TRAILER: Marvel at How Coulsen and the 'Agents of SHIELD' Are Going to Make the Rest of TV Look Silly

It's not supposed to be this easy. What Marvel has done with the Marvel Cinematic Universe on the big screen — tying together multiple movies with multiple directors into one cohesive and ongoing story — was a movie miracle. Not only has no other studio managed to pull it off, but no other studio has even really tried. (I'm not counting what Warner Bros. is doing with DC as trying at this point.) The idea that Marvel and Disney will now extend the Cinematic Universe to television with Agents of SHIELD is just ridiculous. It shouldn't work.

I guess we shouldn't tell that to the full trailer for Agents of SHIELD that ABC debuted on Tuesday, because this trailer sure makes it look like Marvel is about to dominate another form of entertainment. Agents of SHIELD focuses on SHIELD, with Clark Gregg returning from the dead as Agent Phil Coulsen. The show will expand the MCU to include heroes and villains that aren't quite at The Avengers level, while still maintaining a narrative thread with the movies. The trailer uses glimpses of Captain America, Thor, Iron Man and the Hulk to establish that connection. The Avengers director Joss Whedon wrote and directed the first episode, something that should be obvious based on the trailer's dialogue.

So how's Agent Coulsen back? Gregg chatted with Entertainment Weekly about his character's apparent resurrection, and while the actor didn't reveal any secrets, he did have a few things to say about Coulsen's return.

“I kept waiting to see, are we going to shoot a version where [Loki] misses? And they didn’t, so I was really surprised to get that call and I wanted to make sure it didn’t do anything to undermine what we achieved there and when [writer-director Joss Whedon] explained the mystery and how they planned to deal with it, with Agent Coulson being around, I was very sold.” 

Asked specifically how Coulson comes back, Gregg said: “He’s back. He thinks he knows how he’s back. We’ll have to see.”

Interesting ... "He thinks he knows how he's back"?

In addition to Gregg, Agents of SHIELD stars Ming-Na Wen, Brett Dalton, Chloe Bennett, Iain De Caestecker, Elizabeth Henstridge and J. August Richards (who may or may not be playing Luke Cage). The show will premiere this fall on Tuesday at 8 p.m. on ABC. Check out the full trailer for Agents of SHIELD after the jump.