Well, it's not like Robert Downey, Jr., hasn't done television before. Granted, that was before his stardom, even before his downfall, but I could see him doing an appearance as just Tony as Gaith described.
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Agents of SHIELD: Season 3 - Discussion (SPOILERS LIKELY)
- Thread starter Trekker4747
- Start date
Coulson in an undercover role as an ATCU consultant told officials of many nations of the Inhumans, that's what they call themselves. Now Dr Radcliffe didn't have need to know and being an outsider thought it was still in myth, perhaps like SHIELD itself was a myth before they started running around in SUVs with SHIELD logos on them. However you would think that whatever the Maria Hill lead Avengers intelligence support unit calls itself should know as much as the US, Australian, Russian and Chinese governments did and probably would have passed it on to its field operatives. Now would Stark toss it out the Inhuman name to a Peter Parker, or just assume it as the tainted fish oil explanation makes more in story MCU sense than a radioactive spider bite.
OK, true enough, but that's a very recent development this season, and one the writers of the movie couldn't really have accounted for even if it would have made sense to mention it so specifically. (And I'm still not sure it would, quite yet. At the least, it's certainly still pretty early to have the term widely known or used among the public, although I can believe knowledge of it is spreading. The first time I can recall it being used by anyone who wouldn't ostensibly be tasked with keeping it a secret was when the Watchdogs did so in the episode that immediately followed Civil War's release, and they did seem vocally intent on further disseminating it.)
Perhaps, albeit a major point made in CW seems to be that the Avengers are operating outside the governmental system and thus wouldn't necessarily be privy to the secret activities of the ATCU and such. They certainly don't know about Coulson & Co., even though Maria does! And Stark in particular seems to have "tapped out" of the Avengers at the end of Age Of Ultron, so he hasn't necessarily been even so "in the loop" as they may have been. But yes, it wouldn't be implausible that they and he could know know the term, you're right and this is mostly just quibbling. The Tony/Peter exchange @N-121973 proposes wouldn't have felt out of place, particularly if the webslinger had replied: "What's an Inhuman?" and Tony had just said "nevermind."
Yet I'm still not sure why there would be a significant difference (insofar as the plot of CW is concerned, anyway) between Inhumans and other powered individuals that would give cause to expect them to be called out specifically by name. I think they're well covered by the blanket references made.
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It's not about his ability or willingness it's about narrative feasibility.
Sure, they *could* just have him walk on, say one line in the middle of an episode and then bugger off. It would be hilarious if they did that, but it's just never going to happen.
The studio would want to it to be more worthwhile and the network will want to promote the hell out of it. It all has a knock-on effect so that by the end of it, anything less than a two-part story arc event just isn't worth the bother. For that to happen, they'd first have to have a story to tell and a good reason for doing so.
All of which must be done without causing headaches for the movie people, since they must always take priority.
If not inhuman, then how about meta human. I used to that that was a DC term but I distinctly recall Coulson using the term in a recent episode of AOS? I also like the idea that Peter could be inhuman. He get's bitten by a spider and then gets exposed to the Kree dust.
The term "metahuman" in the sense of a superpowered individual was actually coined by George R.R. Martin in 1986, in the role-playing game that became the basis for his Wild Cards shared-universe anthology/novel series. It was picked up by DC in their 1989 Invasion! miniseries as a term used by the alien invaders to refer to superpowered humans, and later came into more generic use within DC. But it has been used in a number of non-DC contexts. (In my original superhero novel Only Superhuman, Chapter 7 is entitled "She Never Metahuman She Didn't Like.")
I did a Google Ngram search, and the term was occasionally used going as far back as the 1950s or earlier, being used generally in philosophical or psychological texts to refer to some divine or cosmic power above humanity, or to some transcendental state or Nietzsche-style superhuman level that humans might aspire to achieve.
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They just aired the season 3 finale here last night, and though some of the beats were fairly obvious with which way they'd go, I have to say I enjoyed
the star wars shout out with Coulson and the hologram
Thanks for that Christopher, I was totally unaware of that. Until sometime ago I always thought that was what DC called its Mutants, so when Coulson used the term I was thrown a little.
It's not like it will never happen, it has happened. Samuel L. Jackson at first did a throw away role talking to Coulson about damaging the plane. They didn't blow it up in advertising that he'd be doing it and it was at the very end, not part of a two parter.
Well a post show cameo is how Fury was introduced in the first place, so there's precedent there.
Plus, even after 4(?) movie appearances, he's still basically a supporting character, only he just so happens to be played by a much more famous actor than most of the others.
Plus, even after 4(?) movie appearances, he's still basically a supporting character, only he just so happens to be played by a much more famous actor than most of the others.
I just got the AoS Pack for LEGO Marvel's Avengers video game. You get May, Daisy, Fitz, Simmons, Ward, Deathlock, Lincoln, post-Teregenesis Raina, Cal/Mr. Hyde, Koenig, Jiaying, Gordon, the AoS version of Bobbi Morse, and The Bus as a vehicle. It also included a level based on the Season 2 finale where you played as May and Simmons during the attack on Afterlife, then you have to stop Gordon as Daisy and Simmons either at The Playground or on the Illiad, after that Coulson replaces Daisy and you have to capture Cal. It's a lot of fun, and if you play LEGO Avengers and are an AoS fan it's definitely worth getting.
Season 3 has dropped on Netflix.
I’ve been watching Iron Man 1 and 2 after several years of not seeing them and just realized that Coulson was part of the modern MCU from the get-go. Had he not been killed in Avengers and survived without being secretly revived with Kree blood, I think Coulson would be like Worf in “First Contact” and “Insurrection” and appear on-screen with Fury in Age of Ultron or any subsequent Avengers movie since the Avengers would have no reason to believe that Coulson’s still dead and Agents of Shield would just have to work around it.
Coulson was the glue that held the MCU together from the start going from the first two Iron Man films to Thor to Avengers. His death was an important part of Avengers and I wouldn't change it but I do miss him from the films.
Yes, he was an original character to the MCU, and appeared in every Phase 1 film except The Incredible Hulk (though he was subsequently revealed in the One-Shot The Consultant to have been behind sending Stark to talk to Ross as shown at the end) and The First Avenger. The comics later brought him into their continuity.
It's just as likely that if the movies had wanted to keep using him, we wouldn't have gotten the show at all, or at least not with him in a main role as opposed to guesting like Fury and Hill and Sitwell.
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Someone, unnamed, who looks very much like Coulson, appears in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). 
