Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 7: Our Finale Farewell [with new Comic-con 2019 Interviews]

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 7 Review

The Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 7 finale arrives tonight, ending the shows 7-year run on ABC, and hopefully wrapping up the journey with emotion and wonder.

Season 7’s uneven run reflects the history of the show in more ways than one. While it keeps its core set of characters together, it also sprawls across space and time. The show continues to plot holes in its wake, along with characters and situations 

My best advice to viewers for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 7, just go along for the ride. If you want to enjoy let the new Hydra plot, the younger versions of familiar characters, the Chronicles, the logic inconsistencies, or the suggestion that the Zephyr doesn’t have security protocols prior to flight just wash over you like sandy water on a warm beach. Once the wave recedes you will still see your family sitting under the umbrella drinking Pina Coladas. 

If you want to enjoy let the new Hydra plot, the younger versions of familiar characters, the Chronicles, the logic inconsistencies, or the suggestion that the Zephyr doesn’t have security protocols prior to flight just wash over you like sandy water on a warm beach. Once the wave recedes you will still see your family sitting under the umbrella drinking Pina Coladas.

The season started well with a little camp around the different eras the team traveled through, framed in opening credits aimed right at the heart of the show’s nerdy followers. But those light-hearted throwbacks faded as the season went on and traditional plot ensued.

Season 7 suffers not just from writing fatigue (or producing fatigue)–it also suffers from a lot of strings flaying on a corkboard that don’t have home—but from time travel. Enough time travel! I loved Avengers: End Game, all except the time travel. And no, End Game would not have existed without time travel, but well, time travel. Because it isn’t real, time travel forces writers to create reconciliations based on some internal logic that is never shared with the audience—or worse, when it is shared with the audience it comes across as B.S. because, you know, it isn’t real. Time travel becomes the source of lazy writing and overly ambitious writing that attempts to prove the writer can write themselves out of the corner the showrunners put them in.

So let me back up. Just let it happen. Hopefully, the things that don’t make any logical sense, break or remerge with the MCU, or disregard the show’s own history don’t take away from the potential of an emotional connection to characters the stalwart fans have come to know and love.

Many will miss Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on ABC. But on to Disney+ and the future of a more integrated, less contentious reckoning between the MCU and its stream-first counterparts.

And now quotes and images from Comic-Con 2019 and The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 7 press room.

Jeffery Bell on seeing MCU characters in AoS

Honestly, in season six or seven, we don’t work that hard to do that we really like the characters that have been, We’re working hard sometimes to bring back characters who have been on our show previously. But that’s a much higher priority to us, then checking off a box, because third guy from the left in this movie showed up, you know, and so we do our card to do that. So that so that that feels like a real world. So maybe some of that.

Jeffery Bell framing the AoS run

It’s a show that’s about hope it there are moments there are times when we’ve had to, you know, like blow something from our eyes. But at the end of the day, the people that are on that show, and the stories that we’re telling are aspirational. And that at a time when just stability is a hard thing to find out there to show a diverse cast, working together, not making any comment on that just seeing it happen, that the women are strong, and they have a point of view and that the people on the show feel that with each other. And that it has a family element to it that this is a group of characters that didn’t know at the beginning that whether or not they were looking for a family, and yet they’ve somehow come together and we think that the audience feels that and respects that and after 136 hours of anything is pretty extraordinary. But do it on TV is exceptional.

It’s a show that’s about hope it there are moments there are times when we’ve had to, you know, like blow something from our eyes.

Jeph Loeb on spoilers and First culture

My feeling and I feel very strongly about this as the head of Marvel Television is the word spoil. It does not have a good connotation. If someone brought you a carton of milk and said, I think this is spoiled. Would you like to smell it? You don’t know, I don’t want to have any of it. So the idea of being able to ruin the story before you get a chance to see it—when there’s so many people are over there just willing to do that. What we try to do is instead, we want to present the show the way that the writers in the showrunners intended for it to happen. And That’s it. You know, in our case, we were to our finale on August 2 and feels like a movie and we’re very proud of it.

When I go to the movies and see trailers for movies to come. I will do this (covering eyes and ears) sometimes because they show too much. I want to experience it when I see it. I want to be part of it. I don’t want it to be like, Oh, I’ve seen that. I know there’s a lot of first culture, because first, and I don’t care. I would rather just be surprised.

Chloe Bennet on cast diversity

I think the show’s done such a good job at like doing it and not making a thing of it, which I think is kind of where we should be. And I think hopefully we’ll get there to a certain point because they’re not like, you know, Hey, Jeff, What’s it like to play on a smart white guy, I would love for these to be so normal that it’s not a thing. I think that the show was kind of just done that, you know, these characters weren’t scripted, Asian, It wasn’t like, I didn’t audition for this, because the role was Asian, they found who was right for the role, and then, and then brought in storylines that cater to my ethnicity, which is like a beautiful kind of wonderful thing. And that’s not common at all. And they also didn’t use it to market the show, which is, and people just kind of discovered it organically, which I think is just the way that it should be.

Jeff Ward following up:

That’s an amazing thing to me is that like this, the show it first of all, it’s never pat itself on the back for how diverse it is, [Chloe interject: it just is, which I think is where it’s what it should be.] It also did that, you know, seven years ago, which I, you know, I hate to say it was not as in vogue, to have such a diverse cast, and to have these very intelligent, you know, female or, you know, diverse characters. And so to have that, and it just, it just was that from the jump, I think it’s something that makes me really proud to be a part of speaks

Chloe continues…

It speaks a lot about having representation behind the camera, and a lot of that as dude, Marissa, and that’s where, you know, a big part of the impact I want to leave on the industry as much as I can is that having representation behind the camera is that important? Because that’s what happens is, you when you have an Asian woman, for instance, running the show, she’s gonna subconsciously cast the people who are right, and they happen to be two other Asian women. I don’t think that’s really a coincidence. I think that that there’s, you know, we want to see ourselves on camera in a way and when you see yourself and when young girls of color, or any different background and can see someone else that is similar to them on screen, being super, being a hero, it inspires you to do other things and in your own life, and it gives you the confidence that in a way that, you know, a lot of people don’t realize, can affect you.

when you see yourself and when young girls of color, or any different background and can see someone else that is similar to them on screen, being super, being a hero, it inspires you to do other things and in your own life, and it gives you the confidence that in a way that, you know, a lot of people don’t realize, can affect you.

Chloe on what she took away from play Skye

Just kind of her arc of, of being an orphan, wanting to find out who she is. It was not great, you know, her family situation—and just kind of how many times she’s gotten up after falling, I think the biggest takeaway playing her is, things happen. You get up when things happen. You get up and you just keep getting up. And I think that, that if there was something to take away as the character and throughout the entire seven seasons, is keep getting up and keep going and surround yourself with the people that care and love the most.

Read the Clark Gregg and Ming Na Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 7 interview from Comic-Con 2019 here.

All photos Alyssa Rasmus, Pink Camera Media and BestEntertainmentReviews.com.