THE
CONSULTANT.

A NEW FORMAT, BORROWED FROM PIXAR’S PLAYBOOK

WHY MARVEL BUILT A SERIES OF SHORTS AROUND ITS SMALLEST CHARACTERS

Marvel Studios producer Brad Winderbaum created the One-Shot program as a direct response to how Pixar paired its feature films with original short films on home video, giving Marvel’s own supporting characters a small, self-contained spotlight rather than competing for space inside a feature’s own plot. The Consultant, bundled exclusively with Thor’s Blu-ray and DVD release on 13 September 2011, became the first of these shorts to reach audiences, running barely four minutes.

It’s a modest piece by design: essentially two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, Phil Coulson and Jasper Sitwell, talking through a problem in a restaurant booth, with none of the action or effects work a feature film would carry. As a first attempt at the format, it functioned less as a showcase than as a proof of concept for the seven further shorts Marvel released across the next several years.

A FOUR-MINUTE PATCH FOR A CONTINUITY GAP

WHY EMIL BLONSKY STAYED IN PRISON, AND GENERAL ROSS NEVER JOINED THE AVENGERS

The short is set between Iron Man 2 and the very end of The Incredible Hulk, and exists to explain something the films themselves never addressed directly: why Emil Blonsky, still imprisoned after transforming into Abomination, never resurfaces as an Avengers Initiative recruit despite the World Security Council wanting him released. Nick Fury opposes letting him out, and Coulson and Sitwell are tasked with making sure General Ross’s debriefing on the subject goes nowhere.

“A patsy?”… someone “so inept General Ross will refuse to release Blonsky”… “arrogant and abrasive, with an utter disdain for authority.”

Dialogue between Agents Sitwell and Coulson, describing the profile that leads them to Tony Stark

That description points directly at Tony Stark, and the short then recontextualises a scene audiences had already seen: The Incredible Hulk’s own post-credits moment of Stark goading General Ross in a bar until Ross tries to have him thrown out, at which point Stark simply buys the bar. What played in 2008 as a stray Avengers tease gets revealed here as a deliberate S.H.I.E.L.D. operation, with Blonsky still safely behind bars the next morning.

A CHARACTER THE FILMS KEPT COMING BACK TO

CLARK GREGG’S COULSON, AND A DIRECTOR CREDITED UNDER ONE NAME

Clark Gregg had already appeared as Agent Coulson across Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and Thor by this point, and The Consultant leans entirely on that groundwork, giving him top billing in a story built around his character’s bureaucratic cunning rather than any new introduction. Maximiliano Hernández returned as Jasper Sitwell, a minor Thor character elevated here into Coulson’s sounding board.

The short is credited to a director known only as Leythum, a single-name credit with no reliably reported biography in mainstream entertainment press; Leythum also directed the second One-Shot, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer, before the series moved on to other directors for its later entries. Composer Paul Oakenfold scored the piece.

THE REWATCH

A DISC-EXTRA EXPERIMENT THAT BECAME AN EIGHT-SHORT SERIES

The Consultant never had a theatrical or standalone release; it existed purely as a Thor home-video extra, a distribution model every Marvel One-Shot followed through 2014’s All Hail the King. It drew little contemporary critical attention beyond brief disc-review mentions, unsurprising for a four-minute bonus feature, but later retrospectives have been kinder to its modesty than its reviews at the time, with one describing it simply as “a perfectly acceptable proof of concept.”

That’s a fair summary of its place in the catalogue: a small, functional piece of connective tissue rather than a destination in itself. For viewers working through the catalogue in release order, The Consultant sits in the MCU release order guide directly after Captain America: The First Avenger, best watched by anyone who’s already seen The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2.