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

One thing I didn't see touched on in any of the articles above is that there is apparently a bit of a mystery attached to Coulson's resurrection that implies that it might be something more than simply dying and being revived seconds later... even though that's the story the SHIELD doctors tell to Coulson himself.

Spoiler: Buzzfeed Pilot Spoilers About Coulson's Death

Within the first few minutes of the pilot, ace solo S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) learns that Agent Coulson indeed survived the Battle of New York from Marvel’s The Avengers, and he quickly deduces that Nick Fury faked Coulson’s death in order to bring the Avengers together. Coulson says he was dead for a few seconds, then he was revived, and whisked off to Tahiti to recuperate.

But after he leaves the room, a S.H.I.E.L.D. doctor (Ron Glass, AKA Shepherd Book) says to another S.H.I.E.L.D. agent (Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill), “He really doesn’t know, does he?” The agent replies, “He can never know.” Season-long mystery alert!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/marvels-agents-of-shield-pilot-comic-con

The mysterious nature of the spoiler above could imply that the early fan speculation about Coulson's survival could actually be correct and that...

Spoiler: Coulson Death Speculation

Coulson didn't actually survive after all but is instead a SHIELD Life-Model Decoy who doesn't realize what it truly is and thinks it is actually the human Coulson.

Since Tony Stark implied that the Life-Model Decoys exist in The Avengers with his joke to avoid talking to Coulson, that would certainly be a possibility. And they're something both SHIELD and Stark have used several times in the comics.

However, there are numerous other methods of bringing back people from the dead in the Marvel Universe, so that's not the only possibility, though I'd consider it the most likely. Regardless, it seems as if it might be an important plot point later on and/or a continuing mystery throughout the season.

 

I'm really excited for the show. It sounds like it will be great, even if I wasn't already a huge Whedon fan.

 

Sorry, I misread reprising as recurring.

 

Sweet!!!

 

Well I think Whedon was very smart in casting Smulders as Hill since really HIMYM isn't going to last forever, and how he tends to like to give his friends jobs - I'm pretty sure Maria Hill will be at least a recurring character in Season 2, if not a "regular guest star" just short of being part of the main 'cast'. Sort of like how for ages on like Stargate they would have characters like Bre'tac as 'guest stars' even though they're basically in practically ever episode that season, but they aren't in the main cast crawl at the beginning of the show.

 

HIMYM is ending next season.

 

Wait, Ron Glass will be on this show, too? Fantastic! Hopefully it'll be more than one appearance.

 

One thing: I can't bring myself to believe that Coulson's field team is going to be the only one doing this kind of investigative work. There will be other groups, right?

 

I imagine there are other SHIELD teams as well as rival agencies. Hydra, perhaps, could make for a good recurring villain. The same with whatever remains of the Ten Rings syndicate and other such enemy groups. I really hope they work out a way to have Mutants at some point, as that is a pretty big part of the Marvel Universe to have to leave out.

 

Given that IM3 introduced A.I.M., I'm hoping it will be a recurring presence in future productions and eventually have its ties to HYDRA revealed. Although that would probably best be done in Cap 3 as a way of bringing the Red Skull back.

Except it's usually off on its own, and even in the MU it can be hard to reconcile with the rest of what's going on. In X-Men comics and TV shows, the general public is prejudiced against anyone with superpowers, but in other superhero shows in the same universe, you never see those attitudes toward superpowered beings, except during crossovers with the X-Men. Maybe it's best to have the Fox X-Men series existing in a separate reality from the MCU.

 

Since when are bigots logical? it isn't like they would have nice things to say about all the non-mutant heroes anyways. Thor is a foreigner who claims to be a god. Hulk occasionally destroys city blocks. Every time any of them have a fight they risk destroying neighborhoods.

The fear of the Mutants comes from the fact that anyone's child might be one, that they're replacing humanity. That they are superior and might one day realize it. And, rightfully so, some teenager who can't keep his boner down in class might one day wake up with lasers shooting out of his eyes, or mutate into a living bomb or a plague, or rip apart reality around him. Combine that with how many mutants are freakish looking and DON'T have powers, and you have a lot of easy targets and a recipe for people putting the blame on those freaks out there, rather than those nice Avenger gentlemen.

The comics don't always portray it well, but comics do a lot of things badly.

Plus, it gives them another option for super-powered threats other than "mad scientist" and "military experiment", which would be handy assuming they aren't going to bring in the Skrulls or other Asgardians any time soon. Spider-Man's rogues gallery makes for some pretty formulaic movies because of this.

