Maybe this isn’t a spoiler, and I just missed the news about it, but Deathlok is coming to MARVEL’S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.! Deathlok was one of those characters that most people don’t pay that much attention to, but that hit right in the early 90’s along with Sleepwalker. I read just about every issue of each.
The news here, along with the already reported info that Jamie Alexander will be appearing later this season as Sif, is that August J Richards, of Angel fame, and now a reoccurring character on the show is going to be transformed into Deathlok in an upcoming episode. I guess it isn’t a big surprise if you look at his semi-reveal at the end of the last episode, but having confirmation is pretty damned awesome.
Here’s what executive producers Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen told Collider in a recent interview about bringing Deathlok to the series:
What can you say about the evolution of Mike Peterson? How long have you been planning his transformation to Deathlok, and when did you let J. August Richards know?
WHEDON: He wasn’t as clued in, as long as we’ve been planning it. We set out with goals and we have tentpoles, but everything changes, especially in TV. Someone will book a series. Now, everyone has a series because there are so many. It’s always shifting, so we’re very careful about when we tell actors what our plans are.
TANCHAROEN: In case they change, you don’t want anybody to get locked into a promise that maybe won’t happen.
WHEDON: So, we were happy to have that plan, and happy to give him that script where it happened.
TANCHAROEN: He was thrilled to know what happens to his character. But from the beginning, we had our sights set on Deathlok. He was at the top of our list of certain characters that we wanted to roll out. And the evolution of Mike Peterson into Deathlok was something that we had toyed with, from the beginning.
WHEDON: It happened organically, in talking about story and talking about the character of Mike Peterson and how we could bring him back.
Read the full interview HERE