SFX 252 PREVIEW How SHIELD Is Rebuilding Itself

Second season addresses the post- Winter Soldier world

They're having to rebuild SHIELD - and that's the show, as much as the titular organisation. Executive Producer Jeph Loeb tells SFX that Agents Of SHIELD season two is “picking up exactly where we left off from last season, in the sense that now Director Coulson has been given a directive which is rebuild SHIELD and do it right.”

“Everything got blown apart, which provides us with an opportunity,” explains co-showrunner Jeff Bell. “It allows us to tell stories where we are the underdog.” Gone is the super-powerful organisation with endless resources. Clark Gregg, Coulson himself, talks about how that's going to affect the tone of the show: “To rebuild SHIELD we're going to need some old friends to prove themselves and some new friends. We're going to have to do it in a way that feels very brass knuckles, old world spying.”

So who is sticking around, as far as he can say? “He's got the people from his first team last year. Skye is an important character to him. May is someone who he's worked out his demons with and can trust.”

“Now they've got to rebuild SHIELD from the ground up, and that means making some new agents, and I would assume, finding out some new HYDRA supervillains.”

“SHIELD is on the run. Now we have to rebuild it and make it better and not so riddled with evil traitors.”

Read more about SHIELD in the new edition of SFX , on sale from Wednesday 20 August. Agents Of SHIELD returns to the US from 23 September.