J. August Richards spoke with Hypable about the shocks of Deathlok, and finding light in the darkness of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

How have Mike’s arcs in season 1 and season 2 felt different to you?

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This season, Mike is owning his abilities and what he’s become. Although I try to constantly remember that there’s a child out there missing his father while I’m playing the character, so I think Mike is growing more into Deathlok, if you will. I think that’s how they differ.

And because he’s owning his powers more now too, I try to find any moments of levity if I can, even though it’s a very dark character. You know, we don’t know exactly how human he is, versus how mechanical or how much machine he is. So it’s sort of a balancing act.

It was a major surprise when Mike returned a few episodes ago. What was it like for you to see the reaction to your return?

I’ve never in my life gotten a response like the one I got from [Afterlife]. I’ve never gotten so much love in my life, from social media, from real life, from family, from friends — the surprise really got everybody, so I was really happy with that.

They even took my name out of the opening credits so it would be even more of a surprise. So I think that’s why it caught so many people off-guard, because you know, this new audience, they’re so savvy that if they see your name in the front of the credits, they know. So we took my name out of the opening credits so that it would be a huge surprise, and it just really worked!

Mike’s ability to have agency and act on his own has been a major theme for the character. Do you think he has regained some of the independence he lost in season 1?

Yes! He is definitely is acting on his own. This is who he’s always wanted to be, the Mike that we see now. From the beginning, the first time we saw him, he says “I could be a hero.” He believes that he has that power within himself, to do something larger than life.

So he’s definitely his own man now, but the thing is, throughout this process of getting the mechanical leg and having things done to his body, it’s changed him forever. He’s not sort of the super-human guy we met at the beginning. Now he’s definitely, he’s got a lot of things going on internally that cause him to be a little mechanical. But in spite of that, he’s definitely in charge of his own actions.

That idea is definitely highlighted in last night’s episode — especially in the scene where he responds to Bakshi trying to trade him. How did you interpret that really tense moment?

You know, that word you used, agency, it was like that. I was thinking, “Here we go again, someone else is using me as a pawn for their agenda.” But this time, Mike wasn’t gonna let it happen, he was about to fire some rockets off right away, and I love that. It was almost like a flashback; it was the Clairvoyant all over again.

And why do you think Mike has decided to follow Coulson’s orders now? Is he acting as he wants to, or as he thinks he needs to?

Right now, I feel like he’s doing exactly what he wants to do. I feel that Mike owes a great debt to Coulson, and he wants to repay that. There’s so much bad stuff that’s happened because of Mike that he feels like he has to pay the debt back — he’s always felt like that, from the second time we saw him in the first season. He came back saying that he was going to make it up to everybody.

And I almost feel like Mike feels this tremendous sense of guilt all the time, about everything that’s happened, and he takes it all on his shoulders. I almost feel like that changes his behavior even more so than the mechanical parts. Just the damage that he’s done to himself from this great sense of guilt, has almost shut him down emotionally — more so than the mechanical parts.

Check out page 2 to find out what it’s like for Richards to work in the Whedon-verse again.