Agents of SHIELD Season 7 Was Marvel TV's Endgame | Screen Rant
Agents of SHIELD season 7 was Marvel Television's own version of Avengers: Endgame. In 2013, Marvel TV launched their flagship series, Agents of SHIELD. The show was originally envisioned as little more than an MCU tie-in series, but as the years passed it established a mythology of its own. As even the stars admit, the growing gulf between Marvel Studios and Marvel TV actually gave Agents of SHIELD's writers a lot more creative freedom instead of resorting to constant changes.
For all this is the case, there are remarkable superficial similarities between Agents of SHIELD season 7 and Avengers: Endgame. Both used time travel as a major plot mechanic, and in both cases the precise temporal mechanics led to intense debate. Amusingly, Agents of SHIELD's season 7 finale wrapped up its time travel theory much more neatly, while Avengers: Endgame's own writers and directors can't agree on how their time travel works. That probably reflects the fact a TV series is able to take a long-form approach, although it doesn't help that Marvel Studios changed their model of time travel partway through production.
But the similarities actually run a lot deeper than just the focus on time travel. Time travel is actually used for the same kind of purpose, and even the conclusion of character arcs are oddly symmetrical. Let's explore all the ways in which Avengers: Endgame and Agents of SHIELD season 7 told a strikingly similar story.
Both Avengers: Endgame and Agents of SHIELD season 7 essentially use time travel as an opportunity to celebrate the stories that came before. In the case of Avengers: Endgame, the quest for the Infinity Stones allowed Marvel to revisit some of the key moments in the history of the MCU. One group arrived during the Chitauri invasion of Earth in The Avengers, a key moment where there were no less than three Infinity Stones in New York at once. Thor and Rocket visited Asgard during the events of Thor: The Dark World, and Nebula and Hawkeye got to watch Star-Lord's opening dance from Guardians of the Galaxy. All these made narrative sense, but they were symbolic; The Avengers was the moment that proved the MCU's success, Guardians of the Galaxy launched the cosmic side of the MCU, and Thor: The Dark World - while hardly a fan-favorite - introduced the Infinity Stones.
Agents of SHIELD took a slightly different approach. The SHIELD team visited a range of time periods, ones Marvel Television had never explored before. But the time travel was used to explore themes and concepts from the last six seasons, including:
- The history of Hydra, notably focused on the Malick family
- How the Koenigs got involved with SHIELD in the first place
- The show's thematic ties to Agent Carter, complete with the return of Daniel Sousa as a member of the SHIELD team
- The history of the Lighthouse, SHIELD's base for the last two seasons
- The Inhumans, complete with a major arc featuring Quake's mother Jiaying
- The Framework (alluded to in the season finale, when the SHIELD team used a Framework environment to catch up)
Viewed from this perspective, Agents of SHIELD season 7 used time travel as an opportunity to celebrate the mythology that it had built up over the last seven years. It's a similar approach to Avengers: Endgame, albeit using thematic elements rather than direct links.
Curiously enough, there are striking similarities on a character level - although, in this case, Agents of SHIELD appears to have inverted certain arcs rather than simply mirrored them. Take Fitz, the genius who cracks time travel, who gets to live his Happily Ever After with the woman he loves and bring up his baby girl. Summarized like that, it's quite easy to see how Fitz's story with Simmons can be compared to Tony Stark, the genius who cracked time travel in Avengers: Endgame, but ultimately sacrificed his Happily Ever After with his wife and child in order to save the world. Both Stark and Fitz gambled everything to do what needed to be done; Stark made the sacrifice play, but Fitz didn't need to, and he earned the reward Tony Stark was tragically denied.
Captain America and Quake finish off in contrasting places as well. In Avengers: Endgame, Steve Rogers traveled back in time to spend his life with his beloved Peggy Carter. In Agents of SHIELD season 7, Sousa - one of Peggy's exes - was plucked out of time to spend his life with Quake in the present day. It's hard to say whether the parallels were intentional; Agents of SHIELD's showrunners hoped Quake and Sousa would work as a couple, but were only convinced when they saw the great dynamic between actors Chloe Bennet and Enver Gjokaj. Whether this was planned or not, though, it certainly worked out - and the weird inversion is both amusing and appropriate.
But here's the strange thing; there is a sense in which Agents of SHIELD is more of a true "endgame" than the fourth Avengers movie. At heart, Avengers: Endgame is the passing of the torch from one generation of MCU heroes to the next. This is neatly symbolized in a sequence featuring the Infinity Gauntlet, in which it is passed from one key Phase 4 hero to the next - from Black Panther to Spider-Man, and then to Captain Marvel. In narrative terms, it is both an endgame for the first Avengers and a launchpad for what will come in the following years.
In contrast, however, Agents of SHIELD really is an endgame - a "Last Hurrah" that celebrates everything that has come before, and that really does end the story. This isn't just the end of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD; it is the end of Marvel Television as we know it. In October 2019, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige was given an expanded remit as Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Entertainment, and Marvel Television has since been wound down. Feige's focus is on making TV shows for the Disney+ streaming service, shows that star characters from the big-screen. Chloe Bennet may be hopeful she will get to play Quake again, but that will depend on whether Feige wishes to weave a small-screen character into his plans. Not only is that impossible to guarantee, he has shown no inclination to do so, meaning it's pretty unlikely.
Furthermore, Agents of SHIELD's conclusion marks the end of themes and stories that began with Marvel's Phase 1. Tony Stark and Captain America are gone; Hulk doesn't have a specific future beyond further team-ups (if they even happen); and Thor is vastly different from his original incarnation. Agents of SHIELD's connections to Phase 1 through Coulson and, really, just for existing - considering the MCU movies don't acknowledge the organization anymore - are what carried the show in its early years. Now, for Agents of SHIELD, this is an actual ending, the closing of a book not just of a chapter.