As played by Clark Gregg, Agent Phil Coulson assembles the Avengers, gives them something
to avenge, and then comes back to life to lead the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. But there's
a lot more than that to know about the man with the Captain America trading cards.
Phillip J. Coulson was born in 1964 in Wisconsin. The son of Robert and Julie Coulson, he was
an only child who loved Captain America and tinkering with cars. He was still in school
when he was recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D. His first mission was with Melinda May, with whom
he developed a strong working relationship.
After about a decade as a field agent, Coulson accompanies Nick Fury to investigate a mysterious
woman who crash-landed into a Blockbuster Video in 1995. That woman is, of course, Carol
Danvers. Fury drives off after her, accompanied by someone whom he thinks is Coulson. But
surprise, surprise, it's actually a Skrull! The real Coulson later saves Fury when he
trusts his instincts and misdirects the squad hunting him down. Fury never forgets this
moment of loyalty.
When superpowered heroes begin to emerge in 2008, Coulson is brought on board as Fury's
proxy. He volunteers to rescue Tony Stark when he's kidnapped by terrorists in Afghanistan,
although Fury shoots down that idea, as he doesn't want S.H.I.E.L.D. operating on foreign
soil. It takes Fury and Coulson a while to figure out if Stark was in league with terrorists.
But when they see him save a fighter pilot, they realize the truth.
Fury and Coulson go back and forth regarding Stark's suitability for the Avengers Initiative.
Stark isn't interested at first, and Fury's turned off by his volatility. Coulson spends
time as Stark's babysitter before handing the job over to Black Widow. Later, he and
a team find a magical hammer in the desert. That leads Coulson to Thor, whom he ultimately
befriends by helping him defeat the Destroyer.
"Know this, son of Coul. You and I, we fight for the same cause, protection of this world."
Fury eventually reveals to Coulson that the body of World War II supersoldier Steve Rogers
has been found, and that he's alive. But before Coulson can act on that, he's sent to Project
P.E.G.A.S.U.S., the alternative energy facility that houses the mysterious Tesseract. This
is an enigmatic object entrusted to Fury that is later revealed to be one of the Infinity
Stones. Loki activates the Tesseract, makes Hawkeye his slave, and destroys the facility.
Coulson barely escapes with his life. It's time to activate the Avengers.
Black Widow, Bruce Banner, and Tony Stark are soon on board. After coolly dealing with
thunder gods and billionaire geniuses, Coulson turns into a total fanboy around Captain America,
asking him to sign his trading cards.
"Trading cards?" "They've vintage. He's very proud."
Coulson warns Fury that the Avengers won't work unless they're properly motivated. Even
when Thor shows up and Loki's plan is revealed, the team does nothing but bicker at first.
After Loki escapes, Coulson threatens him with a high-tech gun, but Loki uses an illusion
and fatally wounds him.
As Coulson lays dying, he urges Fury to use his death to spur the Avengers into action.
But Fury isn't about to just let one of his best agents die. After all, Coulson had been
put in charge of Project T.A.H.I.T.I., which was exploring the use of the blood of a Kree
soldier found by the government to promote rapid healing and even bring back the recently
deceased. However, Coulson shut the project down because of its extreme side effects.
"I can no longer in good conscience let the testing continue."
When Coulson is killed, Fury has him taken to a facility called the Guest House, where
he undergoes a number of surgeries and is given the Kree serum. His memory of it is
erased, and all he remembers is recovering in Tahiti, which he refers to as "a magical
place." Coulson is then given a new task by Fury and Maria Hill. He will lead a specialized
squad designed to intervene in areas where unusual objects or events have manifested.
His first recruit is a solo operative named Grant Ward, who acts as the group's muscle
and wetwork specialist. He also recruits his old friend Melinda May, while tech wizard
Leo Fitz and genius biologist Jemma Simmons make up the team's science wing.
The team's first mission involves tracking down whoever was behind a cybernetic technology
called Centipede, which has been empowering a man named Mike Peterson, who is eventually
transformed into a cybernetic killer called Deathlok. Along the way, they pick up their
next member: a young hacker named Skye, who's been part of an anti-government network called
Rising Tide.
After a series of adventures, an enemy is revealed. He calls himself the Clairvoyant,
and he's always one step ahead of the team. When it's discovered that the villainous HYDRA
has been growing inside of S.H.I.E.L.D., all hell breaks loose. Ward is revealed as a HYDRA
agent, and the Clairvoyant is Coulson's old trainer, John Garrett. Centipede was a HYDRA
operation the entire time!
Coulson flees with his team and learns that Fury is still alive. Fury urges Coulson to
finish his mission and take care of Centipede once and for all. Using the same gun he tried
to kill Loki, Coulson and his team defeat Garrett. Fury then gives Coulson a cube he
calls "a toolbox" and taps him as the next director of S.H.I.E.L.D.
"There's no one else I trust with this."
"Thank you, sir."
Coulson's team gets back together, establishes a new headquarters, and slowly adds more agents.
Meanwhile, he's begun to draw alien symbols, the devastating side effect that previous
recipients of the Kree serum had also exhibited. Ward is now Coulson's prisoner, but he eventually
escapes, proving to be a stubborn thorn in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s side.
Coulson tracks down others who have been writing the alien symbols. When he learns that they
were a blueprint of an ancient Kree city, he's freed of the urge to write them down.
It's then a race with HYDRA to find the city. With most of HYDRA's leadership dead or captured,
Coulson becomes aware of the threat of the Inhumans. In particular, he discovers that
Skye is an Inhuman. When she finds out that her parents are alive and one of them is an
Inhuman, she seeks them out, only to realize that her mother is a killer. Eventually, though,
Coulson and his team are able to subdue the Inhuman threat, while Coulson is able to handle
threats to his leadership. In the wake of all this, Skye decides to go by her real name,
Daisy Johnson.
