For the primary timeline version of this character, see Nathaniel Malick.
An alternate version of Nathaniel Malick appears in the seventh season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which occurs in a timeline where Earth's history has been altered by the Chronicoms. In the primary timeline, Nathaniel had been inducted into HYDRA during his youth, only to be sacrificed to Hive after being betrayed by his brother Gideon. In this alternate timeline, Nathaniel never joined HYDRA as his father continued to lead the organization past his original death date in 1970.
After Wilfred's death and the fall of Project Insight in 1973, Nathaniel would ally himself with Sibyl and her faction of Chronicoms. Uninterested in HYDRA's ideals, he wished to gain power for himself and plunge the world into a state of chaos and anarchy by destroying S.H.I.E.L.D. and all other institutions of control.
History[]
Gaining powers[]
In 1973, while attending a celebration at the Krazy Kanoe when his father announced the start of Project Insight, Nathaniel was noticed by Daisy Johnson when Gideon approached her. Once Phil Coulson and Melinda May were ambushed by Wilfred and Chronicom Hunters, Daisy and Daniel Sousa used Nathaniel as a hostage to force his father to let them go. After they let Nathaniel free at the bar's exit and were pursued by Hunters outside, he witnessed Daisy use her powers to defeat them and instantly became interested in them.
Using his HYDRA connections, Nathaniel obtained a Chronicom weapon and in 1976, he used it to ambush Daisy and Sousa after being informed by the Chronicoms about where they were. Wanting her powers for himself, Nathaniel contacted a prison guard associated with Daniel Whitehall and explained that he wanted detailed instructions from the doctor related to his research on how to transfer enhanced abilities surgically.
At a remote location, Nathaniel walked in as the the two regained consciousness and Daisy called him as psycho. He also introduced himself as while referring that his life had changed since they took him hostage three years before. He added that he was never interested in HYDRA's beliefs such as worshipping Hive but was instead interested in the the two of them, wrongly assuming Sousa was an Inhuman since he hadn't aged in decades despite Daisy's insistence otherwise. Changing the subject, Nathaniel explained that he wasn't interested in the family business until he witnessed her powers and became determined to obtain them for himself. After Daisy said her powers were genetic, Nathaniel revealed that he received instructions from Whitehall about how to transfer them. Upon hearing Whitehall's name, Daisy tried to kill him but to no avail since he dampened her powers. Nathaniel then began the experimentation on Daisy and took her into another room to drain her blood and fluids. Returning her to Sousa, he proceeded to have it transfused into himself but if it failed, he would switch to knives. It was successful, but as Sousa was escaping with Daisy, Nathaniel was unable to control it and the barn's roof crashed on top of him, leaving him incapacitated.
Creating anarchy[]
Seven years later in 1983, Nathaniel was now able to control his powers. He had also aligned himself with the Chronicoms' Predictor Sibyl, who promised him the ability to control the world's future when he received the Time Stream from one of her Sibyl-Bots. With her knowledge, Nathaniel went to Afterlife to harvest the power of Inhumans where near the sanctuary, he stopped Jiaying's daughter Kora from taking her own life. After introducing himself to her and explaining how he knew what she was going to do, Nathaniel convinced Kora that Afterlife was an example of how rules were used to control people like them. Explaining that he planned on causing chaos with some soldiers, he convinced her to join him. Nathaniel and his crew started attacking Afterlife and took its Inhuman residents prisoner. As Jiaying, Yo-Yo Rodriguez and May escaped with Gordon, Nathaniel and Kora took over Afterlife with a number of Inhumans as hostages. He explained that she was now free from the rules that everyone was "prisoners" to, further adding that he would establish a new world order through anarchy. He then taught her how to use her powers and said her little sister would be impressed.
Wanting to continue upsetting the timeline through chaos, Nathaniel recruited multiple criminals that S.H.I.E.L.D. had killed in the original timeline and altered their fates. He then met with John Garrett (a nemesis of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the present day) and impressed him with his powers and knowledge of the future. Taking him to Afterlife, Nathaniel showed him the Time Stream and let him use it to see his own future and fate as he did with several others. He then showed him Li, who had his powers transferred to one of Nathaniel's own men and had Kora kill him to put him out of his misery.
Using the Time Stream, Nathaniel and his men ambushed Coulson and Gordon, ordering his men to prep Gordon for the operation. He then explained his goals to Coulson: a new world order through anarchy with help from the Chronicoms. They then oversaw Gordon getting his powers transferred to Garrett, who later took Nathaniel to the Lighthouse to kidnap Jemma Simmons. While Garrett looked for Simmons, Nathaniel confronted Jiaying and Daisy and proceeded to taunt Jiaying about her future, especially her torture, her attempt to kill her daughter and how she died before Daisy angrily blasted him. Nathaniel counterattacked her with his own blast but before he could finish her off, Jiaying intervened which prompted him to kill her. This made Daisy angry enough to cause him to run in terror to the Zephyr One where he and Garrett hijacked it after kidnapping Simmons. Nathaniel then revealed to Simmons that Leo Fitz was the one reason his plans might fail and needed to know where he was.
