SPY HARDER
Is there life after HYDRA? Marvel’s troubled espionage division is about to find out…
After a rocky first season, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD found its groove when it synched with the big- screen reveals of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. SHIELD was exposed in the movie as having been infiltrated by the nefarious HYDRA and had to be dismantled by Nick Fury. On the small screen that meant Agent Phil Coulson ( Clark Gregg) and his team were left adrift – a plot development that allowed the show to finally find its focus.
For season two, executive producer Jeph Loeb tells SFX that the series “is going to pick up exactly where we left off from last season, in the sense that now Director Coulson has been given a directive which is rebuild SHIELD and do it right.”
And Clark Gregg, Coulson himself, tells us that task won’t be easy because “Everyone in the world seems to want to arrest Phil Coulson. SHIELD is on the run. Now we have to rebuild it and make it better and not so riddled with evil traitors. We have very few resources. Everything we do is about finding out who’s HYDRA, and who’s not, amongst our friends. To rebuild SHIELD, we’re going to need some old friends to prove themselves and some new friends. We’re going to have to do it in a way that feels very brass knuckles, old world spying.”
If it sounds like a reboot, co- showrunner Jeff Bell doesn’t disagree. “Everything got blown apart which provides us with an opportunity. It allows us to tell stories where we are the underdog. It allows us to tell stories the way SHIELD originally was conceived, which was sort of like Men In Black and not officially out there. It’s much more of a spy show. But we’re going to answer some of the questions left at season’s end like ‘ Who else is HYDRA? What happened to Ward? And [ what was the meaning of ] Coulson writing on the wall and making drawings?”
As for that enigmatic moment that ended the first season, Gregg jokes, “I hope the graffiti he was doing doesn’t mean it’s going to be like the end of The Sopranos where it all
“i would hope there will be other villains”
just goes dark.” The truth of how Coulson’s past and fate will play out is a tightly guarded secret for now, but the actor admits he’s happy to return to capitalise on the momentum earned at the end of the first season. “I had so much fun, especially in the back half of season one, with the crossover with Captain America and Nick Fury showing up in my hour of need and handing me my beautiful Destroyer gun and letting me blow away a bunch of super soldiers. The fact that this guy has become a character people know, who is in the comics, who has been in the movies and has a TV show blows me away on a daily basis.”
Asked what he’s most excited to play out this season, Gregg says, “I like that he’s got the people from his first team last year. Skye is an important character to him. May is someone who he’s worked out his demons with and can trust. Now they’ve got to rebuild SHIELD from the ground up and that means making some new agents, and I would assume, finding out some new HYDRA supervillains.”
Bell raises his eyebrow at that tease, but he confirms that the show’s heroes will face an expanded roster of antagonists. “Although HYDRA has a very cool logo, I would hope there will be other villains as well, and a plan,” Bell offers.
And given how the Winter Soldier storyline infused the show with so much energy and purpose, the executive producers naturally smile when asked whether the Avengers sequel might deliver a similar shot in the arm. “1 May [ 2015] is the Avengers: Age of Ultron opening date which will be about two or three weeks before we end the season,” says Bell. “Wouldn’t it be cool if something tied together?”