Aren't you dead?

Black Eye Guy

Black Eye Guy

Taking over the World!
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Black Thorn
I just did a rewatch of SHIELD to pay more attention to it as I find I'm really liking it now, whereas I was underwhelmed by the first 5 episodes.

It's funny after episode 5 the quality of the show takes a dramatic shift upwards.

But watching all together I realised I'd forgotten something while watching week by week (or week, long break, week) - Coulson is "dead"

In the first episode Hill asks Ward what he knows about Coulson and he says he's dead, he's a level 6, so presumably everyone level 1 - 6 believes this. Shouldn't Coulson be a tad more sneaky then he's being if they are still keeping it a secret?

He's just wandering the halls of various SHIELD facilities, or standing about in the plane while repair men fix holes in the plane, presumably they all aren't level 7?
 
Would many people recognize Coulson on sight? I mean, sure, they'd all be aware of his name, but if he's just dandering around the place, he wouldn't exactly turn heads.

Coulson was already dead before The Battle of New York, so he wouldn't have been caught on any cameras for his face to be public knowledge.

If Level 7 is as exclusive and secretive as it seems, it makes sense that they'd try to keep the identities of their operatives to themselves.
 
They kinda made it seem like Coulson was a big deal though, it seemed like people within SHIELD would know who he is.

Like he's basically been sent out on any of the superhero related missions which involved teams of people and any of the people he's come into contact with in the show seem to know him.

Especially since SHIELD is basically an organisation of spies, it seems odd he can just walk about.
 
Bit off topic, but it just occurred to me, is it possible Nick Fury is the clairvoyant?
 
Xin Rong said:
Bit off topic, but it just occurred to me, is it possible Nick Fury is the clairvoyant?
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Just based off rumours, it's a possibility, or at least something they could be setting up as a misdirection

The show is setting up that they can't get in touch with Fury, and he has a much bigger role in Captain America, which will apparently have repercussions for SHIELD (the show).

But I think if they made Fury a bad guy they'd do that in the films, if they revealed him as a bad guy in a movie, he'd be defeated in the movie, I dont think he'd transition into the main bad guy of the show.

Like the way they've set up the clairvoyant he's gonna have to have at least a couple of episodes in SHIELD.

I also hope it's an x-men character, the show needs more naturally powered people to explore.
 
Still a Scoobie
Still a Scoobie
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Black Eye Guy said:
Just based off rumours, it's a possibility, or at least something they could be setting up as a misdirection

The show is setting up that they can't get in touch with Fury, and he has a much bigger role in Captain America, which will apparently have repercussions for SHIELD (the show).

But I think if they made Fury a bad guy they'd do that in the films, if they revealed him as a bad guy in a movie, he'd be defeated in the movie, I dont think he'd transition into the main bad guy of the show.

Like the way they've set up the clairvoyant he's gonna have to have at least a couple of episodes in SHIELD.

I also hope it's an x-men character, the show needs more naturally powered people to explore.
Click to expand...

I wish, but they're not allowed X-men in their universe 🙁
 
The whole Coulson thing is sort of lazy writing in my opinion. They could've done a lot more with the whole 'mysterious back from the dead guy', but I guess they wanted to focus on how he came back to life. Less on the plot possibilities of being thought of as dead by most of the organisation that you work for.

Oh, and speaking of 'Marvel villain ideas', when they keep on refering to May's last mission (the one that screwed her up) - you know with the compound and how she took out all those followers, and that they followed some guy who had powers. (Coulson doesn't know all the details.)

Ddi anyone else automatically think 'The Leader'? (Who, technically, was created in the Incredible Hulk movie)
 
Xin Rong said:
Interesting, I didn't know that, that'd be cool, a sneaky way to get them in the MCU
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Yeah it'd be a great way to do it, mention a character is a mutant in AoS then just have them in the film and never explain their back story.

At least I think it's true, I remember reading that the movie, character and tv rights are all different. Marvel has all the character rights and leases them out for film or tv so while Fox can make the X-Men movies marvel can make X-Men cartoons (I think Disney had the TV rights, but when they became one that didn't matter).

So technically Marvel could use the word mutant in SHIELD, but whether they would do it and risk the hassle is a separate story, but I hope they do, especially with the Netflix shows coming out, there's only so many spider-bites or chemical spills you can believe.

I would like an x-men school Netflix series, one that stays away from all the characters in the movies.
 
Black Eye Guy said:
Yeah it'd be a great way to do it, mention a character is a mutant in AoS then just have them in the film and never explain their back story.

At least I think it's true, I remember reading that the movie, character and tv rights are all different. Marvel has all the character rights and leases them out for film or tv so while Fox can make the X-Men movies marvel can make X-Men cartoons (I think Disney had the TV rights, but when they became one that didn't matter).

So technically Marvel could use the word mutant in SHIELD, but whether they would do it and risk the hassle is a separate story, but I hope they do, especially with the Netflix shows coming out, there's only so many spider-bites or chemical spills you can believe.