As the Zephyr One entered space so S.H.I.E.L.D. couldn't follow them, Nathaniel called for Chronicom reinforcements and had Simmons placed in the Cerebral Fusion Machine to locate Fitz, but it didn't work. After pulling her out, he slapped her for the answer but after this failed, he had Garrett bring in Deke Shaw and beat him in front of her. As he tried emotional torture by threatening to crack her skull open and put her in a coma, Nathaniel noticed the D.I.A.N.A. implant in the nape of her neck. He then knocked Deke out for killing his father and had his men remove the implant. However, after it turned out she was the only one who could get it out, he put her back into the Cerebral Fusion Machine for a second attempt. He began cycling through Simmons' memories in the hopes of finding Fitz's location, but just as he was about to, her memories of Fitz slipped away much to Nathaniel's frustration. Despite this, Nathaniel moved ahead with the plan, which was Sibyl giving him the location of all the S.H.I.E.L.D. bases after breaching the Lighthouse's firewall with Kora's help. After angrily killing one of his men for simply addressing him as "sir", Nathaniel ordered the Chronicom ships to fire on the S.H.I.E.L.D. bases. After Kora returned with Garrett, Nathaniel assured her that they were giving people new life and the two of them kissed.
Endgame[]
Following the annihilation of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s bases worldwide, Nathaniel met with Sibyl aboard her ship, congratulating her on defeating their enemies so swiftly. Sibyl, however, stated that the Lighthouse was still intact and Phil Coulson and his team were still alive and needed to be eliminated before the Chronicoms could begin their colonization. Furthermore, if Leo Fitz was still alive, he could still completely unravel their plans. Nathaniel informed Sibyl that he had given Simmons an injection that would soon dissolve her implant, allowing them to determine if she had truly forgotten Fitz or was continuing to play the fool.
Later, Kora asked Nathaniel about why they were working with the Chronicoms, but Nathaniel assured her that he was merely using them for his own ends, that once S.H.I.E.L.D. had been eradicated they would swoop in to save the Earth from the Chronicoms and then take it over themselves. Kora then asked Nathaniel if killing Jiaying had been a part of the plan, although Malick claimed that he had done that to protect her, suggesting that she was a good person who did not see the evil within others. Nathaniel then proceeded to lie to Kora, claiming that Jiaying had told him that Kora was a mistake and she was sad that she was even born, so she needed to be put down. He then claimed that Jiaying had never been interested in being Kora's mother, as she only wanted to control her. When Kora told him that it had been awful to see Jiaying's body, Nathaniel had then comforted her with a hug, before promising to bury everybody who had ever tried to harm her.
Since the Lighthouse was too far underground to be reached by the Chronicom fleet's weapons, Nathaniel sent Garrett down to plant bombs inside the base. However, Garrett was caught by Coulson's team, who used a jury-rigged Quantum Field Disruptor to stop Garrett from teleporting out of the base. With the clock counting down to destruction, Garrett contacted Nathaniel and asked him to delay the detonation, but Nathaniel refused, thanking Garrett for his service before hanging up on him.
After Quake had boarded Sibyl's ship and confronted Kora, Nathaniel went down to assist her. When he arrived, however, Kora was alone and Nathaniel asked her what had happened. Kora explained that she didn't believe that Daisy was bad, that the things she had said to her made sense. Enraged, Nathaniel took an energy rifle from one of his men and shot Kora into unconsciousness. As a result of Kora allowing them to get past her, Quake's team had been able to destroy part of Sibyl's ship and escape back down to Earth, managing to avoid their detection.
Final battle[]
After Leo Fitz used a device to transport the Chronicom ships into the Quantum Realm, the fleet emerged in the primary timeline in the year 2019, just when S.H.I.E.L.D. had defeated Izel and Pachakutiq. Although Sibyl had continued to insist that they would still be able to conquer Earth, Nathaniel had simply told her that nobody knew the future anymore, before he stormed out of the control room to focus on his power. In order to be strong enough to defeat Quake once and for all, Nathaniel decided to have Kora hooked up to his Inhuman power transfer machine, allowing him to claim Kora's powers for himself.
Having discovered that the Chronicom fleet had been infiltrated by S.H.I.E.L.D., Nathaniel had searched for his enemies, managing to find Quake inside the reactor room while she was fighting off the Chronicoms. As he confronted her, he noted that he had studied Quake's history through the Time Stream and knew every enemy she had ever faced, before his eyes lit up from Kora's power, as he claimed to be honoured to be her final enemy. The two adversaries proceeded to fight, but Nathaniel had more years of combat experience and both Quake's vibrational powers and Kora's energy manipulation abilities. As they fought, Nathaniel managed to pin Quake against one of the ship's reactor cells. He mockingly stated that their was no way that Quake could kill him without killing herself as well, to which Quake agreed. However, Quake was fighting for something greater than herself, something that Nathaniel failed to understand. Mustering all of her strength, Quake generated a shockwave more powerful than any she had produced before, launching Malick across the room and smashing him through one of the reactor cells. The resulting rupture caused Nathaniel to be vaporized by the released radiation and the shockwave not only destroyed the ship, but expanded to encompass the other Chronicom vessels as well, wiping out the entire invasion force.