The thing about Coulson

[petronia]

The thing about Coulson is that he only became a recurring character because the Marvel movies' scriptwriters and directors discovered successively that you need a character IN THAT SPACE to make the overhead structure work. As such, I suspect the real reason a lot of ficcers are de-fridging him isn't because of sentimentality, but because you still need a character in that space to make the structure work.