Although that may be a mystery, Whedon’s reasons for killing Agent Coulson is not. At a press junket for The Avengers, the director came clean, telling io9.com it was … someone else’s idea.
“In our first meeting [Marvel Studios President] Kevin Feige said, this is what we’re gonna do and I said, ‘Oh, but you have to go out there and tell everybody that it was your idea because this is going to get me so much ****. Because they are all going to be like, “Oh, he did it again!”‘ Whedon said. “It was stipulated from the beginning, and I completely agree that it was the right thing to do, and so did Clark, who said in the early days, when I was busy apologizing for it, ‘In a movie like this, with what’s going on if there isn’t some toll, it’s just irresponsible story telling.’”
