I'm hoping it's your second option, but think it's probably the third.

Bah. That article seems to be strongly hinting that Ward is brainwashed.

Really? I got the complete opposite vibe myself.

When the zoomed in on Ward's face as Garrett was bloviating, I expected to have a POV switch and see Clairvoyant text scroll across the bottom of Ward's view saying something like "Kill him next."

I suspect, and will be disappointed, if Ward is merely brainwashed.

Mo and Jed interview! These postmortems are great reads.

Whedon: In our very first conversations with Joss, we were talking about what the show could be, and the challenges and opportunities a S.H.I.E.L.D. show would bring. We were discussing, all sort of on the same page, and there was a moment -- "Oh, there is this one other thing."

Just a small thing.

Neat to hear about all the little hints they've dropped in:

And then in "Seeds," there's a really nice moment where Skye is standing at the wall of valor, and we hear Coulson's voice off-camera saying that the world is full of evil, pain, lies and death -- and the camera pans and lands on Ward when he says "lies" and "evil."

I often don't get home in time to see entire episodes. Has Hand been established as someone who would tell an agent to kill someone in custody? It seemed odd in someone Coulson was willing to have call him Phil.

I expected to have a POV switch and see Clairvoyant text scroll across the bottom of Ward's view

I had this thought, too.

That would have been awesome.

After reading the post-mortems with the writers talking about how they planned for Ward to be a bad guy from the beginning and pointing at all the hints, I will be extremely annoyed if the triple-agent thing ends up being true.

Just watched it, and HOLY CRAP. I spent the whole episode saying "Statistically, *someone* on Coulson's team has to be Hydra," and I was kind of figuring either Ward or Simmons. He'd better not be brainwashed.

Did Skye get the Hydra backup back from Ward?

Every time Ward wandered away, I said "He's got the hard drive!" I feel like if he still had it, surely Skye would have said something in the last scene. Except they still don't know Ward is Hydra. So maybe not.

Oooh. May's going to kill Ward, isn't she? I hope it's horrible and painful.

I thought the Hydra logo when the show went to commercial before the last scene was a nice touch.

BELL: Let me put this on another level: Ward had put Garrett on this plane for a reason, and so he had to come in and be accepted to this team. And so if you’d look at how he related to everyone — Coulson loves projects. Here is a guy who didn’t have people skills. So Garrett says, can you help this guy Ward round off some of the rough edges? So he comes onto the team. Coulson is now vested, because he’s got a project. Who is Ward’s greatest threat? May. What does he do? He seduces her. Who is the one unknown on the team? Skye. He becomes her S.O. How do you get everyone rally around and trust you? You jump out of a plan trying to save someone else. Now, he had a parachute. Let’s say he failed to save Simmons, he would’ve been fine. Everything he’s done has solidified how people feel about him over the course of the season.

LOEB: And what was the next thing he had to do after he saved Simmons? He had someone on the plane who was jealous of him: Fitz. And what did they do? They went on a mission together and they had a really good time together. And a bromance was started. And that took care of that.

Oooh. Well played, you bastards.