After the fans at San Diego Comic-Con were treated with a screening of the pilot, Marvel’s ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ played over the weekend for the journalists at the Television Critics Association. After that, the cast and crew sat down for a panel with the press to discuss the upcoming show on ABC. Among those in attendance were Joss Whedon, Jeph Loeb, Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Clark Gregg and they all spoke a bit on the various aspects of the show.

One of the first things to come up was the show’s connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, especially since ‘Thor: The Dark World’ and ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ are so close to hitting theaters. As before, Joss reiterated the fact that the show isn’t an Easter egg hunt, but there will be tie-ins here and there:

“There will be as much as we can allow. We’re still working that out. It’s a fluid process. The important thing is it’s a fun opportunity, but it’s not…It’s not an Easter egg hunt. We don’t want to be an Easter egg farm. We want people to come back for these people. This show needs to work for people who haven’t seen the movies.”

Because this is Marvel’s first live-action show to be set within the same continuity as their movies, there are great expectations for the show. However, at the end of the day, even with all the Marvel fanfare, the writer/director explained that the network wanted another Joss Whedon special full of interesting characters and a great story:

“Their biggest note after we presented the thing was they wanted to make sure our investment in the characters and their interaction and their evolution was as big as the case of the week. They wanted to make sure people were coming for the recurring story…to me, that’s how I do all of my shows. They basically said, ‘Can you please do what you do and not learn a new skill?'”

The rest of the panel went on to say that this show is really about the people without superpowers, especially Agent Phil Coulson, without whom the show would not exist according to Loeb. Over several episodes, the mystery of his “death” will be explored and when Whedon contacted Gregg to tease what lies ahead, the actor was even more on board than before.

Finally, another mystery that emerged after the debut of the trailer was the identity of the character played by J. August Richards in the pilot. Unlike our coverage of Comic-Con, the report doesn’t go into details about the character, but he was brought up at the panel. Because he’s not listed as a series regular, Whedon was asked about the ‘Angel’ actor appearing again:

“I can neither confirm or deny that [J. August Richards] will be coming back. But I loved him, too, so do that math.”

Naturally, everyone is largely keeping mum about this project so as to not ruin anything for anyone, but if you are one of those people who are getting anxious from all this waiting, I hear that ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ is definitely worth the wait.

‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ starring Brett Dalton, Ming-Na Wen, Iain De Caestecker, Elizabeth Henstridge, Chloe Bennet, and Clark Gregg premieres on Tuesday, September 24, 2013 at 8:00pm on ABC.    

 

Source: E! Online,