Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
There ’s simply no way to make Marvel’sAgents ofSHIELDseason 6 set with the MCU timeline . When Marvel Television launchedAgents of SHIELDback in 2013 , they figure the show as having the closest possible connections to the movies themselves . The first time of year kick off with explicit references to result in the recently - releasedIron military man 3 , had a consecrated tie - in episode toThor : The Dark World , and ultimately reorient its full plot around the gloam of SHIELD inCaptain America : The Winter Soldier . That pattern continued through season 2 , with an arc that tied intoAvengers : Age of Ultron .
Everything changed in 2015 , when behind - the - scenes conflict at Marvel led Disney to force a corporate restructure . Marvel Studios was pulled out of the wide-cut Marvel Entertainment group , and ground as a separate Disney subsidiary . From that point in time on , the connection between Marvel Studios and Marvel Television became perceptibly more remote , and - with the exclusion of a discarded consultation to Pym particle at the beginning ofAgents of SHIELDseason 3 - connection became thematic rather than explicit . And yet , Marvel Television was careful to emphasise the continuing passageway of time , with explicit six - calendar month disruption between most season .
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The time traveling plot inAgents of SHIELDseason 5 appeared to offer the show a probability to do something of a reset . The volume of the team was transported to a dystopian future tense where theEarth had been shatter like an ball , and Fitz soon conjoin them by going the tenacious way around , via cryogenic break . When they finally return to the present , Agents of SHIELDcould have broken away from the main MCU timeline and ran behind the movies for a while to avoid any complications with world - changing events . But it was n’t the plan of attack Marvel Television prefer to take .
How Agents of SHIELD Season 5 Tied Into Avengers: Infinity War
Back in 2017 , Marvel Studios was building up to the adult event in the history of the MCU , the culmination of a ten ’s Charles Frederick Worth of serialized storytelling on the vainglorious screen . And the showrunners ofAgents of SHIELDdecided they by all odds wanted to tie into that for what they believe would be their final time of year .
When the SHIELD squad lastly generate home in season 5 , episode 11 , they found themselves in a new base of operations , the Lighthouse . This had been used by the Chronicom anthropologists Enoch and Noah to supervise the Earth for potential threats ; while SHIELD were still sink in , getting used to their new milieu , they discover " two Asgardians in the metropolis . " It was a clear nod toThor : Ragnarok , where Thor and Loki in brief visited New York . Viewers immediately knew thatAgents of SHIELDwas unite the countdown toAvengers : Infinity Warand the comer of Thanos .
SHIELD soon find themselves navigating a cabal between the last shadow of Hydra and analien Confederacy . In a surprise twist , it turned out the Confederacy had manipulated Hydra by offering knowledge of Thanos and his armies , who they assert would return to Earth after their defeat in 2012 . Later episode feature dialogue confirming that it was concurrent to the beginning ofAvengers : Infinity War , with Thanos ' forces launching their initial plan of attack on New York so as to acquire the Time Stone . In a strange gumption , Thanos himself was the villain ofAgents of SHIELDseason 5 .
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But then , improbably , theAgents of SHIELDseason 5 close ignored the mo Thanos snarl his fingers and erased half the living in the universe . The biggest single event in the account of the MCU was sidestepped by the official tie - in TV serial . From a yield standpoint , it made sense ; the writers and showrunners believed season 5 was the end of the route forAgents of SHIELD(they even called the season 5 close " The closing " ) . They wanted to tie up all the unaffixed ends , decide the main persona arcs , and finish on an affirmative note . All that would have been wholly overshadowed by the snap .
There was just one problem with this approach : ABC surprise Marvel byrenewingAgents of SHIELDfor a 6th season .
Agents of SHIELD Season 6 Continued To Ignore Infinity War
agent of SHIELDseason 6 is explicitly set one year after the upshot of the time of year 5 finale;Mack has had a twelvemonth to reconstruct SHIELD , while Quake and Simmons have been in blank looking for Fitz for the past twelve calendar month . Agents of SHIELDseason 6 , episode 9further cemented the timeline in a view where Mack reminisced with Daisy , think all the weird stuff they ’ve dealt with together over the course of the last five years . Mack joined up with SHIELD in 2014 , after the Hydra uprising inCaptain America : The Winter Soldier , which sustain that season 6 is set in 2019 . That ’s a full year after Thanos snap his fingerbreadth .
For all this is the showcase , Agents of SHIELDseason 6 is clearly set in a creation in which the snap never happened , an world just like ours but with superheroes . There ’s no touch that civilisation has been almost brought down by the sudden disappearing of half the sprightliness on Earth , and there is n’t a trace of the sort of PTSD and trauma shown inAvengers : Endgame . The trouble is n’t restricted to Earth , either ; a skilful chunk of season 6 is base in space , and yet none of the alien civilizations visited by Quake and Simmons have been affected by any cosmic harm either . harmonize toAvengers : Endgame , when Thanos snapped his fingers Earth became basis zero for a wave of cosmic vigor of unparalleled order of magnitude . You ’d have expected a lot of alien races to have checked Earth out after the snap , but inAgents of SHIELD , Terrans are only known because of the actions of Quake and her team .
Again , there ’s a simple rationality for this : Marvel Television had no idea what Marvel Studios ' plan were . " Just looking at it from a very practical place , " Marvel TV school principal Jeph Loeb explained , " which is , what the world looked like post - snap , [ it ] was not something we had seen yet . We were already shooting . " As a issue , Loeb suggested that every Marvel Television show is to be considered lay out pre - snap - includingAgents of SHIELDseason 6 . That would essentially mean thatThanos ' catch has n’t been ignored ; it just has n’t happened yet . The one problem with this disceptation , however , is that it unconditionally contradicts the events of the show itself . Agents of SHIELDseason 5 was explicitly concurrent toAvenger : Infinity War , and time of year 6 is set one year later , in 2019 . There ’s no easy agency to reconcile this .
Agents of SHIELD Can’t Fit The MCU (& That’s OK)
The truth is that Marvel Television and Marvel Studios have develop aside over the last few class . The corporate restructure back in 2015 inevitably mean that , sooner or subsequently , the prime canon of the movies was going to do something the TV side just could n’t suit without it take over every single one of their shows . That has n’t been too liberal a problem for the likes ofCloak & DaggerandRunaways , which have carefully head off giving any specific sense of where they fit into the timeline , butAgents of SHIELDwas always going to take the hit .
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Ultimately , the real question is whether or not it matter anymore . agent of SHIELDhas efficaciously outgrow the MCU , and has uprise a mythology of its own , one that ’s every bit as robust as Marvel Studios ' . Nowadays , this is a show that explores Framework virtual realities and LMDs , Monoliths and jump drives , rather than the late concepts developed on the big screenland .
And this is only get to continue asAgents of SHIELDmoves towards its end . Marvel TV school principal Jeph Loeb has openly stated that he has no idea when ABC will choose to air time of year 7 next year , which think of there wo n’t even be any tie - ins toThe EternalsandBlack Widow- otherwise the loss would be cautiously coordinated . While it ’s conceivable thatseason 7 ’s time travelcould find a jam toAgents of SHIELD ’s persistence by rewrite history somehow , it does n’t really need to . And , frankly , the author would be better served ignore the issue and just ensuring their show bows out in style .
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