Dove Cameron Talks Shocking Agents Of SHIELD Ruby Reveal

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the March 2 episode of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD. 

After months of hints, teases, and secret-keeping, Dove Cameron finally made her Marvel's Agents of SHIELD debut on Friday, sending shockwaves through the show as the mysterious and ruthless Ruby. 

During the episode, fans watched as Team SHIELD came back from the future, only to have General Hale's (Catherine Dent) team lure them into a trap. Leading the charge was a masked assassin who shockingly sliced off Yo-Yo Rodriguez's (Natalia Cordova-Buckley) arms using a chakram. Much to the surprise of everyone tuning in, the perpetrator was none other than Hale's daughter — Cameron's Ruby. 

Cameron spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the twist that left fans shocked, and about her role as Ruby as a whole. The 19-year-old starlet explained that she understands if viewers will view her negatively after what her character did to Yo-Yo, since she knows that's what comes with playing a villain. In fact, she said actually welcomes backlash over what happened in the show.

"I think if people hate me, that's a good thing. If they leave this episode feeling super heartbroken over Yo-Yo's arms and couldn't stand to look at me and wish I'm not on the show anymore, that's a great thing. You never bring on a villain to be liked. I'm excited, actually," said Cameron. "Yo-Yo also loses her arms in the comics, so they had to fulfill that in some way, so I feel lucky that I was the one they trusted to pull off a big plot point. I feel badass."

In terms of how Cameron's Ruby became the villain she is now, the actress couldn't reveal too much about her backstory, but did dish up just enough to give us a better understanding of how Ruby operates. 

"I can say why she's locked away is because Hale is afraid of what she can do. Clearly, by the end of the first episode, Hale has raised this girl. She can't be older than 18, and she's raised this girl probably since birth, probably since she could talk, to be an assassin, to be this murderous, crazy, skilled assassin ... That girl is skilled. That girl is not someone who you would want going up against you," explained Cameron. "[Hale] trained her daughter like that to keep her in line. She's got to be strict with her, she's got to keep her caged, because if she mutinied, something bad could happen. I think Hale fears that she could kill her."

Overall, Cameron stated that Ruby is "definitely Hale's greatest, proudest creation," and that she's "ready to fulfill what she feels is her purpose" and won't "shy away from an opportunity" to be a part of Hale's anti-SHIELD group.

Cameron also noted that she wasn't told a whole lot about her character while she was going through the auditioning and casting processes. "I didn't get called in and get any special information. I just went in like anybody else would, and they told me nothing, basically," she said. "The sides, the script that they gave me, was this one-page monologue ... [and] the monologue itself was clearly fictitious. It didn't end up making the scripts; the scene never happened. It was just a test scene so none of us would really know any information about the show."

Rather than feel troubled by the unknown, Cameron approached it with an open mind and crafted Ruby in an organic way, letting the slow stream of character info inform her performance as time went by. "As the season went on, I was very pleased to see where Ruby goes, what happens to Ruby — it's a very challenging character," Cameron stated. "She's got every layer in her, so you can say whatever you want about Ruby and it would probably be, to some degree, and, to some degree, not so on the money. She's a wild card."

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD returns on Friday, March 9 at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.