Season 2 has seen Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD evolve into a much more serialized and compelling series, as the entire dynamic of what SHIELD is and who is on the team has been overhauled.

Ming-Na Wen as Agent Melinda May in Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.

Ming-Na Wen and Clark Gregg in Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.

Simon Kassianides and Ming-Na Wen in Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.

With the midseason finale airing Tuesday night – with the show taking a break until March 3rd, while Marvel’s Agent Carter airs in its timeslot beginning in January – I spoke to SHIELD star Ming-Na Wen. Taking a short rest from filming a very busy upcoming episode for her, Wen gave me some teases on the midseason finale and discussed the joys and technical challenges of playing Agent 33, the Hydra lookalike who looks like a disfigured version of May. We also chatted about May bonding with Skye more, the possibility of popping up on one of Marvel's Netflix series and more.Yeah, because it is the midseason finale and then we’ll be off the air for about two and a half months. We want to make it a great cliffhanger. We’ve got Whitehall’s team trying to find this alien city and Coulson’s team is trying to get there first. So there’s a race between the two factions.It has been such a challenging, exciting season. I think we definitely have evolved ourselves. The characters have evolved and the storytelling style of our show… I believe that it’s becoming so much more exciting and intriguing. I love it. I love the fact that i get to play two different characters right now between Agent May and Agent 33 and seeing how everybody’s choices in their characters affect the rest of the team. And the team is always evolving and I’m loving that the audience is right there with us. We have such a smart audience. It seems like, especially the Marvel fans, they’re just loving the serialized version of our show.It was so much fun. Clark [Gregg] texted me, like, “They’re going nuts over here!” When I was told by the producers that there’s going to be a May on May fight I got all giddy because I’ve always wanted to play a twin. It was on my bucket list. And then once I got the script, I started sweating bullets. It was just like, oh goodness, that’s a lot of undertaking. Because it wasn’t even just a fight scene. It had to deal with Coulson and May being able to ballroom dance and going undercover and May becoming this other person in disguise. it was just the most fun, challenging episode and I’m so happy that the fans love it.Yeah, I just brought out my clone.Wow, don’t we. I wish I was the Koenig character where there’s just like twelve of you. Right now, especially today, I would love to have a mommy Ming and then actor Ming and the wife Ming, and the Ming that’s going off to get an award tonight. It’s crazy. For me, I was just so thankful we had this incredible stunt team. Matt Mullins is our fight choreographer and he came up with the most amazing fight sequence. I spent like two three days with my trainer and my double, Sam Jo. We trained and we learned both sides of the fight, which can get very confusing but we made sure that we knew it before we went on set. And even when we went on set there was this constant changing of the wardrobes because believe it or not, there has to be as stunt person there for me to fight with! [Laughs] I really don’t fight myself and we had these crazy special effects.You know, Kevin Tancharoen directed it and he’s amazing with his directing with the Mortal Kombat series. So we had this really complicated sequence where we do this 360 and it reveals me and it reveals me again and there’s no cut and you wonder how that happens in one of the fight sequences. And that’s because they completely scanned and CGIed my face onto the stunt double. So there’s a tremendous amount of work that went into the fight scenes and we did not have a lot of time to do it. Mark [Kolpack] and the visual effects people were amazing and I love fighting in lingerie so I learned a lot of things.Yeah, I love when I’m tired up in the chair and stuff and people were saying “50 Shades of May.” I love it.

Continue to Page 2 as Wen discusses why Agent 33 is a tragic figure, May bonding with Skye and more.