Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

I’ve been a Joss Whedon fan ever since the 1992 movie, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when Buffy, played by Kristy Swanson, snapped at her Watcher, “Does the word ‘duh’ mean anything to you?” Since then, he’s developed television shows, movies, comic books, and web series, which has earned him the adulation of his many fans. Now, after the success of The Avengers, he’s recently been put in charge of an upcoming ABC superhero show for Marvel Studios. (Oh yeah, and Avengers 2.)

We know almost nothing about the television show, except what Marvel has already told us, which is next to nothing. This means Joss may (or may not) cull characters from an existing superhero team, or he may (or may not) use characters he created. (I speculate that it’s a combination of both, as with Smallville. In fact, my spider-sense is telling me that Marvel hopes to surpass the ten-season success of the WB series.)

But if past performance guarantees future results, I can tell you what to expect from the upcoming television series, based on what I know about the work of Joss Whedon.

He will have an ensemble cast.

If Joss succeeded with The Avengers, it’s because he has experience fitting a super-sized cast into a group of team players. Although Joss’ previous shows (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse) have focused on one main character (Buffy, Angel, Mal, Echo), every supporting character is as real and fleshed out as the ostensible protagonist.

In other words, Firefly was as much about the crew as much as about Serenity’s captain, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer could have just as easily been called The Chosen One and Her Friends.

He will kill people. A lot.

Joss is a serial killer. He only gets away with it because they’re fictional characters that he himself has created. But if your only exposure to his work is the 2012 movie The Avengers, you may not realize that in every show he’s ever helmed, Joss has killed (even maimed) some of his most likeable characters in order to create tension, to raise the stakes, and to generally keep it real. He did it in The Avengers too, a shocking, sudden death that gave the survivors motivation to continue fighting. (Because I’m a Joss fan, I totally called it, here.)

“But,” I hear you thinking, “he can’t kill off Marvel property. Marvel won’t allow it.” However, Marvel famously has alternate continuities. For example, Peter Parker is alive and well in the Amazing Spider-Man, but in Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Peter is dead, and a boy named Miles Morales has taken his place.

In this upcoming television show, I don’t who will die or how. I don’t know if it’ll happen in season one or season three, when you’re relaxed and off your guard. I only know that the character will be likeable and this death will hurt.

But only Joss (along with George R.R. Martin, a la Game of Thrones) can make it hurt so good.

Friends will be enemies.

By the end of Dollhouse, we learned that the puppetmaster behind the Rossum Corporation was a close friend to the heroine, Echo. In season 4 of Angel, we learned that the person manipulating events to summon the god Jasmine was a friend as well. Same with the comic book, Fray. And in the Buffy Season 8 comic book, which Joss did not write but served as an “executive producer,” it happened yet again.

I didn’t see any of these twists coming. But now I’m primed and ready to be suspicious of the main character’s bestie.

He will cast someone he’s worked with before.

Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, Eliza Dushku, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Alexis Denishof, Felicia Day, Amy Acker, and Summer Glau are repeat performers from the Joss Whedon Stable of Excessively Talented Actors Who We Love. He’s even worked with Jeremy Renner on more than one occasion (first in Angel and later in The Avengers). And although he did not direct Fran Kranz, Tom Lenk, and Christopher Hemsworth in Cabin in the Woods, his producer role means he nevertheless managed to work with them more than once.

I would be surprised if he did not cull actors from his previous work, particularly Nathan Fillion, who reportedly picked up the phone and told Joss, “Whatever it is, the answer is yes,” before Joss could offer him a part in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog.

He will have at least one awesome warrior woman.

Some of Joss’ female characters aren’t afraid to kick ass and take names. Several of his female characters were physically as tough as any man (Buffy, Faith, Zoe, Echo, Natalia). Better yet, they frequently protected others, while some others defended themselves when the occasion warranted it.

Even the female characters who weren’t warrior women were smart and resourceful and a pleasure to cheer on.

He will surprise us with awesome character development.

Joss isn’t just good at plot twists: It’s his character twists that I most love. He’s made good people go terribly bad. He’s redeemed killers. He’s turned an air-headed Valley Girl one of television’s best role models for young women. And that’s just with his own characters.

But from The Avengers (plus his turn writing The Astonishing X-Men and Runaways), we know that Joss will give us character that we think we already know and make them better. In Astonishing X-Men, Whedon, a famed fan of the character Kitty Pryde, made her more heroic than she’d ever been before, while at the same time shaking her emotional core over the reappearance of her first boyfriend, Peter.

That’s because he loves his characters, even though he has no problem hurting them. And even though his characters suffer, they grow stronger for their suffering.

So which one of my predictions do you think is the most—or least—accurate? Let me know in the comments. Also, who of Whedon’s previous stable would you like to see in the new series? Playing which Marvel superhero?