Development After
The Walt Disney Company purchased
Marvel Entertainment in 2009, they announced that a
Marvel Television division was being formed under
Jeph Loeb. In the following months, various
pilots based on comics from Marvel's catalog went into development. In July 2012, Marvel Television entered into discussions with Disney-owned
ABC to make a new series set in the
Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The series was described as a kernel of an idea' with a number of scenarios being explored, including a high-concept cop show". On August 7, 2012,
Joss Whedon was announced to be involved in the series' development. Whedon had written and directed the successful MCU film
The Avengers (2012). On August 8, Whedon, along with his brother
Jed and sister-in-law
Maurissa Tancharoen, met with Loeb to
pitch him their idea for the series, with meetings in the following days with
ABC Studios and ABC network. At the end of August, ABC ordered a pilot for a series called
S.H.I.E.L.D., to be written and directed by Joss Whedon, with Jed Whedon and Tancharoen also writing. Disney CEO
Bob Iger greenlit the series after watching the
Marvel One-Shots short film
Item 47 (2012). In April 2013, ABC announced that the series would be titled ''Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'', and it was officially picked up for a full season of 22 episodes in May 2013. Jed Whedon, Tancharoen, and
Jeffrey Bell served as the series'
showrunners, with Bell joining the show to help the inexperienced former pair with hiring crew members and "navigating the politics of studios and networks", saying, "My job is to help them learn how to do that, to steer the ship while they learn." Joss Whedon assisted them before he started work on the sequel
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). The series was renewed for a
second season in May 2014, a
third in May 2015, and a
fourth in March 2016. In September 2016, discussing the eventual end of the series, Tancharoen said, "You always just forge ahead. Until someone tells us to stop, we will continue to move forward." Jed Whedon added, "There are always ideas in the back of your mind for how you'd wrap it up when they say, 'That's it guys,' but we're not there just yet." A
fifth season was ordered in May 2017, and Bell said they had "a sense of how we'd like the show to end when it ends. We just need to know when that time is coming so we can build to it properly". Jed Whedon continued, "Our goal is to know ahead of time, because we would love to land the story in a way that's satisfying". The writers intended for the final episode of the fifth season to serve as both a season and
series finale, with some elements that could be adjusted based on whether the series was renewed for a
sixth season or not. Whedon added, "we're ready for if this is the end. We're definitely going to make it rewarding either way." Despite this, the series was renewed for a sixth season in May 2018, and a final
seventh season in November 2018. Whedon likened these two seasons to bonus levels in a video game, allowing the writers to have "a bit of freedom".
Writing Bell explained that he, Jed Whedon, and Tancharoen supervise all of the series' creative decisions, often consulting with Loeb. When the showrunners are writing the series, one person can write a script while the other two break stories, so that a story can be broken every few weeks. If the executive producers sign off on a story, a member of the series' writers room then produces an outline, gets notes on it from the showrunners, writes a full script, gets notes on it from ABC and the production crew, and then goes to set to produce the episode. In January 2013, Joss Whedon deflected any direct influences from other series, such as the efforts of
Fox Mulder and
Dana Scully in
The X-Files (1993-2002), and explained that while the show would involve people with powers and the spectacle of
science-fiction storytelling, it would focus on "the peripheral people...the people on the edges of the grand adventures". As the series began to introduce more powered individuals, Bell noted that audiences "seem to respond to powered people on the show and while it's not going to take over and become what the show's about, as a texture and flavor of the stories, we really enjoy that". Jed Whedon stated that the series would continue to emphasize the general public's response to powered people, saying, "The dynamic in the world has changed. There was one person with powers, and then by
