it wasn’t until I got there that day and started to get fitted for the gear that would set up the flaming skull transition that I said, ‘You know, it occurs to me there are implications to the mortality of anyone who plays Ghost Rider.’ And they were like, ‘Yes, there are.’ And I said, ‘Oh, okay, maybe we should talk about that!’ And they really didn’t, and I’m glad they didn’t.

But I was talking to Jeff Bell and Jed Whedon off behind some flats while they got ready to light the scene. They really didn’t give me much because there was this scene where Gabe Luna’s Robbie Reyes character is saying, ‘Do you understand the deal you just made? And more importantly, does your team?’ And I say, ‘Yes, I understand the deal I just made, and I’d appreciate it if you’d let me share this information when I choose.’ And it just felt heavy, and I thought, ‘God, okay, this is going to have longer reaching implications,’ and it wasn’t until the disease that was tearing through him, the waste and the necropathy, that they really said, ‘Yeah, this is your deal with Ghost Rider coming due.’ He basically burned through whatever was left of the revivifying Tahiti stuff.

related: Ghost Rider TV Series Coming to Hulu, Gabriel Luna to Star

And now Phil Coulson was really going to die. And I thought that was a bold choice! They don’t mess around; they take bold choices. It was a little startling after, at that point, ten years of playing the guy and having died already once and the grim stuff I went through in season 1 and realizing how I’d been brought back. And yet Phil Coulson’s always been a little uncomfortable with having felt like he was on somebody else’s library card being here. So it was an ambivalent feeling, and then they said, ‘We will have you back for season 6.’ And then they pitched this Sarge setup essentially in a very rough pencil-sketch form, that he would be somebody else from somewhere else who was as surprised as they were when they were recognizing him.

What’s been the most challenging part of playing this man in black from another dimension?