Update: At the end of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TCA panel, Clark Gregg revealed the new poster for the show would be unlocked via Twitter, one piece at a time, beginning with his own Twitter feed. It took a very short amount of time for the poster to be unveiled, which you can see below. Check out the original story following the poster.

Tying Into the Marvel Universe:

At the end of a long day, ABC ended their TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour presentations with the main event – the panel for Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Here’s the low down on what was discussed by Joss Whedon, his fellow executive producers and the cast.Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. exists in the shared cinematic universe as the films, but as to how much it will tie more directly into specific films coming up, such as Thor: The Dark World or Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Joss Whedon said that would occur, “as much as we can allow. We’re still working that out. It’s s a fluid process. The important thing is it’s a fun option, but it’s not the reason for the show. We don’t want to just be an Easter egg farm. We want them to come back for these people [pointing to the cast].” Whedon said it was important the show “works both for people who’ve seen the movies and who haven’t seen them before.”

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Pilot Review

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Mythology Vs. Stand Alone:

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Coulson's Return:

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The Team:

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S.H.I.E.L.D.: The Musical?

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Co-creator Maurissa Tancharoen remarked, “I don’t think we’ll make references for the sake of making references.” Executive producer Jeffrey Bell said though that they always liked tying into Marvel directly when they could and that if they’re trying to come up with a character name, “There are like 5000 people in the Marvel Universe.” So if they have, say, a doctor or cop, “we can find a name that would mean something to somebody out there,” without changing the story. “If there’s a way to include it, that’s fun.”Bell said S.H.I.E.L.D. “really is built to be a family show,” saying they want everyone to enjoy it and “really building this to be like Joss did with the Avengers.” He remarked that they want it to be “big and broad enough for everybody but with little specific things that people [Marvel comic fans] can find and identify with.”The series will follow a small group put together by Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg), investigating strange occurrences in a world where superheroes and villains have begun to emerge. Said co-creator Jed Whedon, “They’ll be a challenge each week,” but the intention was also to have “the characters dealing with each other [in ongoing storylines] enough to weave through the standalone episodes,” noting, “There will be an over-arcing mythology.”Joss Whedon said he felt S.H.I.E.L.D. offered a ton of possibilities and noted, “Every week it won’t be [the team meeting] some new hero. There can be a device, there can be a mystery… So much has happened since people found out there’s a superhero team and aliens invaded New York,” and he loved that the show could offer “Spy stuff, superhero stuff… Every week you get something that feels a little bit different.”Whedon of course has had some less than pleasant experiences in the past with some of his projects, most notably Firefly. Discussing his collaboration with ABC and Marvel, he said , “ABC and Marvel have been very active making sure that the show is what they want for their company and their network and their audiences, but at the same time very supportive of the vision that we laid out for them.” He stressed, “We want to make the same show. We’re on the same page, which has occasionally not happened to me.”As to the balance of standalone stories to mythology, he said ABC ,“Wanted to make sure people were coming for the recurring story as much as the story in the single episode,” noting that's the way he approaches his series already and joking that they basically asked, “Will you please do it in the way you do it?”Clark Gregg described Agent Coulson as “a terrific chain letter that began in Iron Man with a couple of scenes that my neighbor Jon Favreau asked me to do.” He said he loved watching the character evolve, to the point where Whedon, in Avengers, revealed him to be, “A geek, a fanboy, the nerd avatar who grew up in this world reading about this stuff,” and yet simultaneously was “Almost bored with this stuff.” He noted the role has, “been such a gift for me.”There is a brief explanation given for Coulson’s resurrection in the premiere, even as it’s made clear there is more to the story still to learn. Said Whedon, “We will be dealing with the issue. That will be part of the thread of the story.”Gregg recalled Whedon telling him about their idea to bring Coulson back and how he “Wanted it to not undermine the reality of the Avengers,” but that once Whedon told him the plan – which is more than you learn in the pilot – he loved it.Both Whedon and executive producer Jeph Loeb noted they never conceived of the series without Coulson at the center, though Gregg laughed, “I don’t think anybody said that to me. I may have heard it in my head!” But he added, “It’s pretty cool that a guy who starts out in Iron Man as an annoying bureaucrat with a secret ends up with his own show.”Gregg noted, “There is a perception of S.H.I.E.L.D. being an American organization. It's a transnational organization protecting humanity,” and that being the case, there are non-American characters on the show like Fitz (Iain De Casaetecker) and Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge). Said Henstridge, who is from England, “This is a team of misfits coming together, so I thinks it’s nice to have the international element,” noting these characters are forming both a team and family element.Whedon noted, “I like the people who are on the fringe of things,” stressing that this team is not traveling with the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. “These guys are out there by themselves – which is both an advantage and real trouble for them.” He said they wouldn’t have all the answers or an easy fix for their problems. “That’s the kind of thing that makes a group bond and the kind of thing that I like to write.”The two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents with the best fighting skills on the show are Agent Ward (Brett Dalton) and Agent May (Ming-Na Wen). Jed Whedon described Ward as “much more of a throw down, boxer, Bourne identity type” of fighter, but said May was, essentially, “a Ninja.”Ming-Na Wen laughed, flexing her muscles and saying, “Besides my belly when I was pregnant with my kids, I am so proud to show off these guns.” She said she’d been training harder than ever for the show, remarking, “I think I’ll be in the best shape of my life and I’m really liking it, surprisingly. I hate working out but I do like kicking ass.”As for the show’s hacker, Skye, Chloe Benett said her character was going against the tradition of the “great at computers/bad with people” computer expert seen in other stories, noting, “She’s actually better with people than computers,” including how she can manipulate people.As to why the main characters are all regular, non-superpowered people, Whedon said he felt the entire concept of the show was about the people who usually get pushed to the side in a big superhero story, noting, “Clark was that, a proxy, in the movies.” He said the show followed people who asked, in the wake of the events of The Avengers, “What about the rest of us? How do we cope with this?”Added Whedon, “It was important that our core team, while extraordinary -- it’s television so they’re incredibly good at what they do and ridiculously attractive -- are not super.”On his series like Buffy and Angel, Whedon was known for some very experimental episodes, including going dialogue-free, a musical and turning his lead character into a puppet. Could he possibly go to such places with Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.?Said Whedon, “There is an element of absurdity in the Marvel Universe that is satirical and bizarre. The fact that we’ll be able to tap into that will keep the show from being too self-important or dry.” He said he did want to to push the boundaries, but stressed what he didn’t want to do was “always look for a new angle,” and that it had to work with the characters.

Could The Avengers Appear in S.H.I.E.L.D.?

All of which is to say that despite Clark Gregg’s joking about a S.H.I.E.L.D. musical episode, Whedon said that was one thing he could rule out.

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. premieres September 24th on ABC.Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @EricIGN , IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at Facebook.com/TheEricGoldman