Agents of SHIELD

We are just two days away from the series finale of Agents of SHIELD, wrapping up the time-travel-based final season 7 that has taken its cast all over the map and the timeline in an effort to preserve the continuity of the MCU.

If they do their job right, no one will even know they ever did anything. Which is kind of an unfortunate metaphor for how overlooked the show has been all these years.

Agents of SHIELD has been an extremely interesting and confounding project for Marvel, the last remaining relic of the old TV era that has gone through three phases now:

Phase 1: Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter, employing characters directly tied into the MCU, and yet affording them little connection to the ongoing films once they got their own series.

Phase 2: Netflixs Defenders, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and the Punisher, R-rated offerings allowed pretty much zero connection to any of the films, existing in their own little microuniverse set before Infinity War. All shows were summarily executed in the past year or two with Disney Plus making new plans and Netflix becoming a huge rival.

Phase 3: Disney Plus, a phase which has not started yet, and has been delayed due to the pandemic. Now theyre pulling in their big name name MCU movie stars for smaller, shorter, often limited series, as well as a few different experiments like WandaVision, and then later, bringing in new characters like She-Hulk, Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel. Until these shows air, once SHIELD is done, there will be no mainline Marvel shows on the air.

Agents of SHIELD

What I think is overlooked is a record that Agents of SHIELD has set over the years, however, lasting long past when many assumed it would be cancelled with a dedicated fanbase and endless ways to keep the series fresh, with a hefty Inhumans plotline, space travel and now time travel, almost all of it completely divorced from the MCU after season 1 was hugely impacted by the events of Winter Soldier (Hydra dismantling SHIELD from the inside).

The record is that most of the main cast have technically had the most screen time in the MCU of any characters in the universe, including big name movie stars that have appeared in so many films like Robert Downey Jrs Tony Stark or Chris Evans Captain America.

The ranking order for really the entire MCU is the cast here:

Clark Gregg (Phil Coulson) 136 Episodes

Chloe Bennet (Daisy Johnson ) 136 Episodes

Ming-Na Wen (Melinda May) 136 Episodes

Elizabeth Henstridge (Jemma Simmons) 136 Episodes

Iain De Caestecker (Leo Fitz) 126 Episodes

Henry Simmons (Alfonso Mack Mackenzie) 114 Episodes

All of those are legions beyond anyone else in the MCU, and also, even the Netflix MCU where Matt Murdoch has 39 episodes plus maybe 10 more in the Defenders.

Agents of SHIELD

136 episodes across the four most present cast members at 42 minutes an episode is 95.2 hours in the MCU. The ultimate winner is Phil Coulson, who has those 95.2 hours, and yet has also appeared in many Marvel movies, Thor, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Avengers and Captain Marvel. His character died at least twice onscreen and the current version of Coulson is (spoiler) actually just a very advanced robot filled with all his memories. But that still counts, and Coulson is easily attached to over 100 hours of various offerings in the MCU. Thatsimpressive.

I will miss SHIELD. I think it did the best with what it was able to work with, which was an extremely limited selection of characters and plotlines, given the huge wall Marvel threw up between TV and the movies. They pressed on, adapting creatively, and giving us perhaps some of the most endearing characters across the whole of the MCU, even if none got the chance to ever cross over to the big screen, minus Coulson.

We will see what the new MCU movie-star slate of TV shows holds, but SHIELD did it first, and may have done it best.

Follow meon Twitter,YouTubeandInstagram. Pick up my sci-fi novelsHerokillerandHerokiller 2, and read my first series,The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also onaudiobook.

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As The Agents Of SHIELD Finale Looms, Remembering Its Impressive Achievement - Forbes