I think the reason behind Coulson's survival is pretty simple...Fury just kinda trolled them. A lie within a lie basically. We knew he lied about the cards, but I guess he also lied about the death of Coulson too.
To paraphrase Kung Pow
"We only saw him do this...hrrrk...guhhhh........that doesn't mean a person is dead."
And yeah, it is intriguing to see who this is going to be. I agree at first glance I did just assume Luke Cage, and I'm still standing by that, but I suppose I could see it being one of the other characters closer to the bottom of the list.
In all honesty though, with how you were talking about them, it sounds like Maxam should have been higher on the list than Black Panther,