hugging her and Yo-Yo led him through the door, both of them returning to reality.
Now alone in the Framework, Radcliffe visited the beach where he sat with a bottle of whiskey, looking out at the virtual sunset. He filled a glass and raised it in a toast to Agnes before reciting a famous quote from T.S. Eliot; "This is how the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper." However, just before completing the sentence, Radcliffe's consciousness was erased, his avatar suddenly vanishing and his whiskey glass falling upon the sand.