Calvin Zabo

TALK PAGE

"He's a butcher." "And what are you?" "I'm a man trying to put my family back together!"

- Calvin Zabo and Raina

Calvin "Cal" Zabo is a medical doctor of ambiguous morality. After being violently separated from his gifted wife and baby daughter by HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D., he started the quest to avenge his wife and find his daughter, committing numerous crimes that have caused others to consider him a Monster. During this time, Zabo developed a formula giving the user above average strength. However, the side effects of the unstable formula gave Zabo an erratic personality and severe issues controlling his emotions, particularly anger. After discovering his daughter's whereabouts, he made a temporary alliance with Daniel Whitehall's HYDRA branch so he could take his daughter to the ancient Kree City where she could fulfill her destiny.

Hunan Province
"I worked in a clinic. People liked me. I liked myself."

- Calvin Zabo

Calvin Zabo worked in a clinic in China as a young adult, where he met Jiaying, who would become his wife. As he could not understand Chinese, she helped him with translations. After a while, the two of them had a daughter, whom Zabo delivered himself, and they named her Daisy.

Men claiming to be S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, but who were in truth members of HYDRA, came to their clinic and demanded that Jiaying be handed over. Zabo and Jiaying resisted, but their efforts were in vain, as she was kidnapped nonetheless. He then left Daisy among people he trusted, and set off to search for his beloved wife. He later found her remains in Austria, apparently dead as a result of a vivisection performed by Daniel Whitehall. When Zabo discovered her body, he swore vengeance on her killer. Zabo refused to allow his beloved wife to die and using his medical skills, put her body back together until her Inhuman powers allowed her to recover and return to life.

Understanding, however, that he would be unable to defeat Whitehall in his current form, Zabo began to try and make himself stronger by dabbling in chemistry. Eventually he concocted a formula which made him stronger, but also much more volatile. He later returned to his village, only to find that Daisy had been rescued by S.H.I.E.L.D.. He went into a murderous rage, and butchered the entire population of the village and the S.H.I.E.L.D. teams who are coming for extract an 0-8-4. The first S.H.I.E.L.D. team were killed and a second team, composed with Linda Avery and Richard Lumley, were succeed to extract Daisy to safety. But when they land, each members of the team, including Linda Avery, were killed by Zabo himself. Lumley manages to give Daisy safety and arranges to disappear from S.H.I.E.L.D. circulation. Zabo then set off to find his daughter. In his attempts to do so, Zabo came across another gifted individual, Wendell Levi. With Levi, Zabo was able to look at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Index, but could not find Daisy on it.

When Zabo told Jiaying that he had lost their daughter, she was heartbroken and divorced him. Zabo swore that he would reunite their family one day.

Monster
"I wasn't strong. I couldn't protect the people I loved. So I tried to change, improve myself, with chemistry. Results were... inconsistent. Some volatility issues. But I keep working on a formula. Always tweaking.."

- Calvin Zabo

Zabo found Raina living on the streets as a beggar, holding onto stories that her grandmother had told her. At that time, she was in Thailand with a group of friends who called themselves "freaks." He sheltered them and raised their self-esteem. Meanwhile, he revealed to Raina that, if she could reunite him with his daughter, he could prove that her grandmother's stories about the Kree were true.

Years later, Zabo was visited by Raina, who had discovered his daughter, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent now going by the name Skye, and presented him with a picture.

The Diviner
"Bring me my daughter and I will show the both of you."