The Avengers there were maybe six total ... now they're much more prevalent, so there's reaction from the public based on that." On the balance between creating new material and drawing from existing mythology, Bell noted that telling stories that can entertain both Marvel fans and non-Marvel fans is challenging and that for the series, they try to add nods to the MCU films or the comics in a way that works well on its own for all viewers but could also mean more for a fan. On where the series can draw from the comics, Jed Whedon explained that there are areas of the comics that the series is not allowed to go to, and that ultimately they only use the comics for inspiration in generating their own story. Tancharoen elaborated that, "We're always going to be inspired and influenced by the comics, but of course on the show, we'll always be doing our spin to it." About comparisons between the scope of the series and that of the films, Bell said that ABC and Marvel had been very generous with the series' budget, and that the production could not complain for a network series, but that it was nothing compared to the films or even series like
Game of Thrones (2011-2019). He explained that the series does attempt to create "Marvel moments" as best it can, but pointed out that some of the more memorable moments from the films are smaller, character moments—something that works really well on television—so the series strives for those when it cannot afford more scope and scale. Jed Whedon elaborated that they look at a sequence and try to keep only what is required to tell the story, so "If a monster is landing on a car, instead of showing the whole monster leaping through the skyline, we want to be in the car with the character having that experience". Actress
Ming-Na Wen attributed the time slot shift between the first and second seasons (from 8pm EST to 9pm EST) for allowing the writers "a chance to be more serious with certain topics, a little bit more intense with the fight scenes" in the second season, since the first season had to be more reserved because of it airing during a family time slot. In September 2015, Bell looked back on the first two seasons and talked about the challenges of and changes in the series. He noted the negative reception from fans concerning the low number of recognizable characters like Coulson, but pointed out that fans seemed to have grown to like the series' original characters as they had been developed over time. He explained that with the increasing number of characters and complex relationships in the series, having different pairings and building new emotional relationships was important, and stated that "whether it's a quiet moment or in action, we [hope to] deepen the audience's love and concern, and hopes for these characters". A year later, he reiterated the producer's intention to create a tradition moving forward of "finding new combinations and new conflicts" between different sets of characters, given "a lot of
procedurals [see] the same people doing the same thing for five years and the character don't evolve or change at all". The producers and writers initially formed a general plan for the show through the end of a third season, after reading the screenplays for upcoming MCU films. In May 2016,
Chloe Bennet likened the end of the third season to "the end of the first book of S.H.I.E.L.D. ... the end of something bigger and the beginning of a whole new tone for the show." She elaborated that "the storylines that we started at the beginning of season 1 really wrapped up at the end of season 3. We've had some major losses of people who have been with us on the show since season 1. From the table read to the first day on set, there's definitely a new energy of the show" moving forward. The series was moved to the later timeslot of 10 pm for the fourth season. Jed Whedon said the writers hoped to "skew a little darker because of" this change, with Loeb adding that "It absolutely offers opportunities. I don't know that it changes things all that dramatically [though]. I mean, at the end of the day, Marvel is always going to make shows that run somewhere between PG-13 and PG-16. We're not going to be making
Deadpool (2016) anytime soon on [ABC]". Marvel "had a long talk with ABC about what can we get away with, so to speak" in the new timeslot, which led to the inclusion of
Ghost Rider in the season over one of
Marvel's Netflix television series, because Marvel felt "that this character was right to tell [darker and more violent] stories right now" and having him on
S.H.I.E.L.D. aided that because "it was so unexpected". Loeb hoped that the combination of the later timeslot and the introduction of Ghost Rider would lead to some viewers who had stopped watching the series over the previous seasons giving it another chance.
