Marvel has announced that Agent Coulson is returning for the ABC television series S.H.I.E.L.D. This is awesome news because Clark Gregg is awesome in the role and will just make the show better by being there.

However, since he apparently died in The Avengers, people have wondered how he can come back from the dead. While people die and come back all the time in comics, happening in movies is just not as accepted (although people seem to forget about Spock in the Star Trek franchise).

Some people guessed it might be one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s “Life Model Decoys” and that he might even end up being the character of The Vision. However, I thought that might stretch credibility a little too much and leave it open for anyone to come back from the dead at anytime by claiming it was a decoy.

When I left The Avengers the first time I saw it in theaters, my impression was that Agent Coulson never died. Look, Nick Fury already faked the bloody Captain America trading cards, lying that they were on Coulson when he died to try to save Thor. I honestly believed from that moment that Fury was also lying about Coulson dying at all.

Look, S.H.I.E.L.D. has the most highly advanced, high-tech available and there is no reason to think they didn’t have the technology to save Coulson from death. And there is no reason not to believe that Fury wouldn’t lie to The Avengers about the death to give them a reason to finally band together and fight.

Well, Clark Gregg made a recent comment that slightly confirmed by suspicions. When asked how his character could come back he said:

“It would be surprising to me if this was a world where there wasn’t some reckoning for the fact that it’d be … you know, some level of deception must have been perpetrated on the Avengers.”

Slash Film also reported that a source told them that his life was saved by S.H.I.E.L.D., that Agent Coulson’s death was indeed faked, and that Nick Fury lied to The Avengers about it. I think it is the perfect explanation and is not a cheat at all, because The Avengers foreshadowed this exact explanation.

What are your thoughts? Is this playing fair and is Agent Coulson’s return justified?