 

Some young thug with a gun who doesn't know his history gets caught up in the anti-Mutant movement and finds himself with an opportunity to kill a super-powered sort. Maybe he saw Captain America on TV trying to talk some sense into people about the rights of Mutants, maybe Cap was standing guard at a Mutant safehouse while a mob gathered outside, whatever. Last year we had a dude kill some Sikhs because apparently they were brown enough to probably be Muslim and therefore probably terrorists. I don't see that such things as terribly unlikely in a world where Cap's origins probably aren't common knowledge.

 

But sometimes it's about more than that -- it's a more basic matter of universe inconsistency, especially where screen adaptations are concerned. I recently rewatched all three X-Men animated series on Netflix, along with the series that two of them nominally shared continuity with; the '90s FOX X-Men had a couple of crossover appearances in the contemporaneous Spider-Man series, and Wolverine and the X-Men was nominally in continuity with The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. But they were awkward fits. In many episodes of the original X-Men series, anyone who displayed superpowers was automatically assumed by spectators to be a mutant. For instance, when Apocalypse made his first public appearance, people yelled that a mutant was attacking. But in Spider-Man, people were displaying superpowers all the time, but the only time mutants were ever mentioned was in the X-Men crossover. And WatXM was set in a continuity where there was this fascistic government agency called the Mutant Response Division imposing a nationwide crackdown on mutants, but aside from a throwaway reference to the "Mardies" in one A:EMH episode, that pervasive witch-hunt mentality was completely missing.

Now, sure, in both cases that's because the X-Men shows came first and weren't designed to accommodate the other shows that were added to their continuities later. What you're proposing is the other way around, adding mutants to a universe about other Marvel characters. And sure, that could work, up to a point. But I think the reason I'm resistant to that is that I think the X-Men story works better if the whole mutant-rights issue is in a distinct reality, if you don't have to try to do a handwave to reconcile it with other superheroes' existence.

So sure, you could have mutants in Agents of SHIELD to some extent, but it would have to be handled rather differently than it's handled in the X-Men movies. Mutants would have to be something that's still secret, since the world in the MCU is being portrayed as just recently catching on to the existence of superbeings. So they couldn't be as pervasive in society, they wouldn't be subject to widespread or institutionalized persecution, etc. It would be so different from the usual X-Men saga that it's questionable what the benefit would be. (The second animated series, X-Men Evolution, kept mutants secret from the world until a bit over halfway through its run, and it didn't really get interesting until they were outed and the show could start dealing with the themes of intolerance and persecution.)

Yeah, but by the same token, anyone could come into possession of a piece of advanced weapons technology, or be exposed to exotic radiation and change into a superpowered being, or find a magical or alien artifact, or undergo an experimental medical procedure, or train in a far-off land to master mystical forces, or whatever. There are many ways for "normal" people to get superpowers, which kind of negates the whole "mutants are superior" fear. It doesn't make much sense to fear that normal people will be supplanted by mutants who can shoot beams out of their eyes or exert superstrength or mentally transform reality when Iron Man can shoot beams out of his hands, the Thing can exert superstrength, and Dr. Strange can magically transform reality. Both subspecies come out about evenly matched. So that fear of mutants supplanting us, except in the long term by a demographic shift over generations, makes more sense in a continuity without other superbeings.

 

Yeah at this point it would definitely be hard to reconcile the X-Men movie universe with the Avengers movie universe. Since in the X-Men world, the public has been aware and dealing with super-powered beings for quite a long while-- and yet somehow when the Avengers come along there's nary a mention or hint of this at all.


(Although there'd still be room for Spider-Man, I think, which is the only crossover I'd really like to see with Avengers.)

 

Oh, I agree. As I've said before, a given studio can only make so many movies per year if they want those movies to be any good. Marvel Studios has committed to a pace of two movies per year. So if they held all the rights, all we'd get is two movies per year. But with Fox and Sony doing their own Marvel things, we can get three, four, maybe more Marvel movies per year, and there's a better chance they'll be good.

Fox's X-universe is large and rich enough to stand on its own quite nicely. While it's had its ups and downs, I think it's safe to say it's matured into an enduring franchise, and it rivals the MCU in size and scope (MCU has 7 released films so far, and the X-Men series releases its 6th this week).

As for Sony, though, I'd like them to keep Spider-Man so that we can have more movies per year, but it'd be nice if they could coordinate with Marvel Studios and at least implicitly have the films in the same continuity, like they were going to do by having Oscorp Tower appear in The Avengers' Manhattan skyline. What I'd ideally like is for Marvel to license the Daredevil rights to Sony or work out some kind of cooperative deal so that Spidey, DD, and their shared characters (such as Kingpin and Ben Urich) could share a joint continuity.