Casting Sarah Halley Finn, the casting director of the MCU films, along with her associate Tamara Hunter, served as casting directors during the first season. In October 2012, a casting sheet for five lead roles was sent out, with Finn establishing offices in London, Australia, New York, Vancouver, Toronto, and Los Angeles to audition actors. At the
New York Comic Con, Joss Whedon,
Kevin Feige, and
Clark Gregg announced that Gregg would be reprising his role as agent
Phil Coulson from
Iron Man (2008),
Iron Man 2 (2010),
Thor (2011),
The Avengers, and the Marvel One-Shots in the pilot, and would "headline" the series. Also in October, actress
Ming-Na Wen was cast as
Melinda May. The next month,
Elizabeth Henstridge and
Iain De Caestecker were cast as
Jemma Simmons and
Leo Fitz, respectively, while newcomer
Brett Dalton was cast as
Grant Ward. Dalton gained of muscle before the start of filming for the role. In December,
Chloe Bennet was chosen out of more than 400 actresses to play
Skye, the sixth and final regular for the first season. Bell called the character "the hardest to find" since need to be "the quintessential Whedon heroine–strong, smart, and self-aware", which was difficult to find in a 20-year old. Skye is revealed in the second season to be Daisy Johnson, and no longer goes by "Skye" starting with the third. At the 2014
San Diego Comic-Con,
Nick Blood was announced as cast in the role of
Lance Hunter for the second season, while the character of
Bobbi Morse was revealed to be appearing. That August,
Henry Simmons joined the cast as
Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie, a recurring role, and
Adrianne Palicki was cast as Morse in a guest role, to first appear in the episode "
A Hen in the Wolf House". The next month, the entire first season principal cast were confirmed to be regulars for the second season, along with Blood. Palicki joined them with the episode "
Aftershocks". In February 2015,
Luke Mitchell was cast as
Lincoln Campbell, a recurring role for the second half of the season. All season-two principal cast members returned for the third season, with Simmons and Mitchell joining them, promoted from their recurring roles. In October 2015, the Inhuman
Hive was introduced; for the second part of season three, he possesses the corpse of Grant Ward, again portrayed by Brett Dalton. Also introduced were
Natalia Cordova-Buckley and
John Hannah, recurring as
Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez and
Holden Radcliffe, respectively. Blood and Palicki left the main cast following the season-three episode "
Parting Shot", to star in the then-planned spin-off show ''
Marvel's Most Wanted''. Dalton and Mitchell also left following the deaths of their characters in the third-season finale. Gregg, Wen, Bennet, De Caestecker, Henstridge, and Simmons returned for the fourth and fifth seasons. They were joined by Hannah in the fourth, with Cordova-Buckley once again recurring as Rodriguez in the season, before being promoted to a series regular for the fifth season. Dalton returned as a guest during the
third pod of the fourth season, while Blood returned for an episode of the fifth season. Introduced in the fifth season was
Jeff Ward, who recurred as
Deke Shaw. Wen, Bennet, De Caestecker, Henstridge, Simmons, and Cordova-Buckley return for the sixth and seventh seasons, and were joined by Ward. Given the events of the final episode of season five, in which it is implied that Coulson dies, Gregg noted "there is some interest in having me involved in" the sixth season, potentially with flashback, and was also unsure if he would be a series regular, should he return, as he had been for the previous five seasons. Gregg ultimately returned as a series regular in season six playing a new character,
Sarge. For season seven, Gregg portrays a
Life Model Decoy (LMD) version of Coulson, while De Caestecker is absent for much of the season due to scheduling conflicts with prior commitments, first appearing in the season's eleventh episode; he is credited as a special guest star for his appearances in the season.
