Joss Whedon talks Age of Ultron and the Possibility of a Major Character Death

Anything Joss Whedon says instantly becomes headline news these days - it's been that way ever since he was named the "Godfather" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe back in 2010 when he was named the writer and director of The Avengers.

Now with his fingers in almost all aspects of Phase Two and likely Phase Three and the upcoming TV series Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, he is opening up more about the highly anticipated sequel to Avengers, The Avengers: Age of Ultron. 

We all know the frightful history that Whedon has with our beloved characters - examples include Buffy, Firefly/Serenity and literally no one can forget Coulson in Avengers (I saw it opening day and everyone was in such a state of shock you could hear a pin drop). But could we see a major character death in Age of Ultron? Whedon recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly saying,

“I’m always joking about that. Um… maybe? But I’d have to have a really good reason, a really great sequence for [Marvel executives] to go, ‘We’ll cut off a potential franchise, that’s fine!’ They know, as any good studio does, that without some stakes, some real danger, how involved can we get? We don’t just rule it out across the board, but neither is the mission statement ‘Who can we kill?’ We try to build the story organically and go, ‘How hard can we make it on these people?”

While it seems unlikely that Marvel would want to cut off one of its franchises at this point, no one will ever be sure until the movie is actually released. He also reiterated that we won't see Loki in Avengers 2.

“Every movie is going to be a different villain. Loki’s awesome, and he is awesome in Thor 2. But The Avengers is a different thing. I worked with Tom more than any other actor [in the last film], because he was the only villain and there were six heroes. And he was as great as anyone I’ve ever worked with, and I get why people loved the character. But it’s an Avengers movie.” 

This is after Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige hinted that Loki should make it out of Thor: The Dark World despite rumours persisting that he might meet his demise in the upcoming installment. Again, only the release of the movie will give us the answers. It would be kind of awesome if all Marvel's big bad's we'll see in the MCU films show up in Avengers 3.

For more of Whedon's Q&A, visit the Entertainment Weekly website. Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D premieres on ABC on September 24th, Thor: The Dark World opens in North America on November 8th, and The Avengers: Age of Ultron will hit the big screen on May 1st, 2015.


@Stepherland