Well, the S.H.I.E.L.D. pilot has wrapped, so now it’s just time for waiting, right? Surely there isn’t any more information on the show that we can milk out of Joss Whedon and crew, so let’s just await its inevitable greenlighting as a full series, filming, and finally… its airing on television.

Oh, who are we kidding, Whedon’s going to be answering questions about S.H.I.E.L.D. for the next year. This round, he talks about Marvel characters, Cobie Smulders, and the series’ overall tone.

A month ago, Hayley Atwell told an interviewer that she would not be returning for Captain America: Winter Soldier, and just a few weeks ago we heard that Emily VanCamp had been tapped for the role of Sharon Carter, the niece of Atwell’s Peggy Carter.

But it seems perhaps that Peggy Carter may not be as absent from Captain America: Winter Soldier as Atwell implied.

What were Gabe Newell, founder of game studio Valve, and J.J. Abrams, now for-better-or-for-worse the undisputed master of the two biggest science fiction franches in Hollywood history doing in the same room? They were delivering the keynote conversation of the D.I.C.E. Summit, an annual gathering of video game executives.

What was the sentence the internet went crazy over? Well, I’m not putting it above the jump, it’s basically the entire story! Go on. Click.

Shortly after Beyonce’s rocking Halftime show/impromptu Destiny’s Child reunion last night, and less than two minutes into the second half of the forty-seventh Super Bowl, half of New Orleans’ Superdome went black (or at the very least, quite dark) from a power outage that lasted more than half an hour. And many a nerd across America stood up from their couches, smirked, and said “This is where Bane walks out, right?”

Hey, we watch the Super Bowl too, you know. At the very least to see the movie trailers, eat food, or because we learned to love the game in marching band.

So just in case you are one of those nerds and thought that you might possibly be alone in making that connection, I’ve gathered together some evidence to the contrary. Because maybe it wasn’t Bane who shut down the Superdome. Maybe it was… Baynonce.

There’s a potentially spoilery rumor going around today about Iron Man 3. Or at least it would be a spoiler if it’s true, which it might not be. At the moment a lot of the evidence seems circumstantial to me. However, all the evidence also points towards something that I think is 100% in Marvel Entertainment’s interest to do. What the heck does that mean? Well, if you can stand the possible spoiler, follow me down this rabbit hole of early releases of toy lines, unnamed sources, and a thing Robert Downey, Jr. said.

Ok, so we all know that Jurassic Park is coming back to theaters in three months, for its (brace yourself) twentieth anniversary? Yes? Good. It’s not the only film that’s looking to cash in on moviegoer nostalgia. On the far side of the “probably going to happen” spectrum is the ever rumored Independence Day 2, which at least one actor thinks will be okay without one of its original stars.

With the news that Hugo Weaving isn’t particularly attached to his role as Red Skull, or superhero movies in general, and is not angling to get let back into the Captain America franchise, comes an offhand reference by TGDaily that Natalie Portman was recently ‘forced’ to adhere to her multi-movie contract as the titular god’s love interest for Thor 2. It’s a bit of a flimsy piece of evidence of strain between the actor and the movie studio, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

It’s been almost a year since we visited this story, but Portman was known to not really be enthusiastic about filming Thor 2, and especially not after the studio fired her recommended choice for director, Patty Jenkins, who would have been the first woman to direct a film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Follow me into the land of possible spoilers. Not, of course, of the story of The Hobbit. The dragon dies. Bilbo finds riches. Goes home and kick his jerk relatives out of his house. You know.

No, follow me into the land of knowing, possibly, where in the story of The Hobbit The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will leave us, before we wait a year for another installment.

Marvel has put this alternate opening scene of The Avengers online for the viewing, as part of its ongoing campaign to get people psyched for the DVD release of the movie (which could have just been accomplished by officially releasing the blooper reel, I mean, come on), and it’s totally understandable that this didn’t make it into the final film. It places the film in an entirely different sort of narrative loop by beginning with the end, and more than that, it’s completely at odds with the tone of the rest of the movie. The Avengers was big, bombastic, optimistic, and blissfully consequence free (aside from a certain S.H.I.E.L.D agent and his friends).

What this scene, chock full of Cobie Smulders, feels more like is the opening scene or the teaser trailer for The Avengers 2, a movie that plays up the tension between Smulders’ Maria Hill and Samuel L. Jackson‘s Nick Fury, in the lead up to the director being removed from his command just when the world needs him most.

Joss Whedon‘s been having a pretty good year. People have been regularly talking about how excited they are for Doctor Horrible 2 to finally happen, Cabin in the Woods was finally released, he got to gather all his friends into his home for two weeks during one of his vacations to film Much Ado About Nothing. Oh, and The Avengers. You might have heard of it. It was a modest little film. You know, the one that turned into one of the highest-grossing films of all time.

Well, now The Avengers is making its debut in Japan, and after some early PR speed-bumps, Joss is making the rounds, imparting some of that Whedon-Wisdom, and teasing us with little droplets of info about the Avengers 2.