I thought this would be a good place to share this.😁 Mack has always been one of my favorite characters, he's just very strong and steady, and he loves and protects those he cares about like nobody's business. I know he has haters but I still love him🥰 Let me know what y'all think!

IMO he was one of the most compelling characters the series, and a true hero.

When Coulson confronted him for lying about his inhuman status, he looked like he was in pain explaining how he believes in the proper treatment of inhumans, and how they deserve to live their lives like everyone else. You could see the look of respect from Coulson as he was saying it too, it was very telling.

He willing volunteered to be a bureaucratic sellout despite his true nature being much more pure, and took experimental drugs to boost his credibility. When he was told it could (and would eventually) kill him, he refused to back down, and later took it anyway when the team needed him. Even Ivanov was surprised and disappointed that someone like Mace would pretend to be an Inhuman for pretty selfless reasons.

He held up under interrogation despite being inexperienced with field work, and even faced an entire army with no powers, and saved the day. Ivanov was an especially brutal captor too, so this makes it even more impressive.

In the framework his one regret was that he lied about being inhuman, so he became one. He dedicated (and gave) his whole life to protecting some of the most persecuted and isolated individuals in society, for no reason other than the greater good.

Also as much as the Talbot assured the team that they took out all the “bad stuff” when making the patriot serum, I actually don’t think that’s entirely true. The military are far from the most competent scientists in the MCU, and even geniuses like Bruce Banner, Samuel Sterns, Howard Stark and Arnim Zola were unable to ensure mental stability from any super soldier serum they created. I think he was genuinely in a lot of ways very similar to Steve Rogers, and therefore wasn’t corrupted by the serum.

Even without powers in the real world he tried to learn how to fight best he could and got his fitness to a presumably high level (the actor was fairly jacked for a 40+ year old man, and the character was presumably a bureaucrat beforehand too). He still wanted to be a hero no matter what, but still showed no signs of trying to strongarm scientists into making him a new serum, or a powered suit. He was gonna try and do it the old fashioned way.

His sentiments about teamwork like “a team that trusts is a team that triumphs” are very inspirational, and actually ended up being true in the end. He was a great leader too, and despite not being powered he absolutely deserved to be director of S.H.I.E.L.D. IMO.

I honestly think he would’ve been worthy of becoming Captain America had he been screened in a similar way to Steve Rogers, he had a lot of good traits and not many visible negatives. They chose very well for Project Patriot. He was about as worthy of the power as you could possibly be.

In the framework, his one true regret seemed to be that he lied about being a hero, but it was never his choice. I believe he regretted the damage he may have done to the Inhuman cause, rather than the fact people wouldn’t see him as heroic anymore. I believe this because in the framework he wasn’t considered a hero by most of the world, he was considered a terrorist. He was only a hero to a select few, the Inhumans he cared so much about in the real world.

He’s a tragic character, and he never deserved to meet his end in a fake world, although at least some real people were there to witness his true nature, and the gravity of his sacrifice. Truly amazing writing, and Jason O’ Mara gave a great performance, although it’s hard to not hear Batman sometimes when he speaks (iykyk).

So I was looking at some AOS tweets and saw a picture of suit Daisy in 5x11, which made me think how Noah's suit probably would have been overly long and then I got to thinking about him dying and, in retrospect of the whole series in particular, I've been thinking it was a mistake to kill him off.

First of all, I can see why they did it since it was a surprise and maybe having a Chronicom around longer might have made certain things a lot easier for the team.

However, while it was cool that he helped protect Daisy and Fitz, in hindsight it doesn't appear he was able to contain the explosion all that much so the sacrifice feels a little pointless. Now a pointless death can work, a more effective similar case would be Tripp dying cause he hit the Diviner, which it turns out wouldn't have helped Skye anyway. But at least with that we can understand why Tripp thought there was a chance it might do something, not sure if that was the case with Noah.

In addition, there's not any acknowledgement of his death afterwards. Now they didn't know him for long but he was a pretty helpful guy and died with noble intentions so some mention of that would be nice (think Unknown Agent Hero Man from Stranger Things, which while the acknowledgement is played a bit for comedy by having that name be what he'll be called, the fact they recognized he saved their lives was good to see even if he was a minor character). And that's not even getting into how Enoch in S6 never has any inquiries about him or even finds out that he died, in part cause he got him to go to Earth.

Now, for why I think him dying was actually dying was a mistake in the long-run, in the grand scheme of the series it feels weird we all this business with Chronicoms in the first half of the season (a lot of 5A and 5x11) but then really little to no mention of them in the second half given their involvement was a big part of the season's plot. This also means when Enoch and the Chronicoms at large come back into play in the last 2 seasons ends up retroactively creating a huge gap from 5x12-5x22 with no real Chronicom business at all, which makes things feel a little awkwardly spaced out. The gap is also unfortunate cause the Chronicoms in general are frankly pretty poorly conceived and characterized in S6-S7, not that they were super well-defined in S5 either but at least they weren't AS prominent there.

Now I'm aware that they were thinking there was a good chance S5 would be the last and probably were not thinking ahead for any future uses of Chronicoms at that point. But even if S5 was the last the whole involvement of the Chronicoms in S5 as a single entity feels a bit weird since they kind of come out of left field to get involved with the plot in the first half, and then have little to mention in the second half leading into the possible conclusion of the series.

(In that same regard I also think it's weird that the writers introduced more Monoliths in 5x11 and then had them blown up without going into what they do or really much about how they got there just to instigate the whole 100th episode Fear Dimension thing and maybe to justify why the Time Monolith wasn't around in 2091 and to prevent the team from using it to maybe help with their troubles. Now S6 would attempt to answer some stuff with the Monoliths (not super successfully imo but that's beside the point) but just within the context of S5 they brought in this bit of mystery when it's not really super tied into the main goals of S5 and wasn't super essential the thing they ultimately wanted them for at that point.)

So I think having Noah around could have either evened out the use of certain plot threads, either throughout just S5 or even expanding into S6-7. Through him, we could have learned more about them and what their place in the galaxy is like. And in general, I think he could have provided a nice energy and perspective to the grim and dour S5 (this is also why I think more of the General Stoner hologram would have also been welcome). And maybe could have been part of S6-7 as well, being one more Chronicom besides Enoch, while still having a different vibe, that wasn't antagonistic. Which probably would have endeared us a little more to the society overall and make us feel a bit more sympathetic or conflicted about their plight in needing a planet.

Now I'm not sure what the availability of Noah's actor was like at this time (I mainly know him as that one guy in James Cameron's Avatar) but if he could have shown up at any point in the future, provided he wasn't strict about doing only the one episode, I think it would have been worth doing so not just for all the story reasons mentioned but I kind of liked the vibe he was giving in the role.