Design Costumes Betsy Heimann was the costume designer for the pilot, but left the series because of film commitments. Assistant costume designer Ann Foley took over for subsequent episodes, and worked closely with Tancharoen to create "very strong, different characters" whose "looks evolve along with the show". Foley also brought on concept artists Phillip Boutte Jr. and Josh Shaw to assist with the design process. Foley watched every MCU film, paying special attention to
The Avengers, and was also inspired by such films as
Skyfall (2012) and
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011). In October 2016, Foley said that she was specifically following the aesthetic of
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), "So any costume has to fit inside that world we've established and has to fit that tactical look." On the variety of costumes created for each character, Foley preferred to have set pieces in the characters' "closets", as "it's not a fashion show ... a guy like Ward isn't going to have twenty jackets in his closet. He is going to have one that he uses all of the time." After reading each script, Foley would do her own research, before discussing the look of the episode with the writers. She then studied the comics, general fashion, and history to get a look that is recognizable to fans, but fits into the more realistic world of the series. Costumes are either custom made or bought, and the actors are brought in for fittings before filming. This process was often challenging because of the series' eight-day-per-episode schedule. Foley stated that all costumes take a similar amount of time to create, whether they are based on the comics or not. Marvel CCO
Joe Quesada is involved in the approval process when costuming preexisting characters, including Daisy Johnson's Quake costume, which is introduced in the third season. The Quake costume incorporates elements from the comic version of the character, and was intended to show that Quake "could easily be part of the
Avengers". Foley took steps to differentiate the Quake costume from
Scarlett Johansson's
Black Widow costumes from the films, but was "flattered" by comparisons made between them. Foley was also adamant about showing that characters such as Quake "don't have to be sexualized, that they're powerful, strong women", and so avoided "a lot of cleavage, you don't see high heels. It's about practicality." The costumes go through a natural evolution in the series. There is a shift at the end of the first season to a darker look, and all the characters have "definitely grown up" during the second season. In the third season there is another shift, "from the ragtag group of soldiers and scientists to [a] more precise militaristic outfit". This change is also reflected in the series' color palette, going from "a much lighter tone, much more patterns" in the first season to having "stripped away a bit of color" by the third. Despite this increasing darkness in the costumes, Foley intended to define each character as they are introduced and to have them always be recognizable and identifiable. With the start of the fourth season, Foley said that "each season definitely has its own feel and this season will be no different. I think that you're going to see some subtle differences in the costumes of the characters"; she felt like Fitz and Simmons, in particular, had become "more adult looking", while all the cast had "a pretty specific ... civilian look" that would become more prominent as S.H.I.E.L.D. is re-legitimized and becomes more public. Foley left the series after the thirteenth episode of the fourth season, to work on the television series
Altered Carbon, and was replaced with Amanda Riley. Riley used her previous experience recreating costumes to "blend in" with Foley's established look. Foley returned for the first two episodes of the fifth season, before handing costume design over to Whitney Galitz, who had assisted Foley on the previous few seasons, and Christann Chanell. Galitz eventually became sole costume designer for the series, before being joined by Jessica Torok during season seven. Torok took over for the second half of the season after Galitz left the series to give birth to her daughter.
Practical effects The series'
props department is led by Scott Bauer. The pilot introduces the Incapacitating Cartridge Emitting Railgun, or I.C.E.R., tranquilizer weapons often used by the agents, with Joss Whedon having Bauer design "sci-fi"-looking guns, including a large rifle-like weapon. The series' further portrayal of the I.C.E.R.s was more subtle, with Bauer using airsoft guns that are safe to shoot others with over a small distance. I.C.E.R.-specific muzzle flashes are then added by the visual effects department. Bauer reused the I.C.E.R. rifle prop when making Mack's "Shotgun Ax", which appears in later seasons. The
terrigen crystals that unlock Inhuman abilities in the series are 3D-printed from solid resin and then altered with extra details. Additional practical effects and props were created by
Legacy Effects, which also works on the MCU films, notably creating Daisy Johnson's gauntlets for the third season.
Prosthetic makeup for the series is designed in conjunction with
Glenn Hetrick of Optic Nerve Studios. Hetrick began work on the series with the second season, to create
Raina's Inhuman look, and returned for the third season to design and create the more unusual-looking Inhumans such as
Lash.
