MCU/AoS Colson thoughts
Dec. 22nd, 2018 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urthI sort of feel the need to lay all of this out there, just in case I’m right (I’m not saying I am or even expect to be) and I can point to this later and say I called it (I’m probably not calling it).
Reasons why I think Phil Coulson will appear in ‘Avengers Endgame’
1) ‘Captain Marvel’
This is one of the reasons I’ve gone into before. I think making a point of having Coulson in CM could well be part of the plan to bring him back in A4. I definitely don’t think his odds are lessened by that fact, to put it mildly. They not only have him in the movie, they’ve not only let it be known that he’s in the movie; they made sure to have him in that first trailer. ‘Look everyone, remember Coulson’ style. I think there’s definitely a decent chance that him being in that movie is to remind people who haven’t been watching AoS who he was and that he was an important part of the universe.
As a side note, damn am I hoping for some AoS easter eggs. I want a Lola cameo, and I will flip my shit if there’s a reference to May (a cameo would be even better). Say at the end that he’s going on a mission to Glasgow, please just do it. Validate me.
2) Captain Marvel
Now, this is one that I don’t necessarily think is a lock; but I keep thinking how Coulson being alive could figure in to Carol meeting the Avengers. Of course, she could certainly just show up, it’s not like they’re going to be turning down help; or there’s a pretty good chance she’s going to rescue Tony on her way to Earth and that’s how they all meet. But this also sort of gets it coming and going, just not decisively either way. As someone who is (theoretically) known to Carol and could be a bridge between her and the Avengers particularly in the absence of Fury and Hill; and because they will (again theoretically) have met, there will be a desire to see it pay off in the follow up.
While it might be a lot for the movie to over I have this half-baked notion of her zeroing in on him in Tahiti; her being like ‘hey we need you to get back in the fight;’ him being like ‘so my girlfriend just disappeared, I can’t contact anyone I know, and I’m also dying, sure I don’t have a lot to lose, but I can’t do much either.’ To which she is like ‘would you like some of my blood, its super awesome blood.’ To which the movie does not get into his history with Kree blood but he decides to go along with it (maybe since it’s been absorbed with human blood, or maybe because he doesn’t have a lot to lose, who knows).
3) The old wounds
While we’re on the subject though, what started me down this road was an observation I saw made before IW even happened. That Coulson is dying of his wounds from ‘The Avengers’ simply no longer being healed. This is an excellent way to not have to explain a lot of the details of how he survived Loki’s attack. Coulson can tell them he was injured and out of commission from that attack, had basically retired to spend what time he had before his wounds festered in a quiet out of the way spot where no one knew he was alive. We’ll deal with that being mostly bullshit when we get back to AoS.
4) An old message?
This of course is one I didn’t have until the trailer hit, but there is something a little weird about Cap and Nat’s reaction to Ant-man showing up. Now, especially if there’s a decent time jump during which Scott had been counted among the dead/missing, yes they would be surprised that he reappears out of the blue. But something about them wondering if they found an old message strikes me as...not their reaction to Ant-man. Their shock and wondering how this person can be at the front door feels like it’s something more. I’m fully admitting it could be Tony getting in contact; or it might have been shoving together a scene that is an old message from Fury with Scott showing up at the front door. I’m just not going to entirely give up on the idea that it’s ‘what the hell, how is Coulson alive?”
5) Admittedly, maybe time travel
I have mixed feelings about this one, but we have heard that there may be a time travel element to A4; and people have speculated that this may involve going back to ‘The Avengers.’ This would be a reason why I feel like the audience in being reminded of Coulson without having any expectation of the movie handling what’s happened since A1. If 2012-Coulson is important to the plot but not present-Coulson, many of my reasons for suspecting his return are kind of moot, but the overall vibe I have that he is coming back remains..
I’m not so sure how well it would square with a lot of what I’m going to get to; and I can see so many ways that I would end up throwing a hissy fit if they do it badly. For one I don’t think either the movie side or the TV side will have thought through what it would mean if Coulson had lived. Even just the movies where we pretend he’s been dead all this time, how does him being alive affect ‘Winter Soldier’ and the fall of SHIELD? And if there’s a second of implication that he lived and ended up with the cellist (which is basically the one thing the movies established about him as a person) I may rage-quit; because you are not splitting up my MCU OTP for a cheap payoff in the movies rather than the hard-fought love story of the show.
