The morning of ABC’s Television Critics Association presentation, ABC president Paul Lee said that “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” hit its stride in the latter nine episodes of the first season. Those nine coincided with the crossover with Captain America: The Winter Soldier revealing Hydra as the villain, with guest star Bill Paxton.
The trio of “S.H.I.E.L.D.” producers – Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen and Jeffrey Bell – were on hand that evening and I got a few minutes with them. I didn’t quite get Level 7 material, but I asked the questions with which the summer hiatus has left me.
CraveOnline: Do you share Paul Lee’s view that “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” really hit its stride in the back nine?
Jed Whedon: We had a couple of advantages in the back half of the season [that] we didn’t have initially. Initially we had to, A, introduce the world to a whole new set of characters that didn’t exist in the Marvel comics yet and get to know them and like them.
Jeffrey Bell: And not be angry that they weren’t Spider-Man or a Marvel character.
Whedon: We also had a secret we were not allowed to reveal which was Hydra. We did try early to plant seeds and they started to pay off in the back half, so we agree that we did get a lot of momentum. We will not have, this season, that workload initially to carry.
Maurissa Tancharoen: We’re coming into season two, you know our characters well. We have a very clear big bad and we were left with nothing. S.H.I.E.L.D. is crumbled, so we have a very clear trajectory. The pace and momentum that we gained towards the end of the season is very much what we’re starting with.
Do you think that had to do with tying in to Winter Soldier or was it just the natural evolution of the season?
Tancharoen: It was the natural evolution of the season because we knew it would tie in, we knew about the Cap 2 reveal right from the outset of the show. Of course we had to sort of keep that a secret up until the release of the movie, so then once the movie came out, the secret was out, we were able to go full throttle.
Whedon: But yes, with any new show, everybody is getting in a room together and trying to make one thing. So getting everybody on the same page and making sure we’re all writing in the same voices and production’s all in line, that ship starts to work better later. Obviously at the end of the season I think we did hit our stride that naturally comes with a first season show.
Bell: I would also say that if you think of a 22 episode arc, 16, 15, 14, you’re kind of getting into that third act. If you think of this as a movie, you should be building, building building, oh my God, it all comes together, payoff and then it’s a roller coaster. So there’s going to be a version of that either way, but the fact that it coincided with us being able to say the H word helped us a lot.
Do you have Bill Paxton back?
Tancharoen: Did you see what happened to him?
Yeah, but it’s Marvel.
Tancharoen: Well, his DNA is out there and yes, as you said, it’s the Marvel universe. Anything is possible.
Can season two be more arced and have less standalone episodes now that you have the momentum going?
Whedon: Sure, I mean, now we don’t have to introduce these characters to the public, we’ve spent some time with them so their drama can be more internal than it was at the beginning of last season. We’re definitely hitting the ground running.
Over the summer there will be a Marvel movie before you premiere. Is there any chance the season premiere could tie into the aftermath of Guardians of the Galaxy?
Whedon: There’s always a chance.
Tancharoen: There’s always a chance.
Whedon: There’s always a chance.
Are you inclined to embrace more movie crossovers or now hold them off since you’ve done it twice?
Bell: We live in their universe so honestly it’s is it a good fit, is there a way for our story to tie in with their story? Do they feel, do we feel it will be helpful to both? And if it’s a good story we’ll absolutely do it.
How much of that first season development was you saying you’ve run shows before, this is what you have to get through, let’s not jump the gun? How much was trying to get to things as soon as possible?
Whedon: We all went in with the same goal for sure, which was to establish ourselves as our own entity and not feel like we were an Easter egg farm for the films.
Tancharoen: While also embracing the unique opportunity that no other show has which is to tie in with these huge feature movies.
Would you say Coulson is now closer to his S.H.I.E.L.D. team than he was to the Avengers?
Whedon: I don’t know, he spent many, many more hours with our team and they’re pretty tight. I’d say they’re pretty tight. It’s a pretty tight knit group.
Are you happy with the way you were able to play out the T.A.H.I.T.I. story?
Whedon: As far as we’ve played it out, yes.
Right, is there more to that?
Bell: Excellent question.
I’m sure it is. Is it allowed for Coulson or any character to cross over into the Netflix series’ universes?
Bell: That’s a question for Marvel.
