Agents of SHIELD will turn in its badge to ABC after the conclusion of Season 7 in the summer of 2020!
As the cast and creative personnel prepare for today’s Agents of SHIELD Comic-Con panel, Marvel TV head Jeph Loeb dropped the bombshell that the series will, indeed, conclude, upon completion of next year’s seventh season, leaving what will ultimately be a 136 -episode legacy, as revealed to Deadline. As Loeb explains of the reasoning for the move:
As Loeb states about the expectation of Season 5 serving as the finale:
Indeed, the conclusion of the series appears to be attributed to the show’s story reaching a natural conclusion. He describes the feeling realizing that the show reached that point, explaining:
The cancellation of Agents of SHIELD is an outcome that is simultaneously shocking and expected, since the Marvel Cinematic Universe-set series – which debuted back in 2013 – has found itself circled by the buzzards of cancellation numerous times, only to pull off renewals. Indeed, the currently-running Season 6 was announced last year as being an abbreviated 13-episode season, deviating from its heretofore usual full-season fall-to-summer 22-episode runs. Yet, the network surprised fans of the embattled series this past November by giving it an early renewal for Season 7, also for 13 episodes. As it turns out, the endgame for the series was being charted.
Of course, there’s plenty of outside context attributed to the end of Agents of SHIELD, that being the dramatically shifting landscape of Marvel television, which is quickly moving away from outside platforms like TV networks, and, to chagrin of fans, Netflix, corporately consolidated over to Disney’s imminently launching streaming service, Disney+. Yet, that doesn’t make the end of SHIELD any easier, with it being the MCU’s first venture outside the big screen, initially touting the headlining Clark Gregg in his reprisal of mysteriously resurrected SHIELD agent, Phil Coulson. As Loeb continues:
Loeb – and executive producers Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon and Jeff Bell – will face the music in front of fans when he hits Comic-Con’s Hall H stage alongside stars Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Elizabeth Henstridge, Iain De Caestecker, Henry Simmons, Natalia Cordova-Buckley and Jeff Ward. He addresses in advance any potential outrage of Agents of SHIELD’s cancellation, stating:
The end of Agents of SHIELD – the unquestioned flagship TV series of the MCU – will certainly be a bittersweet event, as Marvel’s live-action arena heads into its next multi-medium epoch.
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Joseph Baxter is a contributor for Den of Geek and Syfy Wire. You can find his work here. Follow him on Twitter @josbaxter.
