The Team Assembles in New 'Agents of SHIELD' Poster

The premiere of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD is only about six weeks away, and even to the select few who caught the pilot episode at Comic-Con there are still a great many questions about what the series will be. Although it will fit in some way to the larger Marvel cinematic universe, it also has to work as a standalone network series, and thus will have to endure the same growing pains that all episodic television must go through. Watching how it evolves over time should be fascinating, and I expect that it will look very different by the season finale than it will in the first few episodes.

A new poster for the show has been released, and it's notable only because it features most of the principle cast, including Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson, whose return from the dead will be one of the driving mysteries. But it sounds like there will be plenty of others, and audiences shouldn't expect each episode to look or feel the same as the last, at least not according to Joss Whedon, who will direct the pilot before handing the creative reins over to his brother Jed and Maurissa Tancharoen. Speaking at the Television Critics Association press tour, Whedon said...

Whedon: “Every week, it’s not going to be some new hero. There could be a device. There could be a mystery. There are so many aspects to what’s happened since everybody in the world found out that there is a superhero team, and there were aliens that invaded New York, and we want to be able to change it up every week. We want to be able to deal with every aspect: the spy stuff, the hero stuff, the heartfelt stuff. We want to make sure that … every week, you get something that feels a little bit different so it’s not just, you know, turkey every day.”

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD debuts on ABC at 8pm on September 24th.