Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Frustrated One Actor Over A Promised Supervillain Role

Is “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” canon to the Marvel Cinematic Universe? It was sold as such. It starred a revived Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), who had been an unexpected breakout character from “Iron Man” up through “The Avengers.”

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The first season was the most authentically connected. The series’ “Marvel X-Files” approach got shattered by “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” which saw S.H.I.E.L.D. infiltrated and destroyed by HYDRA. So, the show pivoted to its heroes going underground. The first season even managed to get Samuel L. Jackson to cameo as Nick Fury twice. But as “Agents of S.H.I.E.LD.” went on for ultimately seven seasons, the crossovers which Marvel fans had expected never came.

Coulson never reunited with the Avengers onscreen. “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” was never a priority for Marvel Studios because the show wasn’t even produced by it. Rather, the series was backed by ABC Studios, co-creator Joss Whedon’s Mutant Enemy Productions, and Marvel Television (then overseen by Jeph Loeb and without the supervision of Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige.)

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Chloe Bennett (who played Quake/Daisy Johnson) has said the limited connections made “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” a better and more creative show. But through all that, “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” still kept up the pretense of “it’s all connected.” Take season 5, which concluded in May 2018 while “Avengers: Infinity War” was still in theaters. 

In that season, Air Force Colonel Glenn Talbot (Adrian Pasdar) receives a warning that Thanos (Josh Brolin) is coming. To protect the Earth, he ingests the fictional element gravitonium, giving him power over gravity. “Graviton” wants to save the Earth, but if he’s allowed to act he’ll destroy it.

“Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” had been setting up Graviton since season 1… but the decision to combine him and Talbot was left-field. In Marvel Comics, Graviton is a scientist named Franklin Hall. The series’ third-ever episode, “The Asset,” featured Ian Hart as Hall and first introduced gravitonium. Hall is seemingly absorbed by the liquid metal, but the episode ends with his hand reaching out from it, monster movie style.

Then … nothing. Graviton fans everywhere (how ever many that is) were disappointed, as was Hart himself.

In a 2014 Den of Geek interview (when “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” had started its second season), Hart spoke about not being asked back. His words suggested that he’d been sold on the role with a promise Hall would return as a bigger villain:

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“They’re a bunch of lying gits! The lying gits told me ‘Oh, we’d love you to do it, it’s going to be the greatest thing ever. What’s going to happen is, he’s going to disappear, then reappear, and it’s going to be f**king great. You’re going to be this and this.’ And then that was it! They went ‘Yeah, we’re going to go a different way. We have a different idea for the character right now, and for different villains in the Marvel universe, right now we’re not going for that character,’ so I went, ‘Alright mate, see you later!'”

Hart apparently hasn’t spoken about his “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” experience since, much less how his part got usurped in season 5. The show’s executive producers Jeff Bell, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jed Whedon spoke to CBR in 2018 about it, though. “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” season 5 was made as if it would be the show’s last (in the end, it wasn’t), so the team decided to bring back Graviton because it was a “dangling thread” from season 1.

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Jed Wheon added, “In terms of who became Graviton, we wanted someone who’d been on the show the whole time. Talbot’s one of the only characters who has been in every season.”

Hall isn’t exactly an unknown actor (he played Professor Quirinus Quirrell in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”), but by season 5, bringing back a one-shot character from season 1 as the big bad would’ve been anticlimactic. Talbot had sometimes been a thorn in the heroes’ side but sometimes been an ally too, so his downfall to full evil was tragic.

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But Hart is not alone in his frustration. When I was a Marvel obsessive in high school, I dutifully followed “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” season 1, then was irritated every week when the show used so little in the way of actual Marvel Comics characters. The idea of introducing Graviton had me excited because I’d previously seen him in the cartoon series “Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.”

That show used Graviton (Fred Tatasciore) as the first villain the Avengers fight as a team. To give the heroes a worthy threat, it looked past his one-note gimmick and C-lister comics history. A guy who can control gravity? He should be an unstoppably powerful villain, so the cartoon treated him like one. “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” did too … just not in the way fans had expected back in season 1.

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