That I can so easily see how that story would be done even though I hate the concept is something I don’t know how to handle. That said, AoS could salvage even that if they were very careful, I just don’t expect they would be (even if they were allowed to be).
6) Season 4
As much as I love s4 and have over time even found a lot to appreciate in the Framework arc, there’s always been a weird jack-knife in Coulson’s arc in those final episodes that if I’m right about him returning to the movies might make some meta sense. That would have been around the time IW/A4 went into main production, so the AoS crew would have known what the movies were planning to do and had to play along.
The Framework arc was clearly set up; they had introduced it being developed in the first episode of the season, had shown how it was furthered by the Darkhold knowledge, established Radcliffe’s reasons for developing it. They also went out of their way to establish Mack’s tragic daughter and Fitz’s terrible father so that these elements could be used in the Framework story. So it’s not that the mini-arc doesn’t fit in the story.
But I’ve always had a little nagging feeling about Mace’s fate, and it only got worse in s5. Narratively, for that arc, it works okay. It’s nicely complicated and raises the question whether it was worth it when that world isn’t real but he thought it was. It makes us aware of the stakes by having someone die, and makes their eventual victory come at a cost. It almost makes it believable when Mack decides to stay, as if the world is real enough that he maybe should stay. But it’s also always felt a little bit cheap in a larger context, so that there was no longer an obstacle to Coulson being charge of SHIELD; except s5 doesn’t even focus on SHIELD the same way, there was no reason Mace had to die for that arc to work and arguably might have worked better in some places if he had. I haven’t quite worked out how this fits with the idea of Coulson returning, but I feel like it does.
More notable to me is that Robo-Coulson tells May-lon that they’re supposed to be together in the Framework only for them not to be. Now you could argue that these sort of happen in the same episode so maybe it doesn’t show outside influence necessarily. And just because there was a gap in episodes aired doesn’t mean there was a gap in production during which they got the info in the upcoming movies. Except I’ve always kind of had the feeling that they wrote the introduction to the Framework arc without having figured out the whole plot. Even visually, the clips we see at the end of 4x15 don’t look the same as the rest of the arc; there’s actual color in those clips instead all grey all the time. So I don’t think we can dismiss the idea that there was a break in production while they sorted out that arc, and that would be a time they had to adapt around the movie’s plans; and for some combination of reasons backed off of this being their time to write May and Coulson together.
7) Season 5
Before I ever encountered the theory of Coulson being brought back into the movies, I’d been bothered by his lack of character development in s5; but the more I think about his lack of character development in the context of him being returned to the movies the more it makes sense. Whatever avenue they’re using to return to the character (present or past versions) there are reasons to only let the character develop so much farther. Present version they had to lock in how he would be written in the movie a year or more earlier and could only get to that point on the show. Past version, especially if they’re going to change his history (between A1 and A4) they needed to leave themselves room to maneuver after A4 happens and they have to figure out where to go next.
So a season where Coulson is dying ends up not being about him (of course, it’s not really about anything except maybe the tragedy of Glen Talbot but that’s a more general s5 complaint). We don’t resolve any of his lingering plot points from 4 aside from his deal with Ghost Rider (and since so many of his lingering plots involve May it really hurt her characterization too). But we do make sure to have him say goodbye; in case the movies want to keep him so he can’t also be a TV character; if it’s going to change his history and he doesn’t end up here, they can say it did at least save his life so it’s not all bad; in case he had to spend time apart from the team for any reason.
8) Season 6 silence
In this case, I recognize that there is a larger point at work here. We haven’t heard much about s6, aside from that there will be a s7; and in the context of where the MCU is, that’s understandable, not to mention that we’re still about six months from it happening. You don’t even want them to tell you that it takes place in the aftermath of the Snap or post A4, because just having that knowledge is a lot until we have the plot and resolution A4. If the movie covers a few years, does this take place in those years? If time returns to the way it was, you’re giving away that it will go back. If it involves time travel that may rejigger parts of the universe that’s probably going to impact AoS maybe more than any other part of the MCU.
