The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (Or S.H.I.E.L.D. as it is more widely known) has been an ever reliable presence throughout the Marvel Cinematic universe.
This is mainly in thanks to Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury popping up now and again to do his standard post credits recruiting thing, which eventually brought all our superheroes together for this year’s The Avengers. However, we’ve never really seen the inner workings of this vast organization, until now.
Joss Whedon will be bringing the intelligence agency to the small screen in a brand new series titled S.H.I.E.L.D. for ABC. In an interview with MTV’s Josh Horowitz at the Toronto Film Festival, Whedon said that he had gotten “very far” in creating the show, having pitched it to the network with a “full framework and a full cast.”
Check out what he had to say below.
“It’s new characters. It needs to be its own thing. It needs to be adjacent [to the movies]. You don’t want to do a show where you’re constantly going, ‘Iron Man just left, but he was totally here a minute ago.’ You want them to go off on their own thing, and say, well, what has S.H.I.E.L.D. got that the heroes don’t have? And part of that for me is, they’re not superheroes, but they live in that universe. That makes them a little bit — even though they’re a big organization — underdogs, and so that’s really interesting to me.”
In my opinion this completely makes sense. While it would be nice for the show to feature appearances from its big screen counterparts, making the TV series more of a stand alone project adjacent to the movies (yet still a part of the Marvel cinematic universe) simply adds to the mythology, hopefully introducing exciting new elements and developments that add to Marvel’s world.
Plus, it will be great to finally get a more detailed look at the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization that has been ever on the sidelines throughout the movies. No word yet if any of the characters on the show will be based on existing Marvel characters or will be created specifically for the show, but I don’t think that really matters, do you?
The mere fact that Joss Whedon is returning to television (he will executive produce and direct the pilot) whilst remaining in this grand universe is already enough to get me excited.