After the costly victory over the Inhumans, Daisy leaves S.H.I.E.L.D. and Coulson steps
down as Director and is replaced by Jeffrey Mace. Coulson returns to fieldwork with Alphonso
"Mack" Mackenzie, in part to track down Daisy. While investigating a series of supernatural
murders connected to a powerful book called the Darkhold, Coulson also has to deal with
a group of fanatical terrorists called the Watchdogs, who are out to kill Inhumans. Along
the way, he encounters the Ghost Rider, whose mortal shell is a young man named Robbie Reyes.
Coulson eventually learns that the man behind the murders is Eli Morrow, Reyes' uncle. His
plan was to use the Darkhold to build a device to give himself absolute mastery over reality
at a molecular level. In the course of this conflict, Coulson ends up stuck between our
dimension and Hell. He can see his crew, but they can't see him. He is eventually freed
when a powerful Life Model Decoy named Aida reads the Darkhold. This allows her to put
Coulson back in one piece. Ghost Rider destroys Morrow, apparently sacrificing himself. Alas,
more dark times lie ahead as Aida becomes sentient as a result of her exposure to the
Darkhold.
Aida replaces May with a Life Model Decoy. The fake May's mission is to find the Darkhold
and bring it back to Aida so that she can complete her dream of becoming a real woman.
In the meantime, she captures Coulson, Mack, and Mace, and uploads them into the Framework,
which was the creation of a scientist named Holden Radcliffe. Even more complications
arise as Aida falls in love with Fitz and puts him in the Framework as well.
In this digital world, HYDRA has defeated S.H.I.E.L.D. and Fitz is a cold-blooded HYDRA
scientist. Coulson is a teacher who's achieved his dream of living a normal life. Simmons
and Daisy use a back door to get into the Framework and snap Coulson out of his programming.
They eventually manage to escape and return to the real world, though Mace's death in
the Framework kills him in the real world as well. Aida achieves her goal of having
her own living body and a full range of emotions. But when Fitz rejects her love, she goes berserk.
So Coulson makes a deal with the Spirit of Vengeance that inhabits the Ghost Rider, thereby
becoming possessed by it and incinerating the otherwise-invincible Aida.
"Is she really…" "Yeah."
Coulson and his crew think they can relax at a diner after this exhausting battle. But
instead they're sent about 80 years into the future to a time when much of the Earth has
been destroyed. What's left of humanity is kept alive by cruel Kree masters. The being
who kidnapped them is an alien anthropologist named Enoch. Having studied humanity for millennia,
he knew that there was an "extinction-level event" possibly linked to Daisy. She's referred
to as the "Destroyer of Worlds," given her powers and proximity to the disaster site.
Coulson's team has to determine why they're sent there, how to negotiate being in the
future with no gear, and how to free humanity. They learn about the Chronicom when Enoch
helps Fitz reach his teammates in the future. Together, they manage to defeat the Kree in
a pitched battle and use a Monolith to get back to their own time. Daisy refuses to go
initially, believing that she's the cause of Earth's doom, but Coulson knocks her out
and brings her back. He wants her to run S.H.I.E.L.D. one day. Upon returning to their proper time,
Coulson serves as the officiant for the wedding of Fitz and Simmons.
More trouble is brewing, as an act of sabotage by General Hale, an old HYDRA operative, creates
a rift into the Fear Dimension, which starts turning everyone's fears into real, solid
constructs. In order to stop it, the team gathers up Gravitonium, the substance that
helps to achieve time travel. It powers a device that seals the rift but doesn't completely
fix it. Coulson volunteers to go and reveals a secret. The deal that he made with the Spirit
of Vengeance to kill Aida means that the Kree blood in his body is gone. As a result, he's
slowly dying of his old wound.
The Gravitonium to seal the Fear Dimension is acquired, and Fitz forces Daisy to remove
a device dampening her powers. It works, and the Fear Dimension is sealed off permanently.
The Gravitonium is stolen by Hale so that she can create an ultimate HYDRA agent out
of her daughter Ruby. But an agent kills Ruby before she can do any damage, and Hale, who
had planned to use Ruby against a Kree invasion, gives the aliens Coulson's location.
Faced with no choice, Coulson's old military frenemy Glenn Talbot takes on the Gravitonium
and crushes the Kree. Unfortunately, it also drives him insane and makes him the threat
to Earth's survival. Given the choice of saving either Coulson or humanity with the Centipede
formula, Daisy saves the Earth.
After Daisy knocks Talbot into space, she returns to Coulson's side. It's too late to
save him, so he and May fly off to Tahiti together for a little bit of happiness before
he dies.
"Anything else on your bucket list?" "Just one thing."
"Parasailing."
But his story isn't over just yet. A duplicate called Sarge is created when Coulson is sent
through time and space while closing the rift to the Fear Dimension. Sarge is a combination
of Coulson's memories and that of a Fear Dimension entity. His mission is to kill a Fear-based
creature named Izel from infecting any more worlds with her Shrike parasites. He teams
up with a reluctant and confused S.H.I.E.L.D. and eventually realizes his true nature and
turns against his allies. Izel is killed using Sarge's extra-dimensional sword, and Mack
kills Sarge to end the Shrike threat.
The end!
No, of course not. Actually, there's still another version of Coulson! That's because
when the Chronicom Hunters then come to conquer Earth, the team goes into the past with a
Chronicom Life Model Decoy based on Coulson, programmed to know everything he missed.
It just goes to prove that the only thing better than one Phil Coulson… is several
Phil Coulsons!
"Hey guys."
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