Agent Philip Broyles

• There are many different angles that can be taken on this one, but we are going to go with what works best, and that is one thing. JJ Abrams is consistent in that he always has a very in depth back story for every main character and he slowly lets us learn it piece by piece, almost as if we were on a 'need to know basis'.
  
  
• Agent Broyles is playing a role that Abrams has had in most of his other shows. In Alias, Jack Bristow (Jack's wife, the mother of Sydney Bristow, was actually a spy for the "bad guys"). In Lost, James "Sawyer" (Sawyer watched his parents die in a murder/suicide which led him on a path to being on the island and having no less than a dozen connections with other passengers on the flight which crash landed).
  In all of the afore mentioned roles, the character had a very important connection going into the past with the main story line. The same goes for Agent Broyles. We have seen him do more than just "collaborate" with the members on the panel following the pattern. When he handed over the Amber Disc to Nina in a private meeting with her at an office in the MD building, there was more to that than just giving it to MD to study. Broyles has a connection with either MD itself or MD did something/experimented on either a direct family member, or most likely his wife (or the war injury theory you'll read later on). As the show progresses, we will find out more about his past, and there will be a tie in with MD in one way or another. He is dedicated to something personal in his investigation of the pattern, and we will be made to realize what that is on a 'need to know' basis.
  
  
• We know Agent Broyles was a Marine. We could easily theorize that during a tour of duty in a foreign country he suffered some sort of serious injury. Remember Nina's discussion with Agent Dunham where she says MD controls huge private armies. In some way Agent Broyles was injured in relation to MD soldiers and in turn was given some sort of technology (like Nina's robotic prosthetic) to enable him to resume life as normal. This is where he initially met Nina, and for one reason or another believes she cannot be trusted.
  
  
• The pattern has only been investigated for the last Nine months as of episode 1.02, and it can be viewed that either MD asked for the governments help with the problems of scientists going rogue, or the other way around. Being that Agent Broyles has intimate knowledge of MD and Nina from his past he was asked to head up the Team.
  
  
• Agent Broyles knows a lot more about both Bishops than he is letting on, there is no way he allows Peter Bishop to join in the investigation and be apart of the team unless he knows more about him than we have been told so far. He also has to know the history between Bell and Dr. Bishop ie., what experiments they worked on while sharing a lab.