SECOND LIFE
Coulson is back from the dead (again) for Agents Of SHIELD season six
When Agents of SHIELD hit its 100th episode in season five, just about everyone assumed the stretch of episodes afterwards would culminate in the series finale. Showrunners Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen even titled it “The End,” but as it turns out, it wasn’t.
The series got picked up for two final seasons, so if you thought there was already closure in the season five finale, as Coulson (Clark Gregg) spent his dying days with May (Ming-Na Wen) in Tahiti, well then… surprise, there wasn’t.
Clark Gregg is definitely back for season six, but as executive producer Jeffrey Bell tells Red Alert, he’s only going to be an A.I. version of Coulson to give current director of SHIELD, Mack (Henry Simmons) some more support. But the actor is going to spend the majority of screen time as a new, enigmatic character known as Sarge.
Confused? Bell explains, “The other characters in the show are going through exactly what the audience is at home, which is, who is this guy? What does he want? Why does he look like Coulson? What the hell is going on? That is a central mystery. That’s not the only mystery...”
He also stresses this is a carefully considered narrative path for Coulson. “The most important thing really for us was to not trivialise Coulson’s death, and to buy it back cheaply. And for Clark, it was assuring him that what we’re going to do had the same scope and gravitas and importance as what he’d been doing. He’s just doing it on the other side of the aisle. What’s great about Clark is he’s really embracing this new character, and we were like, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of swagger in this guy!’ To see Clark play someone so different was really satisfying for us.”
Storylines echo those in the MCU films, such as the shape-shifting Skrulls in Captain Marvel. Since season six is heading to space and Sarge looks like Coulson, might there be a connection? Bell only says, “I’d say in terms of the types of stories we can tell, look at the Marvel movies coming out ahead of us and they possibly open up some new doors.”
So, how will the rest of the team react to a newbie with a Coulson face? “It’s not unreasonable to think that Daisy (Chloe Bennet) and May would be the most shaken by someone looking like him,” Bell teases. He says both women will have differing perspectives on this new person, and as such will bring about some rich interactions with Gregg.
Bell hopes pairing actors in new ways will excite fans. “Whenever you do that, you can find fresh things to talk about. We’ve a lot of that in season six and we also have the addition of Deke (Jeff Ward). And then the flavour of Sarge comes with some friends and it’s an interesting group.” TB
Agents Of SHIELD is on ABC in the US now, and E4 soon.