These days, no Comic-Con is complete without some kind of presentation from Marvel, and the panel for Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Friday afternoon did not disappoint. Dropping hints, leaving clues, alluding to changes coming for the team, they left the audience questioning everything. Moderated by Jeph Loeb, the whole cast was at attendance for the panel; Clark Gregg, Chloe Bennet, Brett Dalton, Ming-Na Wen, Elizabeth Henstridge, Iain De Caestecker, as well as newly added series regulars Adrianne Palicki, Nick Blood, Henry Simmons, and Luke Mitchell. They talked about what they learned from working on the show, what where their first impressions of each other, and shared some behind the scenes stories from the last season. See below for the full panel recap.

Panel Highlights

  • When Luke Mitchell is Australian. He also felt somewhat intimidated when joining the show and wanted to mostly slip in “unnoticed.”
  • Simmons had a lot of fun getting to kick a lot of ass in the later part of season 2 and hopes to do more of it.
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    Image via ABC
    Blood told a funny story about how he came in to work on the show pretty much at the last second. He was shooting on another project in London and wrapped on that, got on a plane the next morning to Los Angeles, where he was picked up and driven directly to set to start working. “I said to one of the AD ‘Is there any place I could take a shower and freshen up’, and they were like ‘We kinda need you to get into costume and make up.’ […] And then I was upside-down in a jeep with Zena the Warrior Princess.”
  • Palicki admitted, “It’s pretty awesome to play [Bobbi Morse] as a geek and a comic book fan. It was a lot of pressure coming in. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone.”
  • They announced that season 2 will be available for purchase September 18, with behind the scenes footage and an extended blooper reel.

Audience Q&A

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    Image via ABC
    When asked about their first impressions of each other Gregg stated “I loved Chloe Bennet from the first moment I met her. She was psyched to be here. She was incredibly enthusiastic and brave, and really brought everything we needed to make the thing work.” He went on to talk about how great the cast has been to work with, how excited they all are about the show, and about the addition of the new cast member “who gave us this incredible infusion of new energy last season.” He feels incredibly lucking to have this cast, they have fun together.
  • When Henstridge and De Caestecker screen tested for their parts they actually used the scene from the end of the first season with their characters on the bottom of the ocean. Henstridge added that at the beginning of shooting they “were emotions wreaks because the scenes were very intense and that was all we had done together.” De Caestecker added, joking about their accents, “And we were the only two people who could understand each other at the time”
  • Wen and Dalton shared a few jokes about their characters season 1 relationship. “It was a necessity, really,” admitted Wen, “I mean, he was there. We were stuck on a bus for months on end. And he was flexing his muscles all the time, so I had to help him, you know, flex.” Dalton added “We also had a co-pilot in this, by the name of Jack Daniels.”
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    Image via ABC
    Loeb then told the story of when the cast found out about the season 1 betrayal of Ward being a Hydra agent. Some audience members yelled “Hail Hydra” at this point and Gregg stood up and played Coulson a bit for the audience. Joeb asked De Caestecker what it was like finding out and he quieted up and Henstridge said that it’s very difficult for him to talk about right now. Bennet continued the story, how they were all sitting in Henstridge’s dressing room “because it’s the cleanest” and the writers were like “why don’t you all read this together.” She thought they were going to be fired. “And then we got to the real about [Ward] shooting Hand, in the face, and I immediately go ‘I KISSED HIM!’ and Ming goes “I f-“ Then the whole panel cut her off for saying a bad word.
  • When asked what they’ve learned while working on Agents of Shield: Matthews: “Chloe is crazy.” Gregg: “Yes, that’s right, that’s the lesson.” Loeb: “Clark what have you learned?” Gregg: “Very much the same thing. Elizabeth’s trailer is clean and Chloe’s crazy. And Iain is ridiculously” Blood learned that he has to stand on tip-toe when working with Palicki and Simmons. Henstridge learned to pronounce really long words and sound “science-y.”
  • An adorable child asked if there was space on the team for an 8-year-old girl: Gregg answered her “Let me just say, one of the things we are most proud of at SHIELD is the fact that anyone can run SHIELD. We have a number of very strong women who might SHIELD at some point. We have an amazing president […] with Peggy Carter, a very strong, powerful woman who is more then capable of running SHIELD. And just from the few moments we’ve spent with you today, I feel that some day, you could run SHIELD.” Needless to say the young girl was over the moon. He then added, “As long as you stay away from Ward.” Dalton added, petulantly, “There’s space on my team, too.”
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    Image via ABC
    Loeb asked if anyone would be interested in Ward’s team, and the audience was pretty divided, which surprised Bennet.
  • An audience member who was a military NAVY doctor complimented De Caestecker on his portrayal of a character that has suffered a brain trauma and asked how he prepared for the role. De Caestecker said that a lot of the research had been done for him by the writers, and that they’ve been really on point with how it’s depicted. Henstridge interjected that he was being modest and that he did a lot of research for the role. He said that what he liked the most about how the injury was treated on the show is that the character never wanted to just fix him up, and that it was treated very respectfully on the show.
  • When asked about Favorite Characters in Marvel: Gregg: Iron Fist; Bennet: Peggy Carter; Dalton: Fitz; Wen: Mockingbird; Henstridge: Daisy Johnson; De Caestecker: he couldn’t give one because Dalton said him and he and Henstridge had a great FitzSimmons moment which the audience loved; Palicki: Mac; Blood: “Not Bobbi, Iron Man”; Simmons: “Well now it’s Mockingbird”; Matthews: Hulk.
  • Loeb revealed that the character Lash will be coming to the show in season 3.
  • Season 3 will be premiering on September 29.

Footage

Like in the Agent Carter panel, they showed a montage of everything that went down last season, wrapping the whole thing up with “Everything Will Change.” You can see the footage above.

They also treated the audience to a pretty amazing “serious” blooper reel from the past season.

They also had a “behind the scenes” video of Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon discussing season 3 in their office so the audience can “secretly see what they are up to.” The video was pretty funny and showed a lot of hints of what is to come:

  • It featured a blank white board with “Season 3 Story Ideas” at the top.
  • Whedon was throwing darts at a dartboard with pictures of the cast in a circle around it with another white board with the names of the characters and “Which character to kill off this season at the top with tallies next to the names, except for Emma Simmons who has “ALL READY VERY DEAD” next to it (Which Henstridge took umbridge with.)
  • The “came up” Daisy Johnson’s code name “Quake.” Tancharoen accidentally called her “Skye” and had to but a dollar in a jar marks “IT’S DAISY NOW.”
  • They came up with the name for the new plane: “Zephyr 1”
  • They hinted at a Secret Warriors arc for the show.
  • During all this B.J. Britt (who played the character of Antoine Triplett, who died last season) walks in with donuts and asks how the death tally is going. At the end of the video he suggests “I’m thinking more, ‘who should we bring back.” Maybe a hint that he might return?

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