Title sequence Throughout the series,
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. "[became] known for its signature use of changing title cards" to reflect the storyline being told and would define "a specific era of the series". The third season introduces a new title sequence for the series, replacing the one that appeared in the first two seasons. The title sequence in "
4,722 Hours" is drastically different from the design introduced for the third season, with the series' title in the episode's typeface silently fading onto the screen over the back drop of the planet Simmons is stranded on. The fourth season sees new series title cards for the
Ghost Rider and
LMD pods, and an
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. title card for the
Agents of Hydra pod that changes to say
Agents of Hydra for episodes primarily set in the Framework. The
Ghost Rider graphic is used again for the fourth-season finale. For the fifth season, the opening of "
Orientation" is reminiscent of the sequence for "4,722 Hours", forgoing the title card and having the typeface silently fading onto the screen. The subsequent episodes of season five feature a title card with the series name in a new typeface against a backdrop of various depictions of Earth: episodes through "
Past Life" feature a destroyed future Earth; episodes from "
Principia" through "
The Devil Complex" feature a present Earth; while episodes from "
Rise and Shine" through "
All Roads Lead..." feature the Earth beginning to crack. Each episode of season seven features a different title card and opening to reflect the time period and genre of the episode.
Filming Production for the pilot took place almost entirely in
Los Angeles to accommodate Joss Whedon's schedule, while the rest of the series is primarily filmed at
Culver Studios in
Culver City, California. Additional filming has also taken place around the world, including in
Paris, France,
Stockholm, Sweden, and
Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. used the
working title R.A.G.T.A.G. throughout its production. The series is filmed on
Arri Alexa cameras, with
David Boyd serving as
director of photography on the pilot, and Feliks Parnell, Jeff Mygatt, and Allan Westbrook doing so throughout the rest of the series.
Garry Brown is the second unit director for the series, with stunts coordinated by Tanner Gill. The series is filmed in
2K resolution.
Visual effects FuseFX serves as the lead visual effects vendor for
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., with additional work by
Pixomondo, CoSA VFX, Greenhaus GFX, Lion VFX, and Synaptic. The series sees an average of 80 to 150 visual effects shots per episode, with 10 to 12 days to work on the effects for one episode once background plates have been received from filming. This equates to approximately 2000 visual effects shots per season. Mark Kolpack serves as visual effects supervisor for the series. David Altenau was the in-house supervisor at FuseFX for "Pilot" through episode eight, with Kevin Lingenfelser taking over for subsequent episodes. VFX producer Andrea D'Amico joined the team at FuseFX to work on the series in December 2015. Two separate production management and creative teams were established to work on the show, and producers, compositors and various artists were able to alternate episodes. This was important because most of the episodes had to be worked on concurrently, either two or three at a time. Typical effects for the series include the creation of character-driving effects animation, photo-realistic vehicles, CG set extensions, pyrotechnics, and atmospheric effects. Some assets, such as a
Quinjet and
Helicarrier, are shared from
Industrial Light & Magic, though "those models are generally super heavy and dense with data" and need to be made "HD friendly or simply manageable to work in [a] TV schedule".
Music Bear McCreary confirmed that he would compose music for the series in July 2013. Unlike on some of his previous scores, ABC and Marvel allowed McCreary to work with a full symphonic orchestra, typically featuring 50 or 70 players, with over 90 for "important" episodes. Orchestra recording for the series occurred at
Warner Bros. Studios' Eastwood Stage,
Sony Pictures Studios' Barbra Streisand Scoring Stage, and
Twentieth Century Fox Studios' Newman Scoring Stage. Complex synthesizer programming was also used, to give the score "a modern edge". Since
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was the first MCU television series, McCreary felt there was "a sense that it had to connect" to the consistent orchestra sound of the films but viewed through a television lens. McCreary composes on average 30 minutes of music per episode. Creating the main theme for the series, which McCreary also saw as Coulson's theme, was a process that took a lot of collaboration with the executive producers, who wanted a specific sound—"something big, that...belonged in the Marvel Cinematic Universe" but also "intimate because these aren't superheroes, these are regular people". McCreary had to work harder to make the theme heard, given that the show does not have a traditional title sequence. By the third and fourth seasons, McCreary noted "the score became a little more intense and more electronically driven... [E]lectronics really moved to the forefront as we got into more stories about Inhumans and the digital world our characters inhabit. But the orchestra is always our foundation." In 2014, after working as an intern for McCreary, Jason Akers was asked to provide additional music for the series. McCreary hired Akers as a full time staff member in 2015, and he began to have more artistic input into the series' music. Akers is credited as co-composer alongside McCreary for the seventh season. Some of McCreary's favorite pieces from the series included "Cello Concerto" from "The Only Light in the Darkness", and pieces that had "massive deviations" such as music for Ghost Rider, the Framework reality, and going to outer space.
