Agent Coulson didn't count? You're heartless!

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the audience loved him.
Besides,he was in love with someone off-screen possiblythe Scarlet Witch

He couldn't shoehorn in a 80lbs kung fu waif, that helped for me.

The notion that that particular spoiler was Joss' decision has also been debunked. In this very thread, a few pages back.

And I'm still not sure that individual is actually dead. We never saw the corpse. This is a comic-book universe; at a bare minimum, you need to see the actual corpse get buried, and sometimes even that doesn't work.

Will Coulson come back as the Vision? I doubt he was already a life model decoy since he picked up snacks in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer... but http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/DGTZ/news/?a=60025

The only people in the universe of comics that are truly and irrevocably dead are Uncle Ben and Bruce Wayne's parents. Everyone else is fair game.

-- Ben

I'm kinda hoping they keep revolving-door-death out of the movies.

I'd be ok with Coulson coming back. There were enough hints that Fury was gaming the other Avengers that I could roll with it.

Uncle Ben came back to life for five minutes.

http://marvel.com/universe/Parker%2C_Ben

But Wayne's parents have stayed dead appearing only as flashbacks, hullanations or alternate realities/timelines.

I saw it last week finally. I think I spent the second half of the movie staring in slack-jawed wonder. When I wasn't laughing hard enough to crack a rib.

Seriously, I think this has to top my favorite super-hero movies of all time list.

That would be a really challenging story to write. Kind of like Superman if he never got sent to earth.