- Calvin Zabo

Raina retrieved what he truly wanted, the Obelisk, and in order to test its authenticity, instructed Raina to hold it. Instead of turning into stone, the Obelisk glowed orange with the Words of Creation, confirming Raina was an Inhuman. He was pleased by the Obelisk's reaction. Raina begged Zabo for more information about the Obelisk, but in order to explain to her its significance, he required his daughter. He ordered Raina to bring him his daughter, and he would show the both of them. A few days later Zabo was performing an illegal surgery on two gang members who had been injured in a fight; one of the gang members drew a gun, saying he planned on killing the man who injured his friend. Zabo politely asked the gang-member to put the gun away, which the man did since Zabo asked politely. Raina appeared, having been threatened by HYDRA leader Daniel Whitehall and begged him to give up the Obelisk. He refused, saying that she has still not brought him Skye. Grabbing Raina's throat, he asked her if she feared Whitehall more than him. Raina told him he was losing control and needed her to help him with his rage. Loosening his grip, he refused to give up the Obelisk and told her to plead to Whitehall for her life. As Zabo returned to the surgery, the gang-member told him to calm down, Zabo did not react well and murdered both of the gang-members. Later, Coulson's team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents reached his hideout, after following Raina, only to discover it deserted. A picture of him was left on the ground and Skye found it in shock. Meanwhile he was hiding in his car outside and watched the team searching his hideout through a secret camera embedded in a clock on the wall. After seeing the two corpses of the two gang-members he had killed, Skye called him a monster. In response he angrily smashed his tablet, which he used to access the hidden cameras. He threw the tablet out of the window and drove away. He then went to HYDRA Laboratories to meet Daniel Whitehall. When the guards tried to stop him, he promptly slayed them both. He then showed Dr. Whitehall the Obelisk, and offered not only to teach him how to control the power of the Diviner, as it is called in its native language, but how to survive it. When asked his motivation, Zabo said that they had a common enemy: Phil Coulson.

The New Alliance
"He's a murderer!... You forgot to mention that."

- Skye

Schematics for the Splinter Bomb were sent to Toshiro Mori from Daniel Whitehall and Calvin Zabo.

When Skye attempted to get information about Senator Christian Ward from his brother Grant Ward, the conversation strayed into discussing her father. Phil Coulson activated the Inertial Confinement Laser Barrier to stop the discussion. Later, Skye returned to Vault D and had Ward tell his version of the massacre at the Hunan village.

Unable to sleep, Skye confided to Coulson that she was upset because everything that was happening seemed to be connected. She mentioned her father's connection to the Diviner, HYDRA, the alien symbols, GH.325, and Grant Ward. Daniel Whitehall had a meeting with his scientists, but was disgusted when they only told him things he had already known since 1945. Zabo was brought in and he told Whitehall that he would help him learn the origin of the Diviner and edited the story that Whitehall told him of what he knew.

Zabo was given a team of operatives to take to Australia to find the city matching the City Blueprints. When S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Antoine Triplett was shot during a firefight there, Zabo assisted in saving his life, in order to talk face-to-face with Phil Coulson. He revealed to Coulson that the Diviner had something within it, but when Coulson asked if it was equal to the Tesseract, he had no clue of the comparison. The Doctor then escaped, leaving the medical care of Triplett to Coulson and Fitz.

Before Coulson could tell Skye that he and Leo Fitz met her father, a match was found by the satellites searching for the Kree City. Meanwhile, Zabo met Grant Ward during his meeting with Whitehall. Jemma Simmons asked Antoine Triplett his impression of Zabo; before Trip could describe his insanity, Skye entered and joined the discussion. Coulson decided that he did not want Skye to go with him to the hidden city in San Juan because he did not want to accidentally reunite her with her father; he instead assigned her to go to Vancouver to help Raina instead. During the mission, Raina confided in Skye about how she met her father, and how he had saved her when she was living on the street and he took her in. Raina also debunked Skye's belief that she was an alien, but did tell her that they both had the potential to be more than humans. When Zabo returned to HYDRA, Whitehall introduced him to Grant Ward, who had been a team member of Skye's. Whitehall believed that as a team they would be able to be able do achieve many things. Ward asked him how his meeting with Coulson had gone, Zabo said that it was worth while, as it was always worth looking your enemy right in the eye. As he said this he looked at Whitehall.

Family Reunion
"Best day ever."