Original soundtrack album In September 2014, McCreary announced that there were plans for an
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. soundtrack, which was released digitally a year later by
Marvel Music on September 4, 2015, and on CD on October 9. Featuring music from the first two seasons, the soundtrack was written and produced by McCreary and Steven Kaplan, with the album produced by Joe Augustine with McCreary. All music composed by Bear McCreary.
Steve Bartek plays guitar on "Aftermath of the Uprising", Eric Byers plays cello on "Cello Concerto", and McCreary's wife, Raya Yarbrough, provides the vocals in "Alien DNA". The episode column in the table below indicates which episode(s) the music was featured in.
Future albums Regarding the release of additional music from the series, McCreary said in August 2020 there were no immediate plans but would "love for that to happen", given he had been waiting until the series concluded to assess everything that had been produced for any potential future releases. He also hoped to get fan input regarding pieces of music they would like to hear on a release in addition to the tracks McCreary would want.
Marvel Cinematic Universe tie-ins In July 2013, Jed Whedon said the series would work in tandem with the Marvel films, both past and upcoming, to weave in between the films, and to "try to make them more rewarding on both ends." He explained that each Marvel project is intended to stand alone first before there is any interweaving, and noted that the series has to work with the film division and be aware of their plans so as not to interfere when introducing someone or something to the universe. Bell elaborated that this was preferable so that people who do not watch the films can still follow the series, and vice versa. He stated that "ABC and Marvel both want the series to be able to make sense on its own", but that it was beneficial for the films to have the series fill in any "gaps" for them, due to having to be "big" and moving "quickly through a lot of huge pieces", unlike television which has time to deal with more nuances. In January 2016, Joss Whedon noted that this process "unfortunately just means the TV show gets, you know, leftovers". He stated that, for example, the series' creative team initially wanted to use
Loki's scepter from
The Avengers but were unable due to Whedon's plans for it in
Age of Ultron. On how their ability to connect with the films changed over the life of the series, Jed Whedon said, "The rule when we started was we couldn't say anything about spies, we couldn't say anything about Hydra, we couldn't have any A.I. or robots or anything like that, because all of that was coming in movies that year or the year after. Since then, they've blown those doors wide open". He added, "We have relatively free rein [in what the series can introduce and connect to]; we just can't go anywhere that [the films are] going. They know their stories so much further out than we do, which is good for us to tee up things that we know are coming to them or avoid things that they want to be special on the big screen. As long as we are not covering bases that they're going to cover, we haven't been told "no" that much". As an example, Whedon noted the fourth season's Framework storyline as "something that's pretty significant in our world, but is also a little eddy in the river that doesn't affect anything else because it's an alternate universe. So those kinds of stories help us go big without sending ripples through the whole MCU." In May 2016, Chloe Bennet complained that Marvel did not acknowledge
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in their film universe, despite pretending that the films and televisions series were all connected; she expressed interest in seeing the Avengers in the series. The series mimics the films'
post credits scenes with "end tags", starting with the episode "
0-8-4" which features a
Samuel L. Jackson cameo as
Nick Fury. Bell explained, "Sometimes it'll be funny, sometimes it'll be a mythology thing ... or an extra little reveal about" the episode. The end tag for "
End of the Beginning" is a "directly lifted" scene from
Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The series's first major tie-in episode with the wider MCU was "
The Well", which begins immediately after
Thor: The Dark World (2013). The episodes "End of the Beginning" and "
Turn, Turn, Turn" revolve around the events of
Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which led to a retooling of the series. Flashback sequences in "
