“We wanted to bring a clip but there was a legal [thing],” said Whedon at the start of the panel. “So we can’t show you a clip. We’re just going to show you the episode.”
Naturally, the crowd practically wet themselves with glee, and their excitement wasn’t misplaced. What followed was the stuff of dreams for Joss Whedon/Marvel/Agent Coulson fanboys and fangirls; although it’s hard to write about without giving too much away, but here’s the run-down of the greatness of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. pilot.
(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to follow.)
The events in S.H.I.E.L.D. begin right after the epic destruction of New York in The Avengers, which means that now everyone on Earth knows that giant damn portals can now open up above Manhattan and allow aliens to invade Earth. So essentially, all the activity that S.H.I.E.L.D.–an espionage agency that deals with superhuman threats–previously monitored on the sly is now squarely in the public consciousness.
Enter Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), the man who became nearly every fan’s favorite character after his untimely death in The Avengers. (C’mon guys, he is us, right down to his collections of superhero trading cards.) He’s amassing a new kind of entirely-human team to help investigate and assist with the doings of the supernatural. It’s a more down-to-Earth version of Nick Fury’s master plan in Avengers, except instead of gathering heroes like Iron Man and Thor, Coulson is calling on folks like Agent Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) and Skye (Chloe Bennet), a hacker who has been investigating both S.H.I.E.L.D. itself and a young man played by J. August Richards, who has super-human strength and a bit of a temper. (Fans of recent Marvel blockbusters may be able to guess the source of his power, in yet another moment of inter-movie crossover.)
Cobie Smulders returns as Maria Hill, parlaying her turn on The Avengers into… well, the pilot at least. She’s handling the new recruits along with Agent Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) and the duo of Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge), who are responsible for cool gadgets, science stuff and a bit of comedy.
But ultimately this is Coulson’s show, both literally and metaphorically. Gregg’s a classically great actor with good comedic timing who seems born to star in Whedon productions, where both skills are essential. He’s good at being the straight man and somehow charming at same the same time, delivering lines like, “This is where they make the red tape, isn’t it?” and actually carrying it off. Other characters will presumably get fleshed out over time, but as the show’s entry point into the stand-alone S.H.I.E.L.D. world, he’s essential.
So how exactly did Coulson survive his stabbing by Loki in The Avengers, especially after we heard Nick Fury say the paramedics had called time of death? It’s addressed only slightly in the pilot, and while Coulson seems content to joke about his apparent demise it seems something far more dramatic happened, something that Agent Hill says “he can never know.” (Dun, dun, dun…)
This isn’t the kind of pilot that sets up some big problem that will be solved over the course of multiple episodes, and since its viewers already probably saw The Avengers and other Marvel movies, the stakes of the Marvel Universe don’t have to be explained. Instead, it jumps right in to the Marvel Universe and introduces a cast of heroes who solve superhuman snafus without powers–or capes and tights–with hints of the adventures they will ultimately go on together.
As usual for the Whedonverse, the real genius is in the details and in-joke one-liners (our personal favorite: the burn “she might as well be one of those sweaty cosplay girls crowding around Stark Tower”). S.H.I.E.L.D. seems primed to leave the big bangs to the movies and work on building out the universe (and saving it), one problem at a time.
And, oh, what a wonderful universe it could be.
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