Upon Talbot’s hospitalization, authority in the search for S.H.I.EL.D. seems to have gone over to General Hale, an unpolished military officer in much the same vein as General Talbot.
She seems rough around the edges, overall, but not more than that. Until two of her agents flub the search for Fitz, and she shoots them in the head in an interrogation room.
This seemed, tonally, very bizarre. It also wasn’t clear what the motivation was. They weren’t the only people to have interacted with Fitz, nor to have failed to capture him. She, herself, seemingly signed off on letting Fitz work for them. Obviously, this isn’t accepted military procedure in the real world, but even the agents didn’t seem to be expecting anything like it. She didn’t even interrogate them to find what they knew or whether they were being truthful, seemingly, though she did that for Fitz. Even if for some reason an execution were desired, why would a general do it personally? And finally, she didn’t summarily shoot Fitz when she had him in custody, even though he was far more obviously her enemy than her own agents.
And all this was even weirder because it looked like the agents were kind of being set up as characters. They even took the time to show them being killed—so why?
It was very strange. It made me wonder whether there was something more here: was she being set up as a villain? Was it meant to imply that she had some hidden agenda? In short, is there any meaning to the general’s actions besides the obvious?