Shadows" and "
The Things We Bury" featuring
Hayley Atwell as
Peggy Carter served as marketing and set-up for the
Agent Carter television series. The events of "
The Frenemy of My Enemy" and "
The Dirty Half Dozen" led up to the opening sequence of
Avengers: Age of Ultron, while "
Scars" deals with the aftermath of that film. The third season follows similar themes to the film
Captain America: Civil War (2016), focusing on powered people and the different responses to them, leading up to the episode "
Emancipation", which takes place after the film and shows how its events affect the series' powered characters. The episode "
T.A.H.I.T.I." introduces the
Kree alien race to the MCU, members of which play a significant role in
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). This begins a storyline that recurs throughout the series and introduces Inhumans to the MCU, with Jed Whedon saying that it was something "in the works" for a long time since
Marvel Studios had plans for an
Inhumans film in 2019, and this would be "one of the first instances where we get to start planting the seeds on the show before the film". The third season introduces the concept of the
Secret Warriors, with new Inhuman characters inspired by the comic of the same name, while also
retconning the history of Hydra in the MCU, tying it into the Inhumans storyline. Gregg noted in January 2016 that the "writer and director [of the
Inhumans film] will have free rein to do what they want to do with the Inhumans, but hopefully there'll be some way that our Inhumans connect to that". When the film was removed from Marvel Studios' release schedule, Whedon noted that the series had "a little more freedom" and were "able to do a little bit more" with the species going into the fourth season, including the potential of introducing some of the "classic" Inhumans. ''
Marvel's Inhumans, a television series centered on Black Bolt and other members of the Inhuman Royal Family, was announced in November 2016 to air on ABC in September 2017. It was not intended to be a spin-off of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'' In the lead-up to
Avengers: Age of Ultron, Joss Whedon explained that despite bringing Phil Coulson back to life to helm
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the MCU itself dealing with characters seemingly dying only to return later on like Loki, Nick Fury, and
Bucky Barnes, "As far as the fiction of the movies, Coulson is dead", choosing to not reference Coulson's resurrection in
Age of Ultron to not diminish the impact of his original death among the characters. Whedon further elaborated that due to his feeling that the audience of
The Avengers does not necessarily seem to be the same one as the audience of
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., in addition to introduce nineteen new characters, he would have been forced to explain Coulson's resurrecting once again to the film-only audience had Coulson been featured in
Age of Ultron. Despite this, Jeph Loeb stated prior to the film's release that there was a plan for the Avengers to discover that Coulson was alive eventually. The fourth season explores the concept of Life Model Decoys, which were first referenced in
The Avengers, and introduces the character Ghost Rider to the MCU. On why the series waited to begin exploring LMDs, Jed Whedon said that the series previously did not want to explore the concept before the release of
Avengers: Age of Ultron, which sees the introductions of
Ultron and
Vision in a similar manner to LMDs. On introducing Ghost Rider, Whedon said that "with
Doctor Strange (2016) coming out this year, the Marvel [Cinematic] Universe is moving into new waters", referring to the exploration of magic. "We felt that this was obviously a great character that we'd love to have on our show that we feel fits with that shift." The season also continues storylines from the
second season of
Agent Carter, with the reveal that the Momentum Energy Labs group is a successor to the Isodyne Energy company, with both companies connected by the parent company
Roxxon, a mainstay of the MCU. The last four episodes of season five take place over a single day, and coincide with the events of
Avengers: Infinity War (2018). In August 2017,
Emily VanCamp said that discussions had taken place for her to reprise her role of
Sharon Carter for the series, but there were conflicts with her starring role on the series
Revenge (2011-2015). The following month,
Jeremy Renner expressed interest in reprising his role as
Clint Barton / Hawkeye in the series.
