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Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. set up the appearance of Avengers foe Graviton in Season 1, but the character didn’t appear for four seasons.
Throughout its seven seasons, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. served as the live-action debut for several comic book villains, but none of them were more powerful than Graviton. The show set up the gravity-controlling villain in its third episode, but his story was seemingly dropped and left unresolved for over four years, before finally being resolved in Season 5. Heavy liberties were taken with his depiction, but in essence, Graviton remains the same character that fought the Avengers in the comics.
Graviton’s origin in the comics is fairly simple – he is a physicist named Franklin Hall that is exposed to graviton particles, empowering him with the ability to control gravity. He goes mad with power and becomes a supervillain, serving as a recurring foe of both the Avengers and the Thunderbolts. Graviton has consistently been portrayed as one of the Marvel Universe’s most dangerous villains.
Due to his reputation, fans were incredibly excited when Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 1, Episode 3, “The Asset,” introduced Franklin Hall as a S.H.I.E.L.D. scientist studying a rare element called Gravitonium. Hall is kidnapped by a businessman named Ian Quinn to help him figure out how to exploit the element, but Hall secretly sets in motion a plan to destroy it. S.H.I.E.L.D. gets involved, and Hall ends up falling into a mass of Gravitonium, which absorbs him.
Despite this incredibly promising setup, Hall never makes another appearance in the show. The Gravitonium is referenced a few more times before seemingly disappearing after the first season. Hall’s actor Ian Hart mentioned in an interview that he was frustrated by the fact that he never got to come back, and as the years went on, it seemed that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had backed out and would never fulfill their promise of introducing Graviton.
However, it turns out that the creators of S.H.I.E.L.D. were playing the long game, and fans were shocked when Gravitonium returned to the series in Season 5. As the season played out, the mysterious element became a major plot point, serving as a key aspect of Hydra’s scheme to create their own super-soldier. Additionally, a flashback reveals that Quinn was swallowed up by the Gravitonium as well, and his consciousness continues to exist alongside Hall’s within the writhing element.
S.H.I.E.L.D. manages to reclaim the Gravitonium from Hydra, but not before Carl Creel, aka the Absorbing Man is infused with the element. Haunted by Hall and Quinn’s voices constantly arguing in his head, Carl allows his friend and recurring character Glenn Talbot to remove the Gravitonium and infuse himself with it. The power-crazed Talbot adopts the name of Graviton and decides to find more Gravitonium to increase his power levels, heading to Chicago to mine the element straight from the Earth’s core.
In Chicago, Talbot is confronted by Daisy Johnson, better known as Quake. They battle and Talbot overwhelms Quake, with her flashing back to an erased timeline where Graviton destroyed the Earth. Thanks to an assist from Phil Coulson, however, Daisy beats Talbot and punches him into space, finally killing him and destroying the Gravitonium after four seasons of buildup.
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