Marvel's 'Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.' Coming To An End After Season 7
Right now, Marvel's Agents of SHIELD is in the middle of its sixth season, but ABC has already renewed the show starring Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Elizabeth Henstridge, Iain De Caestecker, Henry Simmons, Natalia Cordova-Buckley, and Jeff Ward for a seventh season. However, Marvel Television's Jeph Loeb has revealed season seven will be the end.
Deadline has word on Marvel's Agents of SHIELD ending, and thankfully, the show is being allowed to go out on its own terms. For a while, many weren't sure if Agents of SHIELD would even get a sixth season order, so it was surprising that the show landed a seventh season last fall, before the sixth season had even hit ABC. The network liked the new direction Agents of SHIELD was taking, and they wanted another season, but Jeph Loeb and the producers only said yes after decided to bring things to a close.
Jeph Loeb talked to Deadline about the show coming to an end:
"How many shows do you know that just suddenly ended, and you feel like, but wait a minute, there was more. Yes, in the chronology of this is we thought Season 5 was the end. If you go back and you look at the end of that season, it is written that way. Actually, the last episode of that season is called "The End." Honestly, we thought we were turning out the lights and going home when we got a call from ABC that said, the material is so strong, do you think you have another season, do you think you have another 13 because we sort of like this idea of doing it again."
Indeed, Agents of SHIELD has taken an interesting path this season. The end of the fifth season killed off Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson (again), but this time it was for good. However, Gregg still ended up returning in the sixth season, only not as Agent Coulson. Instead, Gregg has been playing a character called Sarge who looks just like Coulson, but is nothing like the charming SHIELD agent we knew. He's a dangerous man and he's given our heroes plenty of grief this season.
There are still four more episodes left to play out this season, and the seventh season will give Agents of SHIELD another 13 episodes to finish things up. That should make the final season an interesting journey for fans who have been with the show since the beginning. Loeb said:
"When you know that's what you're doing, you can take greater risks, of life and death. Those kinds of decisions suddenly now are real on the table because you're not playing how do we undo this when we get to the next season. You're playing that this is going to be the end of the story."
As of now, it's not clear if there will be a big two-hour finale for Agents of SHIELD in the final season or not. In fact, Jeph Loeb doesn't even know when ABC will schedule the seventh season to air. And that's a big reason that the show is heading to Hall H this year, so as many fans as possible can start saying goodbye.
Since Agents of SHIELD started with a cameo from Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, is there any chance we'll see him pop up on the show again? Or could there be a cameo from some other big name cast members in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in order to give the show a proper send-off within the confines of the MCU? Loeb isn't giving anything like that up yet:
"You have to wait and see. Or as we used to say, that's a level seven question."
Agents of SHIELD continues its sixth season on Thursdays for the next few weeks.