4. Strong Female Characters
Buffy Summers. River Tam. Echo. Whedon has done almost as much to define the action heroine as James Cameron. Each of his shows has featured strong women, and I mean that literally and figuratively. Where many genre shows have female characters who can only be called three-dimensional because of their cup size, Whedon goes above and beyond to make his ladies just as powerful and developed as any male character.
In many way, Whedon set a standard for the action heroine that shows like Battlestar Galactica, Lost Girls, and Defiance have taken to heart. One can only hope that we will see the same amount of girl power in S.H.I.E.L.D. (something some have doubts about, considering the lack of character development for Black Widow and Maria Hill in The Avengers). Still, if our brief introduction to Ming-Na Wen’s Melinda May in the trailer is anything to go by, I don’t think we have anything to worry about.