So the fact that they’re keeping quiet on whether Coulson is part of it...while I’m going to read into it I’m perfectly aware that I could be reading too much into it and quite willing to be wrong. But, the fact that they are keeping so quiet, while telling that Deke will be back and while also renewing the show for a s7 makes me wonder if Coulson’s fate is tied to what happens in the movie; that he’ll be part of it, but his role in the story and maybe AoS’ role in the MCU is going to be different in the next phase of the universe.
9) Star Wars connection
This is one is tenuous at best, but it’s still a thought that’s been lurking in my mind for a bit. A while back I was sort of parsing through my thoughts on Solo making it movie canon that Darth Maul survives TPM and decided that I’m right on the edge of okay with it, but mostly if the MCU also just one day movie-canonizes that Coulson has also been alive all this time. Yes I realize that these are separate franchises, and that by all accounts the relationship between Marvel TV and movies is much less amicable than Lucasfilm TV and movies. And yes, it didn’t seem like general opinion was really in favor of the Maul twist, so that might make them rethink doing something similar here. And yes, just because they’re both owned by Disney doesn’t mean the same rules ably in both ‘verses.
On the other hand, Coulson has been on a live action, major network series for five more-or-less consecutive years in a universe that knew it was ongoing rather than a few appearances on a cartoon not everyone could or would have watched when at the time it seemed like the mainline series was no longer going on and having ended up already written the end of his story. Coulson was stabbed and seemed to die in a comic book universe where there’s always a reason if writers want to bring someone back from the dead; Maul was sliced in half and tossed down a reactor core moments after Qui-gon couldn’t be saved from a single stab by the same weapon. I’m not saying the movies should take time and explain everything that happens on AoS, but I think it’s a lot more reasonable for Coulson to return to the movies and to expect audiences to know or go along with that fact, than it is with Maul.
And yeah, if they weren’t both owned by Disney I’d probably say this had even less bearing than it does presently. This is less of a reason for my thoughts than an opinion I have looking for a reason to express.
Reasons why I think Phil Coulson will appear in ‘Avengers Endgame’
1) ‘Captain Marvel’
This is one of the reasons I’ve gone into before. I think making a point of having Coulson in CM could well be part of the plan to bring him back in A4. I definitely don’t think his odds are lessened by that fact, to put it mildly. They not only have him in the movie, they’ve not only let it be known that he’s in the movie; they made sure to have him in that first trailer. ‘Look everyone, remember Coulson’ style. I think there’s definitely a decent chance that him being in that movie is to remind people who haven’t been watching AoS who he was and that he was an important part of the universe.
As a side note, damn am I hoping for some AoS easter eggs. I want a Lola cameo, and I will flip my shit if there’s a reference to May (a cameo would be even better). Say at the end that he’s going on a mission to Glasgow, please just do it. Validate me.
2) Captain Marvel
Now, this is one that I don’t necessarily think is a lock; but I keep thinking how Coulson being alive could figure in to Carol meeting the Avengers. Of course, she could certainly just show up, it’s not like they’re going to be turning down help; or there’s a pretty good chance she’s going to rescue Tony on her way to Earth and that’s how they all meet. But this also sort of gets it coming and going, just not decisively either way. As someone who is (theoretically) known to Carol and could be a bridge between her and the Avengers particularly in the absence of Fury and Hill; and because they will (again theoretically) have met, there will be a desire to see it pay off in the follow up.
While it might be a lot for the movie to over I have this half-baked notion of her zeroing in on him in Tahiti; her being like ‘hey we need you to get back in the fight;’ him being like ‘so my girlfriend just disappeared, I can’t contact anyone I know, and I’m also dying, sure I don’t have a lot to lose, but I can’t do much either.’ To which she is like ‘would you like some of my blood, its super awesome blood.’ To which the movie does not get into his history with Kree blood but he decides to go along with it (maybe since it’s been absorbed with human blood, or maybe because he doesn’t have a lot to lose, who knows).
