One of the biggest emotional moments of Joss Whedon's The Avengers was the death of Agent Coulson, but fans of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will know that the character was actually brought back to life on that series. According to Joss Whedon, though, that major event won't be impacting Avengers: Age of Ultron at all.
Joss Whedon spoke to Mental Floss a few days ago about Coulson being brought back to life, and he seemed a little disappointed that it happened in the TV show. He said that rewatching The Avengers, he feels that it takes away some of the impact of Coulson's death scene knowing that he isn't really dead.
What got a lot of attention is that Whedon also said that within the fiction of the movies, Coulson is dead.
That drew a lot of confusion, as it sounded like Whedon was saying that the movie universe and the show universe are now different, whereas Marvel has made it a point to have them be connected.
IGN caught up with Whedon today to ask him to clarify his comments. When asked if Coulson is dead in the movies, Whedon said yes and no. He said that in terms of the Avengers story, it's important for those characters that Coulson still be dead. Whedon said that he wants the Avengers movies to exist for people who have only seen the Avengers, and so with that in mind it wouldn't make sense to have Coulson suddenly reappear.
So what it sounds like Whedon is saying is that it's not that Avengers: Age of Ultron will actively change the canon so that Coulson is still dead, or that it exists in a separate universe from the show. It's just that the movie won't be affected by Coulson's resurrection at all. The Avengers never found out about that, and Coulson is doing his own thing in a different corner of the Marvel universe, so from their perspective, he's still dead. On a literal level, he's still alive, but these characters don't know that, so he's basically still dead from a storytelling perspective.
What's almost more interesting about this is how Whedon seems kind of fed up with Marvel in all these recent interviews. He makes it clear here that he thinks the decision to bring back Coulson on the show takes away from his vision, and he went on say that in the big franchise world, nobody can really be permanently killed, but that it feels disingenuous to have a big battle with no loss at all. He's basically calling out Marvel and saying that them not letting him kill anyone is actively taking away from his vision.
From all of this, it sounds like Whedon really is done with Marvel, and just about ready to get back to creating his own characters, who he'll have the freedom to kill off for real.