The deputy who ran the agency's day to day for a director who was never where he said he was.
Maria Hill is the person who actually runs S.H.I.E.L.D. while Nick Fury is off doing whatever Nick Fury does. Cobie Smulders plays her as a commander and deputy director appointed by Fury as his right hand, and the films use her as the voice of procedure in a building full of people who improvise. She oversees the Avengers Initiative, helps fake Fury’s death when Hydra moves against him, and is part of exposing Hydra inside the agency.
When S.H.I.E.L.D. falls she goes to work for Stark Industries, keeps quietly aiding Phil Coulson’s missions on the television side, and comes back to Fury’s side to fight Ultron and for the Battle of Sokovia. After the Avengers’ civil war she leaves Stark and joins Fury’s new team. The Snap takes her; five years later she is back.
Minor spoiler
She returns to the field beside Fury to help stop a Skrull attack, and is killed by Gravik, the Skrull leading it, while he is disguised as somebody she trusts. It happens during a bombing in Russia that she, Fury and Talos fail to prevent.
Show detailsThe one that is not her
Cobie Smulders is on screen in Spider-Man: Far From Home, but the character is not Hill: it is the Skrull Soren, Talos’s wife, impersonating her while Fury is off Earth. That film is therefore not in her list. An alternate version of Hill appears in the animated What If…?, which this catalogue does not count for live-action characters.