3) The old wounds
While we’re on the subject though, what started me down this road was an observation I saw made before IW even happened. That Coulson is dying of his wounds from ‘The Avengers’ simply no longer being healed. This is an excellent way to not have to explain a lot of the details of how he survived Loki’s attack. Coulson can tell them he was injured and out of commission from that attack, had basically retired to spend what time he had before his wounds festered in a quiet out of the way spot where no one knew he was alive. We’ll deal with that being mostly bullshit when we get back to AoS.
4) An old message?
This of course is one I didn’t have until the trailer hit, but there is something a little weird about Cap and Nat’s reaction to Ant-man showing up. Now, especially if there’s a decent time jump during which Scott had been counted among the dead/missing, yes they would be surprised that he reappears out of the blue. But something about them wondering if they found an old message strikes me as...not their reaction to Ant-man. Their shock and wondering how this person can be at the front door feels like it’s something more. I’m fully admitting it could be Tony getting in contact; or it might have been shoving together a scene that is an old message from Fury with Scott showing up at the front door. I’m just not going to entirely give up on the idea that it’s ‘what the hell, how is Coulson alive?”
5) Admittedly, maybe time travel
I have mixed feelings about this one, but we have heard that there may be a time travel element to A4; and people have speculated that this may involve going back to ‘The Avengers.’ This would be a reason why I feel like the audience in being reminded of Coulson without having any expectation of the movie handling what’s happened since A1. If 2012-Coulson is important to the plot but not present-Coulson, many of my reasons for suspecting his return are kind of moot, but the overall vibe I have that he is coming back remains..
I’m not so sure how well it would square with a lot of what I’m going to get to; and I can see so many ways that I would end up throwing a hissy fit if they do it badly. For one I don’t think either the movie side or the TV side will have thought through what it would mean if Coulson had lived. Even just the movies where we pretend he’s been dead all this time, how does him being alive affect ‘Winter Soldier’ and the fall of SHIELD? And if there’s a second of implication that he lived and ended up with the cellist (which is basically the one thing the movies established about him as a person) I may rage-quit; because you are not splitting up my MCU OTP for a cheap payoff in the movies rather than the hard-fought love story of the show.
That I can so easily see how that story would be done even though I hate the concept is something I don’t know how to handle. That said, AoS could salvage even that if they were very careful, I just don’t expect they would be (even if they were allowed to be).
6) Season 4
As much as I love s4 and have over time even found a lot to appreciate in the Framework arc, there’s always been a weird jack-knife in Coulson’s arc in those final episodes that if I’m right about him returning to the movies might make some meta sense. That would have been around the time IW/A4 went into main production, so the AoS crew would have known what the movies were planning to do and had to play along.
The Framework arc was clearly set up; they had introduced it being developed in the first episode of the season, had shown how it was furthered by the Darkhold knowledge, established Radcliffe’s reasons for developing it. They also went out of their way to establish Mack’s tragic daughter and Fitz’s terrible father so that these elements could be used in the Framework story. So it’s not that the mini-arc doesn’t fit in the story.
But I’ve always had a little nagging feeling about Mace’s fate, and it only got worse in s5. Narratively, for that arc, it works okay. It’s nicely complicated and raises the question whether it was worth it when that world isn’t real but he thought it was. It makes us aware of the stakes by having someone die, and makes their eventual victory come at a cost. It almost makes it believable when Mack decides to stay, as if the world is real enough that he maybe should stay. But it’s also always felt a little bit cheap in a larger context, so that there was no longer an obstacle to Coulson being charge of SHIELD; except s5 doesn’t even focus on SHIELD the same way, there was no reason Mace had to die for that arc to work and arguably might have worked better in some places if he had. I haven’t quite worked out how this fits with the idea of Coulson returning, but I feel like it does.
