Back from the dead twice? Why Clark Gregg’s Agent Phil Coulson is the true hero of the MCU

He might not be the most flashy or spectacular role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but this character has gone from a bit part in Iron Man to the only character to feature in all versions of the Marvel Cinematic Universe juggernaut.

S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Phil Coulson might not be the most flashy or spectacular character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but he has some pretty diehard fans nonetheless.

Clark Gregg has played the mild-mannered, smartly-suited, slightly sarcastic government agent since appearing in Iron Man more than ten years ago, and for five seasons of the spin-off TV hit Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

And while Captain America, Thor, Hulk and the Guardians of the Galaxy might get the bulk of the plaudits, Gregg says he’s always pleasantly surprised to meet his fair share of Coulson freaks at fan events around the world.

“They are all kinds of people — men, women, children,” Gregg says. “It’s really odd to go to a Comic Con and see a seven-year-old boy dressed in a suit. There are much cooler heroes you could be, kid. But there is something they responded to and continue to respond to and I think that’s why the television show is about to start shooting season 7. It’s baffling to me — but I am just grateful for it.”

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Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson. Picture: Marvel Studios

Such adulation and longevity is all the more remarkable given that Coulson was never featured in the Marvel comics from which the films are taken.

Even the part in Iron Man, which kicked off the record-breaking Marvel Cinematic Universe — now into its 21st movie instalment with the release of Captain Marvel — was written as a minor role that just kept growing. Now Coulson is the only character to have featured in all incarnations of the MCU — films, shorts, TV, comic and digital series.

Gregg says that while he could never have imagined the juggernaut that the MCU would become — and the doors it would open for him — he had a sense that something amazing was unfolding before his eyes right back at the beginning.

“From the minute I first walked on to the set with Jeff Bridges and Robert Downey and Gwyneth (Paltrow) and saw what was going on with Iron Man I thought this is different from the Batman and Superman movies that I had seen,” he says.

“And I thought ‘if they pull this off, with this tone that’s funny and dangerous — then it could be something really special’. But I had no idea that it could become something as huge and with so many galaxies unfolding as it has.”

Stella Gregg, Clark Gregg, and Jennifer Grey attend at the LA premiere of Captain Marvel last week. Picture: Getty

Gregg hasn’t appeared in an MCU film since Coulson was killed off in the Avengers (and then resurrected for Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.) but says he didn’t need much convincing to return for the ‘90s-set Captain Marvel, which is in part an origin story for the title character (played by Oscar-winner Brie Larson) as well as movie regular Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson).

“The phone call I got said ‘listen, we’d like to put you into another Marvel movie’,” says Gregg with a laugh. “And I said ‘fantastic — am I alive?’. And they said ‘well you certainly are in the ‘90s’. We’re going to have some origin story stuff, the meeting of Coulson and Fury, Brie Larson is Captain Marvel and there’s a great ‘90s soundtrack — they didn’t really need to keep talking much for me. It was a very short phone call.”

Both he and Jackson were digitally de-aged for the film but he says seeing a younger version of himself up (fewer wrinkles, more hair) on the big screen was not nearly as strange as the current wave of ‘90s nostalgia that Captain Marvel fortuitously showcases.

“You don’t really think of the ‘90s as being such a nostalgia period,” Gregg says. “Then you walk into a Blockbuster or you look at MTV bumper stickers that say Rock the Vote and you think ‘oh my God, this was eons ago’. Or you do a car chase in a 90s car and you ‘look at this thing — it’s primitive’.”

Clark Gregg in a scene from Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

As the father of daughter Stella with his wife, Dirty Dancing star Jennifer Grey, Gregg says he was proud to be part of the first MCU film with a stand-alone woman as the title character.

“My daughter is 17 and anything that gets the mythical, pop-culture world looking like the one we actually live in, where women kick ass and should be the heroes as often as men are, feels like correct redress,” he says.

True to form for anything Marvel, Gregg is Coulson is cagey on any details about the imminent return of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season five finished in May 2018 with Coulson presumed dead or dying, but footage of season the coming sixth season (a seventh and final season has been confirmed) showed a character that looked a whole lot like him.

“For a long time I was in the cone of silence and now it’s been revealed that Coulson has passed on and yet these strange ruptures that seem to be happening between universes are revealing traces of some beings that are terrifying and seem malevolent and one of them looks a hell of a lot like our friend Phil Coulson,” he says cryptically. “More than that, I can’t say.”

Captain Marvel is now showing.