- Calvin Zabo

Zabo sat in a room and waited for Grant Ward to bring Skye to him inside the Ponce de León Theater‏‎, a temporary base HYDRA established in San Juan. Zabo told Skye how he had waited so long to be reunited with her. Though she was repulsed by him, calling him a monster, she listened as he told her of how he met Jiaying. She corrected his story when he said that S.H.I.E.L.D. took her to Austria to kill her, revealing that it was HYDRA that truly did the deed. Zabo told her he had known all along that Whitehall killed his wife and that he was using the HYDRA leader to reunite them; he planned to rip Whitehall apart in revenge. Whitehall had a meeting with Zabo, Skye, Ward, and Raina, wanting to know if Skye would survive touching the Diviner. When she did and attacked a HYDRA operative with it, Zabo lunged at Whitehall, but Whitehall had him knocked out. When he awoke he was stopped with a Control Device that paralyzed him remotely. Stunned, Zabo used the opportunity that Ward gave him by distracting their guard to remove the device and kill the guard. He did not free Ward or Skye because he did not want her to see or Ward to help him kill Whitehall; he left them still bound. Whitehall was about to shoot Zabo, but Phil Coulson shot the HYDRA leader from behind. Angered that he could not exact his revenge on the now dead man, Zabo took his rage out on Coulson. Coulson fought back for a while, but Zabo eventually got the upper hand and beat Coulson into submission. Skye found the two struggling, and at gunpoint, told her father to leave and never see her again. Zabo agreed to leave, but promised that she would eventually come to him for comfort, because no one else would understand her after her transformation. He also revealed her birth name to her: Daisy.

In Hiding
"We can't stop now. We can't let them make us afraid or make the world afraid of us! They are the criminals, and we're gonna shine a light on that!"

- Calvin Zabo

Zabo went into hiding following his confrontation with S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA, intending to leave Puerto Rico inside one of the container units of a cargo ship. Raina, who had traveled with Zabo using that method many times before, went to the cargo ship to confront him, having been transformed into a new Inhuman form, which she considered monstrous. She demanded to know what had happened to her, but Zabo simply told her that she had become what she always wanted and there was no way back. Raina then revealed that Skye had also gone through a transformation; he danced with glee and swore he would have to help her through her confusion the same way Jiaying helped others years before. However, his glee turned to horror as he reminded himself that Skye would go running back to Coulson's arms, who would most likely put her on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Index. He convinced himself that Skye would come to him when his prediction regarding her friends growing to fear her came true. A dejected Raina retorted that it would never happen nor would Skye ever love him, though he ignored her. He then got the idea to contact other powered people he knew from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Index so he could exact his revenge on Coulson. When Raina told him that she could not live looking like that, Zabo dismissed her and left.

Slicing Talons
Zabo quickly reconnected with Wendell Levi to assemble a group of people from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Index to help him destroy Phil Coulson. He removed the microchip in Levi's arm that kept him from accessing technology and Levi hacked into the files of the Index to find potential members that Zabo felt was wronged by the organization because they had powers. Zabo recruited Francis Noche; then the three went to the home of Karla Faye Gideon and convinced her to join by freeing her of her restraints. Together, they broke into the Brynmore Psychiatric Facility and freed its prisoners John Bruno and David Angar. Leaving Bruno behind, the group travelled to Manitowoc, Wisconsin to exact revenge. Along the way, the team stopped at a diner to eat where Zabo gained the sympathy of his compatriots by explaining to them how Coulson killed Daniel Whitehall, despite his desire to do so himself, and how he gained his strength. The group desired to teach Coulson and S.H.I.E.L.D. a lesson.

At a high school in Manitowoc, Angar's muzzle was removed, but before he could scream, Zabo advised him to "make it count"; Zabo watched as Angar screamed in the middle of a football field filled with athletes and cheerleaders. They then awaited Coulson's arrival. When Coulson arrived, Zabo spoke on a microphone, announcing the team as the Slicing Talons and that they wanted revenge on S.H.I.E.L.D. for the wrongs that it has done to gifted individuals. Zabo approached Coulson with his teammates, except for Gideon who was in the bleachers with a group of unconscious students, when Melinda May arrived with Skye at gunpoint. This made Zabo hesitant and explain his motives over the microphone. He then passed the microphone to Angar. Suddenly, Gordon teleported onto the football field and warped Zabo away.

Reunion with the Inhumans
"You're making too much noise." "Noise? I'm sounding a battle cry! I'm protecting us from S.H.I.E.L.D.!" "There is no "us." You're not one of us. You're just a science experiment."

- Gordon and Calvin Zabo

Zabo threw a tantrum and destroyed the furniture in the room he was placed. Gordon later entered and asked if Zabo was finished. Zabo asked Gordon why he teleported him instead of Skye; Gordon explained that Zabo was creating too much attention towards the Inhumans and, since he was not one of them, it was not appreciated. Gordon then motioned Zabo to the door to see the one who would decide his fate. Zabo adjusted his attire to be more presentable and walked slowly out the door.

