Five Reasons to be Psyched for Slingshot

Six digital episodes of Agents of SHIELD spin-off Slingshot premiere on ABC.com/ABC app on December 13. The episodes center on Elena ‘Yo-Yo’ Rodriguez and are between three to six minutes long, which means you can binge them in a single sitting.

This post does contain spoilers for the season four winter finale of Agents of SHIELD.

Yo-Yo has quickly become a fan favorite ever since dashing on to the scene in season three’s episode, ‘Bouncing Back.’ When we first met Yo-yo, she didn’t speak any English, but managed to have a meaningful conversation with Mack. She related her Inhuman powers to her faith. Natalia Cordova-Buckley, who plays Yo-Yo, said in a video on the ABC website that the series will focus on her transition from just a person trying to do the right thing to a full-fledged SHIELD agent.

From the ABC site:

“As a person with powers, she must sign the recently instituted Sokovia Accords, the worldwide agreement that regulates and tracks those with super powers. However, the restrictions of the Accords are in direct conflict with a personal mission she’s desperate to fulfill, a mission that will test her abilities, her allegiances, and will include some tense encounters with our most popular S.H.I.E.L.D. team members.”

In excitement over the series, we have compiled this list as to why we love Yo-yo.

• Yo-Yo takes no ones crap. In many of her scenes on the show, Yo-Yo is often calling out others to remind them that she is in fact, standing in the room and can speak for herself. In doing this, she shows she is competent in her abilities and personhood. By drawing attention to these occasions, we also get to see the archaic power order of SHIELD being tossed on its head.
• Yo-Yo keeps her identity. Becoming an agent is hard enough, but Yo-Yo has seemingly embraced it. In contrast to Daisy’s transition from private citizen to agent, Yo-Yo jumped on the ball with a preceding wisdom, and managed to do it without sacrificing her core values.
• She’s been through hell, and she keeps walking through it. In the first episode we meet Yo-Yo, her cousin who was helping her destroy a drug lord’s weapons is skilled as a result. While she weeps for her cousin, she gets back on her feet in no time to become one of SHIELD’s biggest assets.
• She’s nearly mastered her powers. Yo-Yo’s power is that she can run really fast and return to her starting point in the time span of a heartbeat. Check your pulse, your heart beats pretty quick right? Yo-Yo has grown tremendously in using her powers since we first saw her use her power to steal some guns. As we last saw in the season four winter finale, Yo-Yo was capable of running down an entire hallway in a single heartbeat, as well as ripping a page out of Quicksilver’s book and adjusting the variables toward her team’s side. She must have been working on reducing her heart rate in order to get that accomplished.
• From the get-go, every time Mack and Yo-Yo would share a scene it was like we were watching a match being struck. The pair work well together, and Yo-Yo is even able to draw Mack out of his comfort zone. We were relieved to see the pair finally resolve that built up tension in the season four winter finale.

Yo-Yo is a total badass and we can’t wait to see her continue to shine in Slingshot.

You can visit the ABC site to learn more about the series, click here.