New York Comic Con 2014 kicked into high gear on Day 2 with the panel for “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.EL.D.” and while the live ratings may be on the lower side, you couldn’t tell from the avid fans who stood in line for hours to get into the sold out main stage. There were already rumors going around that the attendance at this year’s New York Comic Con surpassed that of San Diego and not surprisingly, they kept on trying to play the New York audience against the San Diego fans.
The MC introduced the panel by bringing out Jeph Loeb, who said that it was going to be a different panel and he talked about how the series was announced at New York Comic Con two years ago after the demand from fans that “#CoulsonLives.” He then teased that on the new season “anyone can be HYDRA” and he opened his shirt to reveal a T-shirt with a HYDRA symbol underneath which the crowd booed. Then Clark Gregg came out to confront Loeb and the crowd went nuts, giving him a standing ovation.
Loeb asked Gregg questions about having Agent Coulson live on the new show–apparently they’re not allowing audience questions at any of these panels?–and Gregg cajoled Loeb that he wasn’t sure if he could forgive him for the HYDRA shirt, so Loeb relented by showing a new unseen episode of the show (which is what was announced on the schedule).
They showed the entire episode airing on Tuesday, October 14, called “I Will Face My Enemy,” which really is a great showcase for actress Ming-Na Wen and her character Agent Melinda May, as we get to see a lot of different sides of her, mostly as she does what’s necessary for the mission they’re on, which involves a “miracle painting” that may have something to do with Coulson’s recent carvings maybe? We don’t want to give too much away, but if you ever wanted to see May in a fight with Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson… or even possibly dancing? You’ll want to tune in.
We also got to see the sullen scientist Fitz, played by Iain De Caestecker, starting to get out of his funk and even bonding with some of the new S.H.I.E.L.D. members and some fun scenes with Adrian Pasdar’s General Glenn Talbot, as well as a great end sequence tease for the next episode with Reed Diamond’s Daniel Whitehall and Ruth Negga’s Raina.
It was a lot of fun watching an episode of the show with a live audience, who laughed at all the best jokes (usually from Ming-Na Wen or Gregg) and really got into the fight sequences and there were even a few girls “Awwww”-ing at the more touching moments. Anyone who has not seen the show with a group of people, especially seeing it with women, are really missing out on a fun experience.
Loeb came out afterwards to say they had run out of time, but as the audience showed their disapproval, Clark Gregg came back out and said that showing the episode wasn’t enough to forgive the HYDRA faux-pas from earlier, suggesting that maybe Loeb should give a sneak preview of Marvel’s next ABC show “Agent Carter.” After a lot of the “fake negotiating” that goes on at these Comic-Con panels, Gregg produced a DVD and Loeb said that they would be showing a single sequence from the show that was just filmed on Monday!
The scene features Haley Atwell as Agent Carter and Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark (both from Captain America: The First Avenger) and James D’Arcy as Stark’s butler Edwin Jarvis. It began with a vintage car driving up to a pier. Carter and Stark get out as the latter talks about an important document that’s gone missing that has a formula to create a highly-powerful explosive. He gets onto a small motorboat talking about the fact there are only a few fences that deal with such things and he goes off on the boat in search of them after telling his butler and chauffeur Jarvis to drive Agent Carter home. Carter goes back to the car and talks a bit with Jarvis (he mentions having a wife and the fact they go to sleep early) but when he suggests taking Carter home, she says, “This is Where I Get To Work.” We then got to see a little bit of Hayley Atwell in action fighting with an unknown attacker with a Tilda Swinton-like haircut, which we couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman.
You can see the episode we watched of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” on Tuesday night at 9 p.m. on ABC and “Agent Carter” will start airing sometime in 2015. Check out three promos for “I Will Face My Enemy” below.
