The new Zodiacseries from Marvel may be able to unite almost all spy agencies in the MCU, as a new wave of casting and story details hints at a huge international conspiracy. The Disney+ series is reportedly casting two male and one female British leads to play new characters created specifically for the series. The show is said to be darker in tone and has been compared to The Americans, according to Knight Edge Media. Marvel has already established an entire network of spies and secret organizations throughout the movies and television shows, and Zodiaccould finally provide them a reason to cross paths.
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Marvel Television chief Brad Winderbaum offered a little more in an interview with Collider, describing Zodiacas “a globetrotting, international espionage show about secrets and lies and betrayals and secret acts of loyalty and an insane cast of characters.” Production is scheduled to start in London in spring 2027, with a premiere on Disney+ set for 2028. Marvel announced the project at New York Comic Con and debuted a mysterious logo, featuring a modified S.H.I.E.L.D. insignia, and Winderbaum asked people to look closely at the design for clues. And these clues could lead to one of the biggest conspiracies in Marvel Comics. Early reports have also compared Zodiac to The X-Files, hinting the series could explore a variety of cases while working toward a bigger mystery. Between The Americans, Slow Horses, and The X-Files, there’s room for a Marvel spy series that doesn’t need a “Big Potato” hero to show up every week. And when you consider how many secret organizations there already are in the MCU, the writers will not have to start from scratch.
Zodiac Could Bring the MCU’s Spy Agencies Together
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In Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Warriors, the Great Wheel is a secret society of twelve intelligence agents that were brought together by Leonardo da Vinci in 1961, each representing a different sign of the zodiac. It featured Nick Fury, played by Samuel L. Jackson in the MCU, and it’s hard to imagine Marvel doing an international spy series without him getting involved. The Great Wheel had covert ties to S.H.I.E.L.D., HYDRA, Leviathan, the Hand, and was even responsible for the creation of Life Model Decoy technology. If you have seen ABC’s Alias, you may have noticed some similarities to the Alliance of Twelve, the secret organization that controls intelligence agencies throughout the world. Leonardo da Vinci and his inventions replace Milo Rambaldi. With Marvel teasing the Great Wheel in the “O” of the Zodiaclogo, it looks like we’re getting a new take on the organization. The MCU already has plenty of familiar faces that could fill its ranks.
Winderbaum only raised the already sky-high expectations for Zodiac when he teased an “insane cast of characters.” With all the spy talent in the MCU, there’s a long list of big names we want to see make an appearance. With the show set in London, could Secret Invasion’s single bright spot finally be back? In that series, Sonya Falsworth (Olivia Colman) ran MI6 operations and could be the lead in the MCU’s take on MI-13, the superhero branch of British intelligence. And then there’s Martin Freeman as CIA man Everett Ross, whose ex-wife Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) has become a key figure in the Marvel intelligence community. Also, Martin Freeman and Olivia Colman sharing scenes in a Marvel spy thriller would be a pretty great added bonus.
Baron Helmut Zemo (Daniel Brühl) could take over for Baron Strucker in an updated Great Wheel. Zemo was last seen in prison on the Raft in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, where he was able to kill the remaining Flag Smashers without even having to leave his cell. He can stand in the corner and dance for six episodes, and we’d be fine. In that series, we learned that Emily VanCamp’s Sharon Carter was the Power Broker, but with the history of Life Model Decoys in the Great Wheel, we have to wonder if the Sharon we’ve been seeing is even the real Sharon. We’d love to see Jimmy Woo take steps to run the Agents of Atlas, but last we saw of him, he’s still FBI, and London is out of his jurisdiction. That’s not even counting S.A.B.E.R., Damage Control, or the Ten Rings.
The Return of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Of course, if Marvel wanted to turn Zodiacinto an old-fashioned spy show, it had already done so with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. In fact, the series’ final season featured a 1970s-style opening credits sequence with the look and feel of a classic television spy drama:
The seven-season series followed Phil Coulson’s team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents as they fought HYDRA conspiracies, alien invasions, rogue artificial intelligence, and threats from across time and space, all while occasionally referencing the larger MCU. Clark Gregg’s Phil Coulson, Ming-Na Wen’s Melinda May, and Chloe Bennet’s Daisy Johnson would all fit right into this story. There’s also Patton Oswalt, who played the seemingly endless Koenig brothers, several of whom worked on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s LMD program. Gregg even shared the Zodiac announcement logo on social media, quoting Coulson’s final line from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., “Cool.” It’s hardly confirmation of his return, but it’s certainly an interesting choice of words. And that’s without getting into the show’s enormous supporting cast, including Adrianne Palicki as Mockingbird, Nick Blood as Lance Hunter, and Henry Simmons as Mack. Marvel’s been building out its network of spies, government agencies, and secret societies for almost two decades now, and Zodiac could be the one to bring it all together. And we’ve already come up with nearly 20 characters who could appear. Winderbaum really shouldn’t have promised an “insane cast” if he didn’t want us getting carried away. The MCU already has far too many good candidates.
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