Keeping His Promise
Ultimately, Zabo found himself in a room with no exit, neither windows or doors; he pounded and rampaged to no avail. One day, Gordon teleported within the room; Zabo demanded to be released. Zabo soon realized that, after days without a visitor, Gordon was there because Skye was in Afterlife. Zabo then attacked him, but Gordon used his strength and teleportation to strike and evade Zabo, who eventually relented because he had hurt his already sore hands. Hours later, while Zabo still suffered from the pain in his hands, Jiaying and Gordon appeared in the room. She thanked and hugged him for keeping his promise to reunite her with their daughter Skye and help her fulfill her destiny in becoming an Inhuman. However, when he asked her if he could see her, Jiaying told him he could not.

Family Reunion
Zabo was informed by Jiaying that he would have an opportunity to have dinner with her and Skye. Zabo prepared for the meal by collecting daisies and wearing a suit. When Skye and Jiaying arrived, he handed Skye the flowers and greeted her warmly. Jiaying mentioned that Skye did not know when her birthday was, and Zabo immediately told her that it was July 2nd, going on to happily tell the story of her birth. Zabo then revealed that Skye was born in 1988, not 1989 as Skye had originally believed.

Personality Traits
Since experiencing the trauma of discovering the brutally murdered corpse of his wife and experimenting on himself, Calvin Zabo has demonstrated a highly unstable personality, easily prone to outbursts of rage, driven by a desperate motivation to restore the family he feels he has lost while seeking revenge on his transgressors.

Under normal conditions Zabo maintains a calm demeanor, expressing a high level of intelligence and a sensible, levelheaded personality, but at times may still express mild anger or annoyance in a more tactful manner.

Powers
"If my daughter wasn't here, I would tear you and your men to pieces."

- Calvin Zabo to Daniel Whitehall


 * Enhanced Strength: Calvin Zabo shows physical strength that exceeds that of an average man, being capable of easily killing a man with his bare hands and breaking a HYDRA operative's neck by lifting him and tossing him on the floor. Derived from experiments Zabo performed on himself hoping to protect his daughter after her mother's death, his strength allowed him to toss a now transformed Raina to the ground, even though she had him by the throat, once he got enraged when she insulted his daughter.

Abilities
"I can help. I'm a doctor."

- Calvin Zabo


 * Master Physician: Zabo has extensive medical training, having worked in a clinic in his youth, and having performed underground surgeries in his recent years. He possesses extensive medical knowledge regarding human physiology, which in turn makes him effective at saving lives, or killing others whenever he loses his composure. He has used his medical knowledge to create a chemical formula that enhanced his physiology and improved his strength, though he was not entirely successful with it, as it gave him a more violent personality.
 * Kree Knowledge: Zabo has extensive knowledge of the Kree and their intentions for Earth, probably learned from his wife. He was able to tell Raina about her true nature, and revealed to Daniel Whitehall the existence of the Kree City and the properties of the Diviner.

Family

 * Grandfather
 * Jiaying - Former Wife
 * Daisy - Daughter

Allies

 * Raina
 * Grant Ward
 * Slicing Talons
 * Karla Faye Gideon
 * David Angar
 * Francis Noche
 * Wendell Levi
 * Gordon

Enemies

 * S.H.I.E.L.D.
 * Phil Coulson
 * Melinda May
 * Antoine Triplett †
 * Leo Fitz
 * Brick † - Victim
 * Deacon † - Victim
 * HYDRA - Former Allies
 * Daniel Whitehall †
 * Sunil Bakshi
 * Agent 33

Trivia

 * In the comics, Calvin Zabo is best known as the supervillain Mister Hyde, a recurring enemy of Thor and Daredevil, and father of superpowered S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Daisy Johnson.

Behind the Scenes

 * Though the character's full name wasn't yet revealed in the series, it was confirmed by Maurissa Tancharoen that the character is Calvin Zabo.
 * Kyle MacLachlan did not play Calvin Zabo in the character's first appearance, Beginning of the End; the character was instead portrayed by a stand-in.