Agents of SHIELD improved once the show stopped connecting too heavily into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, according to stars Clark Gregg and Ming-Na Wen. When Agents of SHIELD began in 2013, the series was sold as a show that took place within the MCU, with the revival of Phil Coulson after his death in The Avengers, a key piece of the marketing. The first season was loaded with MCU references, but the reception wasn't as strong, until the show's connection to Captain America: The Winter Soldier changed its future.
Season 1's big MCU tie-in saw Agents of SHIELD deal with the Hydra twist from Winter Soldier, with Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) and John Garrett (Bill Paxton) revealed to be Hydra sleeper agents. The connections continued with Samuel L. Jackson appearing in the season finale, while seasons 1 and 2 brought Jaime Alexander to the small screen as Lady Sif. Season 2 even included a tie-in to Avengers: Age of Ultron, but that was one of the last times the MCU movies significantly impacted the series. And according to two of the stars, this was for the best.
Prior to Agents of SHIELD's series finale, the cast participated in a press event and discussed the lack of connectivity to the MCU movies in recent seasons. As shared by TVLine, Natalia Cordova-Buckley mentioned that she “would have loved for the movies and our world to connect” more than they did, but Wen and Gregg didn't agree. Wen said that the early connections to the MCU movies hampered the writers, even though Gregg still thinks the season 1 twist works well. Once the show managed to break free of the movie connections, the two stars agree that Agents of SHIELD became a better show.
Gregg: I liked when the focus [became], ‘What’s the best way to tell stories with these characters, using whatever pieces of the Marvel Universe aren’t already spoken for?’ That really freed up our writers to take chances — and take chances they did, every season.
Wen: I think it was a glorious idea to have this all be ‘connected,’ but in the end it was so great because it allowed our writers to just take off and use their imagination and create things that they were allowed to have with different characters and different storylines. But that first season was a bit bumpy, definitely. It definitely had its issues…. There were all kinds of weird things we couldn’t do or say.
The belief that Agents of SHIELD improved the less connected it became to the MCU movies is something that fans of the series have been in agreement about for the last several seasons. Season 3 focused on its own Inhuman story and barely addressed the Sokovia Accords, but the quality of the show improved. Then, season 4 is largely considered to be the best season of Agents of SHIELD even though there are no major MCU connections. The season brought Ghost Rider and LMDs into the story, and the result was arguably the best stretch of the show's run.
As improved as Agents of SHIELD's storytelling became as it distanced itself from the movies, the attempts to then connect to the MCU films were only made more clunky. The fifth season name-dropped Thanos multiple times but it never addressed The Snap or any of the events from Avengers: Infinity War. For season 7, Agents of SHIELD got around the MCU timeline by having a time-travel adventure and recently confirmed that the show currently is operating in a new timeline. But, with only the two-hour series finale left, fans will soon discover if Agents of SHIELD ends with the team back in the movie timeline or leaves them in this new universe.
Source: TVLine