Patrick Brennan, who portrayed
Marcus Daniels / Blackout in the series, appears as an unnamed bartender in the film
Captain Marvel (2019). Marvel Studios producer
Victoria Alonso alluded to the possibility that the two were the same character, given that film was set in the 1990s. Season seven sees
Enver Gjokaj reprise his role as
Strategic Scientific Reserve agent
Daniel Sousa from
Agent Carter, joining the main S.H.I.E.L.D. team. There was a discussion to retcon Officer Saunders, a character Gjokaj played in
The Avengers, into Sousa by having Sousa time travel back to the Battle of New York and going undercover as a cop, but the idea was dropped due to conflicts with the established timeline. The
Quantum Realm is also featured in the season, with Fitz using it to travel to the altered timeline created during the season and reunite with the S.H.I.E.L.D. team before bringing everyone back to the main timeline. Whedon added that, with this introduction into the series, they planned to mention how the realm could be used to survive the snap from
Thanos, as seen in
Avengers: Infinity War and
Avengers: Endgame (2019), but was ultimately cut.
Reed Diamond, who portrayed elite member of Hydra
Werner Reinhardt / Daniel Whitehall, had been approached by Marvel Studios regarding his availability for
Avengers: Endgame, with visual effects company
Cantina Creative eventually using a photo of Whitehall in imagery for the film's time heist information screens, which was ultimately cut. In May 2020, Bennet called
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. "the
black sheep of the Marvel Universe" since "everyone was aware of the fact that we were supposed to be one thing when we started" and ultimately, the writers "had to side-step" many potential opportunities in order to not conflict with the plans for the films. Henstridge also added that in past seasons, all of the episodes had to be reviewed to ensure they would not show something the films would be covering, but for the final season, "there was just such a sense of just abandon" with all the ideas the writers came up with allowed to happen. Ahead of the series finale in August 2020, Gregg and Wen looked back at the early tie-ins the series had in season one. Both felt having to wait until the release of
The Winter Soldier resulted in the early episodes "treading water" and "hampered the writers" creativity. Despite this, Gregg did feel the end of season one "holds up really well" once the Hydra twist was revealed. Both added the series took off once the writers were less tied to the MCU films and were able to focus on the stories of the characters in the series. Following the series finale, Bell looked back on the series and felt because of all the restrictions it faced from Marvel Studios until the Hydra reveal, it was "a tech series" when the audience was expecting "a superhero show with a lot of Marvel brand names". Tancharoen added that the series was "more case-of-the-week" when it first premiered, but that allowed them to plant various story devices that could be fully explored once they got past the Hydra reveal. Bell also revealed the series at one point had been given permission to use the character
MODOK before Marvel retracted their access the character, hoping to work it into their storyline with
Anton Ivanov / The Superior in season four. The series had also tried to incorporate the space-based counterpart organization,
S.W.O.R.D., but was stopped from doing this by Marvel. The
Darkhold, a magical book that is prominently featured in season four, was later featured in the
Disney+ miniseries
WandaVision (2021) with a different design from the one it had in
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. WandaVision head writer Jac Schaeffer said there were no major conversations amongst the writers regarding the
Darkhold previous appearances in
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.; co-executive producer
Mary Livanos had
pitched the idea to use the
Darkhold in
WandaVision to increase the level of danger
Agatha Harkness posed to
Scarlet Witch. The new design was based on how the
Darkhold looks in the comic books and questions about how it was created. Despite the redesign,
WandaVision director
Matt Shakman felt this was the same
Darkhold as the one seen in
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Schaeffer said the nature of the
Darkhold would be further explored in future projects. The film
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) shows that multiple copies of the
Darkhold exist across the multiverse. "
Glorious Purpose", the first episode of the Disney+ series
Loki (2021-2023), revisits Coulson's death without acknowledging his return in
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. When asked if they toyed with mentioning Coulson's resurrection,
Loki head writer
Michael Waldron said the idea could be "one other tendril of the multiverse, perhaps" and believed simply seeing Coulson again raised exciting questions. In August 2024,
Brad Winderbaum, Marvel Studios' head of streaming, television, and animation, was asked about
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. place in the franchise. He praised the series' connections to the films and acknowledged that Marvel Studios could consider it part of the MCU's
Multiverse Saga but he was unwilling to confirm that at the time. ==Marketing==