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.
As Whedon has maintained for months, the focus of S.H.I.E.L.D. is on the agents who make up the core cast of the show, and “not a ton” of characters who’ve actually appeared in Marvel comics. However, that might change after the series is greenlit. He told TVLine: “Right now, I want to involve people in the characters that we’ve created for the show,” a very sensible approach to television making. He admitted, though that “there’s a little bit of talk of [using more familiar Marvel Comics characters],” and that is certainly something that might happen as the series progresses, once the show has established its core cast.
With Agent Coulson, whose death was greatly exaggerated, firmly on board for the series, a lot of people have naturally wondered if Cobie Smulders‘ Maria Hill, herself an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. portrayed by a television actor, might appear in the series. With the renewal of Smulders’ How I Met Your Mother for a ninth season, however, she’s going to be more busy than previously anticipated. Whedon said that if they got that slim chance to put her on the show, however, that they’d take it.
Broadly, Whedon spoke about the tone of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
I’m excited about the show because it’s a very hopeful show. It’s not about murder, and it’s not about crime, and it’s not people looking into their own belly buttons. It’s about people who are trying to help each other, and that’s one of the things I loved about comic books. They had costumes and the villains were cool [but] they stood for something, and I like doing a show that does that.
Sounds good to me! Now just make it happen.