More notable to me is that Robo-Coulson tells May-lon that they’re supposed to be together in the Framework only for them not to be. Now you could argue that these sort of happen in the same episode so maybe it doesn’t show outside influence necessarily. And just because there was a gap in episodes aired doesn’t mean there was a gap in production during which they got the info in the upcoming movies. Except I’ve always kind of had the feeling that they wrote the introduction to the Framework arc without having figured out the whole plot. Even visually, the clips we see at the end of 4x15 don’t look the same as the rest of the arc; there’s actual color in those clips instead all grey all the time. So I don’t think we can dismiss the idea that there was a break in production while they sorted out that arc, and that would be a time they had to adapt around the movie’s plans; and for some combination of reasons backed off of this being their time to write May and Coulson together.
7) Season 5
Before I ever encountered the theory of Coulson being brought back into the movies, I’d been bothered by his lack of character development in s5; but the more I think about his lack of character development in the context of him being returned to the movies the more it makes sense. Whatever avenue they’re using to return to the character (present or past versions) there are reasons to only let the character develop so much farther. Present version they had to lock in how he would be written in the movie a year or more earlier and could only get to that point on the show. Past version, especially if they’re going to change his history (between A1 and A4) they needed to leave themselves room to maneuver after A4 happens and they have to figure out where to go next.
So a season where Coulson is dying ends up not being about him (of course, it’s not really about anything except maybe the tragedy of Glen Talbot but that’s a more general s5 complaint). We don’t resolve any of his lingering plot points from 4 aside from his deal with Ghost Rider (and since so many of his lingering plots involve May it really hurt her characterization too). But we do make sure to have him say goodbye; in case the movies want to keep him so he can’t also be a TV character; if it’s going to change his history and he doesn’t end up here, they can say it did at least save his life so it’s not all bad; in case he had to spend time apart from the team for any reason.
8) Season 6 silence
In this case, I recognize that there is a larger point at work here. We haven’t heard much about s6, aside from that there will be a s7; and in the context of where the MCU is, that’s understandable, not to mention that we’re still about six months from it happening. You don’t even want them to tell you that it takes place in the aftermath of the Snap or post A4, because just having that knowledge is a lot until we have the plot and resolution A4. If the movie covers a few years, does this take place in those years? If time returns to the way it was, you’re giving away that it will go back. If it involves time travel that may rejigger parts of the universe that’s probably going to impact AoS maybe more than any other part of the MCU.
So the fact that they’re keeping quiet on whether Coulson is part of it...while I’m going to read into it I’m perfectly aware that I could be reading too much into it and quite willing to be wrong. But, the fact that they are keeping so quiet, while telling that Deke will be back and while also renewing the show for a s7 makes me wonder if Coulson’s fate is tied to what happens in the movie; that he’ll be part of it, but his role in the story and maybe AoS’ role in the MCU is going to be different in the next phase of the universe.
9) Star Wars connection
This is one is tenuous at best, but it’s still a thought that’s been lurking in my mind for a bit. A while back I was sort of parsing through my thoughts on Solo making it movie canon that Darth Maul survives TPM and decided that I’m right on the edge of okay with it, but mostly if the MCU also just one day movie-canonizes that Coulson has also been alive all this time. Yes I realize that these are separate franchises, and that by all accounts the relationship between Marvel TV and movies is much less amicable than Lucasfilm TV and movies. And yes, it didn’t seem like general opinion was really in favor of the Maul twist, so that might make them rethink doing something similar here. And yes, just because they’re both owned by Disney doesn’t mean the same rules ably in both ‘verses.
On the other hand, Coulson has been on a live action, major network series for five more-or-less consecutive years in a universe that knew it was ongoing rather than a few appearances on a cartoon not everyone could or would have watched when at the time it seemed like the mainline series was no longer going on and having ended up already written the end of his story. Coulson was stabbed and seemed to die in a comic book universe where there’s always a reason if writers want to bring someone back from the dead; Maul was sliced in half and tossed down a reactor core moments after Qui-gon couldn’t be saved from a single stab by the same weapon. I’m not saying the movies should take time and explain everything that happens on AoS, but I think it’s a lot more reasonable for Coulson to return to the movies and to expect audiences to know or go along with that fact, than it is with Maul.
And yeah, if they weren’t both owned by Disney I’d probably say this had even less bearing than it does presently. This is less of a reason for my thoughts than an opinion I have looking for a reason to express.
