A lot has been going down in the Marvel TV universe, and there’s lots more to come. Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson made a pivotal decision in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. mid-season finale that will surely have a butterfly effect with major repercussions. Meanwhile, the small screen is figuring out plans to connect with the Phase Three slate of films and one tie-in with be between Agent Carter and Doctor Strange. While the Television Critics Association continues its slate of panels and parties, the cast and producers of these shows revealed more about what we can expect.

MAJOR AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. SPOILER AHEAD



Regarding S.H.I.E.L.D., IGN spoke with Gregg, showrunners Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen, Brett Dalton, and Ming-Na Wen about — MAJOR SPOILER ALERT — Coulson’s decision to kill Ward. This action allowed for his body to play host to that Inhuman entity, which, the cast and crew confirmed, isn’t a good thing. Gregg said:

What I know so far, it looks like the biggest possible effect, because it works on two levels. On the one hand, it means Coulson having crossed a line that I think he takes very seriously, which is, “If you’re trying to protect the world from evil and you then become evil, haven’t you become part of the problem?” That’s a little bit what’s going on for him, even though I don’t think that answer’s cut-and-dry in this case…Also, he’s created a corpse for [the Inhuman] to jump into, and I think the fallout from that is going to be big, although it should provide this brilliant thespian with some unbelievable stuff to chew the planetary scenery with.

After Wen teased more about “the emotional consequences” of Coulson’s action, Dalton said:

Suddenly it’s about bigger things, so Hydra is about something even bigger than what I thought. I didn’t even know the organization existed as long as it did. It’s been around for centuries, trying to get this creature from another planet. There’s a lot of much bigger things at play here. So that means more trouble for this guy over here.

Elsewhere, bigger things are coming for Agent Carter. Speaking with Comic Book Resources, showrunner Michele Fazekas discussed how Darkforce and Isodyne Energy company will connect season 2 with Doctor Strange starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

Basically, Isodyne is a company that we invented based in part on real life companies like Radiodyne or General Atomic or the beginnings of the Jet Propulsion Lab — all of which were in L.A. in the ’40s, and were developing the space program and were developing nukes. That’s what Isodyne is, and what you’ll learn is they were involved in the nuclear testing out in the desert when they were testing the, at the time they were calling it the atom bomb — and one of these tests didn’t go as expected. You’ll learn more about that in season 2, but they stumble upon what people in the Marvel Universe will know as Darkforce, but because they’ve never seen it before they just name it Zero Matter. That’s our tie-in to the Doctor Strange universe, and also to S.H.I.E.L.D. because you’ve seen it in S.H.I.E.L.D., as well.

You might recall that S.H.I.E.L.D. villain Blackout was powered by Darkforce, but, like the substance’s comic book history, it has multiple uses in the show. Fazekas continued:

The cool thing about what we learned as we researched Darkforce over the course of Marvel comic book history is, it affects people in different ways. It’s created a bunch of superheroes, it’s created a bunch of villains, and it has all these different properties. It could be a liquid, it could be a gas, it could be a solid, it could give you powers, it could kill you. It has a lot of different applications, which was cool for us. We were able to select what we liked and sort of make our own rules as to what it does, how it operates, and who it affects in our world.

Agent Carter season 2 will premiere on January 19th, while Marvel’s Doctor Strange will hit the big screen on November 4th.