Joss Whedon's S.H.I.E.L.D to ABC!

[Captain Craig]

I was thinking along those lines as well. Maybe once or twice you get an actual C-list villain show up, during sweeps month or something. Perhaps Stiltman or Trapster is on a crime spree. Then maybe for a season finale if you could swing a cameo by Maria Hill(which is most logical option given the actress at this time imo) the audience gets that and she makes mention of how Fury is looking at this units performance.

[Christopher]

JD wrote:

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It also seems to me like the perfect way to bring the whole Marvel Universe into one show.

Hmm, interesting thought. It occurs to me that movie and TV rights don't always go together. We know that Marvel doesn't have the movie rights to Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, or Daredevil (though the latter may revert to Marvel if Fox can't get a movie into production pretty soon), but is it possible that they retain the live-action television rights to some of those characters or their supporting casts?

[nvek86]

I don't know about the others, but they probably don't have the tv rights for the X-Men, otherwise they wouldn't have had all the trouble they had when they produced "Mutant X".

[Captain Craig]

^^^
Wasn't that a late, late '90's issue though that would've overlapped somewhat with the first X-Men film debuting in 2000.

I would be curious to know what the status is of various Marvel properties in relation to TV use now. That could have some bearing on the discussion of what we'd like to see, speculate on within reason for this TV series. Most seem to know now where the Movie rights for each film property are located.

[davejames]

Excited for this, but now it seems like an even bigger shame that Gregg's Coulson is dead, because he would have been fun as hell to watch every week.

[CorporalCaptain]

davejames wrote:

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Excited for this, but now it seems like an even bigger shame that Gregg's Coulson is dead, because he would have been fun as hell to watch every week.

I think there's a possibility that he might get better.

[Christopher]

^Wow, really? A comics/SF character returning from the dead? Why, that's never happened before in the history of the world!

Heck, I was surprised they didn't reveal in the post-credits scene that Coulson's death was faked. After all, we didn't actually see him declared dead, just heard Fury say it had happened. It would be incredibly easy to reveal he was still alive.

[Satyrquaze]

Silvercrest wrote:

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I'm still deciding whether this is feasible for TV, but what about Quasar? The character did originate as a SHIELD agent and got his quantum-bands from them.

His powers are basically the equivalent of a Green Lantern. The effects wouldn't quite require the same level of interaction with his environment as those of an overtly physical character. Might be easier to animate. Plus the powers might be severely limited, at least at first. Maybe the show could spend the first season with him in a lab. He's just investigating the quantum-bands to see what they do, but they could throw in some superheroic stuff now and then as he learns.

You make a good point.

[Silvercrest]

I was hoping you'd chime in on this one!

[Admiral_Young]

"Daredevil" will be reverting back to Marvel in October. That's pretty much established. Joe Carnahan's pitch was Fox's last ditch effort to find someone.

I'm sure CorporalCaptain is referring to the popular fan theory that Coulson will be resurrected as the Vision rumours that have surfaced since the "Avengers", unless there are new rumours that I'm not aware of regarding how Coulson could return. Revealing that Coulson is alive would defeat the purpose of his death being the catalyst for uniting the team. Joss would not have done that. Coulson's death kind of reminded me of Wash's from "Serenity".

[davejames]

Admiral_Young wrote:

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Revealing that Coulson is alive would defeat the purpose of his death being the catalyst for uniting the team. Joss would not have done that. Coulson's death kind of reminded me of Wash's from "Serenity".

Agreed. That was too big a moment in the movie's story to just be undone with a snap of the fingers.

And the last thing I really want to see is him brought back as a superhero. I want him to be the same deadpan SHIELD agent we saw before.

[CorporalCaptain]

Admiral_Young wrote:

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I'm sure CorporalCaptain is referring to the popular fan theory that Coulson will be resurrected as the Vision rumours that have surfaced since the "Avengers", unless there are new rumours that I'm not aware of regarding how Coulson could return. Revealing that Coulson is alive would defeat the purpose of his death being the catalyst for uniting the team. Joss would not have done that. Coulson's death kind of reminded me of Wash's from "Serenity".

The Vision theory, what Christopher said about the comic/SF staple, but also—let's face it—Coulson seems pretty popular. There's nothing like brining back popular characters to really create a swell of enthusiasm.

I'm puzzled with your assessment that "Joss would not have done that." He and Penn already had Fury lie about the card to bring the team together; what's one more lie? The whole point of that scene of the reveal of the lie is actually undermined if you just assume that Fury's telling the truth.

[Christopher]

Admiral_Young wrote:

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"Daredevil" will be reverting back to Marvel in October. That's pretty much established. Joe Carnahan's pitch was Fox's last ditch effort to find someone.

Yep, that's probably the case, but I don't like to say things are certain until they actually happen, or get definitively announced as being about to happen. The thing about high-probability events is that there's still a small but nonzero probability that something else could happen instead.

I'm sure CorporalCaptain is referring to the popular fan theory that Coulson will be resurrected as the Vision rumours that have surfaced since the "Avengers", unless there are new rumours that I'm not aware of regarding how Coulson could return.

I don't know about CC, but I'm not talking about any rumors. I'm talking about what I was thinking when I actually saw the film for the first time. I was thinking:

a) We didn't actually see the moment of his death, just heard about it, and that's a classic get-out-of-death loophole going all the way back to Sherlock Holmes.

b) Fury faked the blood on the trading cards, so we know he was willing to use deceit to motivate the heroes by giving them something to avenge (as Coulson was trying to say in his last line).

c) The whole sequence of events seemed tailor-made to conform to what audiences have come to expect from Whedon (i.e. that he kills our darlings), and I figured that Whedon wouldn't want to be so predictable. So I was thinking that maybe he was deliberately playing with our expectations, making us think he'd killed Coulson and then subverting our expectations by having it turn out to be a trick.

(Although I now know differently; see below.)

Revealing that Coulson is alive would defeat the purpose of his death being the catalyst for uniting the team. Joss would not have done that.

Well, first off, the team's united now, and I don't think they'd abandon that unity if they learned Phil was still alive. Sure, they'd be mad at Fury for manipulating them, but that's nothing new. Second, as I said above, we know for a fact that Fury did trick them to some extent, so it would really be a difference of degree.

And third, it actually wasn't Whedon's idea to kill Coulson. That decision was made before he was even brought aboard. So while it looks just like the sort of thing we'd expect of him, it didn't come from him.


But I agree, it would be problematical to bring him back in a separate work. That does kind of seem like cheating. I'd be willing to forgive it if we got more Coulson out of it, though. And yeah, I'd want him to be Coulson, not the Vision.

But Whedon has said this project would be "autonomous" from the movies, so it probably won't feature any of the films' characters.

[Admiral_Young]

Both Corporal Captain and Christopher make excellent points regarding how Fury used Coulson's death to unite the team. Perhaps I phrased my statement incorrectly. With my comments in regard to Coulson's death and Joss, I only meant that it isn't like Joss to "take back" or "undo" important character deaths, especially with characters that are his favourite to write, like Phil was, and popular characters. Wash in "Serenity", Tara in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", Kitty Pryde in "Astonishing X-Men" (although she wasn't killed, just space missiled!) , Penny in "Dr. Horrible". etc. Coulson is just the latest

[Christopher]

^On the other hand, killing Coulson wasn't Whedon's idea, but Marvel's. And like I said, maybe he's getting tired of being predictable and might want to break with tradition. Or, since killing Coulson was Marvel's idea, maybe resurrecting him could be their idea too (it would hardly be unprecedented for Marvel).