I would like an x-men school Netflix series, one that stays away from all the characters in the movies.
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That would be amazing: Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch looked awesome in the Captain America film 🙂

Makes sense re the rights thing, don't marvel make the ultimate spiderman show, which has the Samuel L Jackson version of Nick Fury
 
Just doing a rewatch and noticed that FitzSimmons are both level 5 and Tripp is level 6, and they all had no issue being allowed to know Coulson was alive, so the whole Ward being moved to level 7 to be allowed to know coulson was alive is very weird, unless they are unrelated.
He got level 7 just becasue of his new position on the team and Coulson was just back, and everyone no matter what level is allowed to know Coulson is alive, but maybe they were told in order of level, like level 7's first, 6's second etc.?
 
Maybe it had something to do with Ward's - ahem - 'side' activities.

Say it's Level 5 and above who know about Coulson, if Ward was busy elsewhere before he was recruited to the plane, then maybe he just wasn't around for them to tell him. We don't know what the team was doing before they got on the plane - and we especially don't know what Ward was doing, given recent developments.

Garrett says that he maneuvered Ward onto May's radar so that she would pick him for the team, so he might have been off with Garrett doing...stuff, before that, and might not have been in contact with anyone to be informed.
 
Ward's level 7 before he joins the team on the bus, isn't he? IIRC he says to Hill in the pilot: "I'm level 7, I know Coulson's dead" (or something to that effect, suggesting that he has that knowledge because of his high level), then Coulson walks in and says "welcome to level 8", which suggests to me that people below a certain level (7, maybe?) were never even told he died. There's still holes in it that way (probably more so), but I think it's less that Ward is move up a level and more that the knowledge of Coulson's revival is restricted to Level 8 or those who need to know, which I guess would include his team. And news of his death is kept quiet so if people do see him, they aren't thrown by it, because they never knew he was dead. In a way that makes sense, because if you plan to resurrect him, why tell everyone he's dead? It would jeopardise the Guest House and possibly other S.H.I.E.L.D. intel. The only bit of that which doesn't make sense is why tell level 7 he's dead when everyone below that doesn't know he died and everyone above knows he was revived? You end up with one random mid-level with false intel for no real reason.

I might be wrong on the exact level numbers but that's the gist, anyway.

---------- Post added at 08:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:14 PM ----------

On reviewing, I am dead wrong about the numbers, just knock 'em all down one and it still sort of makes sense.
 
Still a Scoobie said:
Ward's level 7 before he joins the team on the bus, isn't he? IIRC he says to Hill in the pilot: "I'm level 7, I know Coulson's dead" (or something to that effect, suggesting that he has that knowledge because of his high level), then Coulson walks in and says "welcome to level 8", which suggests to me that people below a certain level (7, maybe?) were never even told he died. There's still holes in it that way (probably more so), but I think it's less that Ward is move up a level and more that the knowledge of Coulson's revival is restricted to Level 8 or those who need to know, which I guess would include his team. And news of his death is kept quiet so if people do see him, they aren't thrown by it, because they never knew he was dead. In a way that makes sense, because if you plan to resurrect him, why tell everyone he's dead? It would jeopardise the Guest House and possibly other S.H.I.E.L.D. intel. The only bit of that which doesn't make sense is why tell level 7 he's dead when everyone below that doesn't know he died and everyone above knows he was revived? You end up with one random mid-level with false intel for no real reason.

I might be wrong on the exact level numbers but that's the gist, anyway.

---------- Post added at 08:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:14 PM ----------

On reviewing, I am dead wrong about the numbers, just knock 'em all down one and it still sort of makes sense.
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Hmmm, yes knock it all down 1 level and it's correct. It does make sense to explain that scene.
But I'm not convinced that's how it works, firstly cuz Tripp is level 6, so going off that he would know Coulson is dead, but shouldn't be allowed to know he's alive. Neither should Fitzsimmons, but I guess we could give them a pass as their on the team, but the Cellist also knows he dies which kinda implies the general idea is he died, and the secret part is that he's alive?
 
yeah, either way there's holes in it, but Ward definitely mentions his level in connection to having the knowledge that Coulson is dead, suggesting he's got that knowledge because he's attained that level. Of course, that's just a set-up for the "welcome to level 7" line but I'd like it to make sense in-universe too.

Maybe Trip knows Coulson's dead because he's working under Garrett who knows what's going on with Coulson.

As for the Cellist, well Fury put May on the bus to keep an eye on Coulson, presumably because he thought there was a chance that she'd have to send him back to the dead so (thinking about what Spike says in Bargaining pt. 2 about Willow not bringing him on the plan to resurrect Buffy) I guess they just did what they'd always do and informed the nearest and dearest Coulson was dead. That might cause Coulson a few problems but Fury's shown he's not too worried about messing with Coulson, what with using his death to motivate the Avengers and then bringing him back. Plus, since Coulson's been brought back from the dead, he's going to a) have bigger problems than that or b) be too grateful for being back to worry too much about how difficult it'll be to see the Cellist again.

I think it's just one of those little inconsistencies that occur all the time in shows, you can look at it either way and it'll not quite seem right.
 
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