During the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase One, Clark Gregg's Phil Coulson served as one of the primary connective threads between those early movies, with both him and Nick Fury serving as S.H.I.E.L.D.'s main representatives. Since The Avengers, Coulson has been sticking to the TV corner of the MCU as one of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s main characters, but next year, Gregg will reprise the popular agent for Captain Marvel. However, because Captain Marvel is set in the 1990s, we'll be watching a Coulson who's not the pro we're used to following. Gregg explained:
He's a bit of a new guy in S.H.I.E.L.D. He's a lot younger. It's the earliest we will have seen him, so when he says, 'Mr. Stark, this isn't my first rodeo' in Iron Man, this is maybe the rodeo he's talking about.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has touched on Phil Coulson's life before he crossed paths with Tony Stark in Iron Man, but Captain Marvel will be the earliest we've gone back to see him, so he'll only have just joined S.H.I.E.L.D. when the movie begins. Like most of his fellow agents, Coulson doesn't have any special powers, but as we've seen numerous times in the MCU movies, shorts and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., he's able to keep a cool head when dealing with unusual threats. Judging from Clark Gregg's comment to EW, it sounds like because Coulson's a fresh recruit to the spy organization in Captain Marvel, seeing aliens and a woman shooting energy blasts will throw him for throw him for a loop, to put it mildly. Still, the events of Captain Marvel are just the beginning for Coulson, and they'll help shape them into the experienced agent we first met in Iron Man.
Captain Marvel takes place over a decade before the modern MCU kicked off, but even at that point in the timeline, S.H.I.E.L.D. has been working to maintain global security for decades, albeit mostly from nefarious forces from Earth. And even though Phil Coulson will be the S.H.I.E.L.D. newbie, he won't be the only one who might get frazzled by what goes down in the movie. Captain Marvel will also feature a two-eyed Nick Fury, who, as Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige noted, believes his best days are behind him when the story begins. Little does he know that's far from the truth, as he, Coulson and whatever other players are involved will soon meet a genuine superhero and potentially have to directly deal with members from two different alien species. Being a spy already makes for an exciting life, but throwing extraterrestrial elements into the mix kicks things up several notches on the craziness scale.
Captain Marvel will be released in theaters on March 8, 2019, so keep checking in with CinemaBlend for more updates about the movie. Don't forget to also look through our Marvel movies guide to learn what other MCU projects are in development.
