Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Clark Gregg on Inhumans, Team Dynamics, Secrets & More!

Everyone has Inhumans on their minds, especially after the cataclysmic events of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. mid-season finale. Keen eyed comic fans might be able to connect the dots, but as far as the characters on the show are concerned, they have no idea what they’re dealing with especially Director Phil Coulson. During a visit to a top secret location (Level 7 Clearance, obviously), actor Clark Gregg took some time to chat with members of the press on what fans can expect as we head into the back half of season two.

Today and tomorrow, we’ll be sharing our chats with the other cast members which we’re sure will only stoke the fires of anticipation. Then, after the first episode back, we’ll have even more for you to take in.

If you aren’t caught up on the show, spoilers lie ahead. Consider this your warning.

On what the team dynamic looks like moving forward after Skye’s transformation.

Clark Gregg: We don’t quite know what happened. And yet something clearly happened, and that’s really the tension of the first couple episodes back is what happened to Skye. This is one of the things that I’ve liked most about this season in that that relationship got so tight by the end of last season and only more so this season. And yet, she’s risen to a place where she’s one of the most effective agents he has. And so he’s put in this position where she’s a daughter to him. She’s the closest thing to a daughter. And what bonds them is their dedication to this cause, whereas head of S.H.I.E.L.D., he doesn’t get to be quite as touchy-feely as he was season one. He has to make choices that are simply for the greater good that S.H.I.E.L.D. provides which is protecting the world from the strange, the weird, the line that Joss wrote in the pilot. And it means putting her in dangerous situations. And I think it makes him feel very responsible for whatever’s going on with her.

On if the introduction of the Inhumans changes Coulson’s mission statement.

Clark Gregg: I forgot how hard it is to answer this stuff.

[Laughs]

You’d think at this point I’d be better at this? The Inhumans are something that Clark knows about because I like comics. It’s certainly not something that Coulson knows about. And they aren’t kind of giving out infomercials about who they are or what Skye’s connection to them is. As a fan of the comics, Clark will say, not Coulson, that I’ve always loved the Inhumans. It’s exciting to me, because I love the idea that there is evolutionary potential within us that makes some people suddenly evolve differently and represent something either very special, or a potential weapon and a threat. I love when the comics are a great, interesting, off-kilter prism to look at our world a little differently.

Coulson on the other hand, doesn’t know anything about Inhumans. No one in our world does yet. All I can answer is that something happened to Skye. Coulson desperately went to this alien city, underground, that his writings had led him to. It certainly seemed like she was a partner in getting them there, but then something happened that has put her in quarantine which makes her at the same time in jeopardy, and potentially a threat by being connected to something bigger that we don’t understand yet.

On Coulson’s role, the toll secrets take on Coulson and the team and the importance of keeping them together.

Clark Gregg: Coulson’s dilemma has been what it’s always been since the first half of this season which is “Who am I in this job?” He’s a huge fan of Nick Fury’s in many, many ways, was close enough to him to not see him as some deity. And what’s clear is that he’s smart enough to know that you can’t do the job by impersonating anybody. The best you can do is bring your best version of yourself.

In the episode in Puerto Rico, he kind of says it, “I don’t have an acceptable body count. I don’t think that’s the way you can do this job.” I think that is a concept that is going to be challenged early and often in the back half of the season. The choices you have to make often, by their nature, require some form of sacrifice. 

One of the things I love, is that he went from not being comfortable keeping any secrets from his small team to suddenly becoming head of S.H.I.E.L.D. after realizing everything that had been kept from him. By the time we came back season two, he’s got more than one team working, and they don’t even know about each other. Then, they collide in the field with kind of positive and kind of disastrous results in that it cost me a chance to hang out with Lucy Lawless more.

So I think he’s determined to keep a team together that will not replicate the rotten version of S.H.I.E.L.D. that we saw in Winter Soldier, and the Garrett plot of our back half of the season. There’s an ongoing attempt to broaden the team of S.H.I.E.L.D. that he will need to protect the world from what’s going on within HYDRA. And at the same time, there’s a lot of people there he doesn’t know that well.

Coulson has some history with Agent Hunter & Agent Morse, but not even to know where everyone stands. What I loved about what we got to do in our show after Winter Soldier is that you don’t know who’s lying to you at any given moment. People have been keeping the secret for years and years. After a betrayal like that, you have to kind of constantly evaluate everyone and their motives. I feel like that’s another thing you see play out in a deep way this season.

On if Coulson will have a prejudice against what he doesn’t understand?

Clark Gregg: To me, that’s the real question that we’ll be dealing with this season. The Inhumans are different. They’re different than Iron Man. They’re different than Bruce Banner. They’re different than Steve Rogers. Many of those guys were created by science, either tech in Tony Stark’s case or experiments gone awry as the classic way Spider-Man.

The Inhumans are different. Inhumans represent – and we get into some of that back story… maybe – they represent people walking around with a potential that they’re not aware of. I love that part of last season, when fans discovered that Skye’s an 084 combined with the story of the village that gave their lives to protect her and then finding out how much that was true. I think the idea that there are people who contain within them the potential to blossom into something else is such a fantastic idea.

It’s very different from the other super heroes. The Inhumans in the comics & the graphic novels, are a whole kind of separate, isolated, alien race where they nurture people when this change happens, and it’s a ritual. That’s the comic book world. But even in our world, it’s hard to imagine that Skye is having that same experience, she’s on her own. So she and Coulson are there to figure out what this means, and the exciting and very scary part of it is, it seems destined to really challenge how real their connection is.

—

So there we have it folks, that’s all we can share for now, but be sure to check back to ComicBook.com for more about the show and it’s future.

Are you excited for Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. to return? Let us know in the comments below!