Falcon & Winter Soldier Shows Agents of SHIELD Was Right To Ignore The Blip

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier shows Agents of SHIELD was right to ignore Thanos' snap. When ABC unexpectedly renewed Agents of SHIELD for seasons 6 and 7, Marvel Television's bosses were placed in a difficult position. The final episodes of season 5 had tied in with the build-up to Avengers: Infinity War, with the threat of Thanos looming over the Earth, which meant realistically future seasons should be exploring the consequences of Thanos' snap. But communications between Marvel Studios and Marvel Television had long since deteriorated, and nobody at Marvel Television knew what the Blip would look like or how Avengers: Infinity War's cliffhanger would be resolved. And so Agents of SHIELD elected to ignore the snap, with Loeb suggesting the setup in season 5 should be ignored and everything they made should be considered set before Avengers: Infinity War.

It very much felt like a missed opportunity, because it would have been fascinating to navigate a post-Avengers: Infinity War world through the eyes of familiar characters. Even more frustrating, at first it seemed Marvel Studios was in a hurry to reset after Avengers: Endgame put the worlds to right. Spider-Man: Far From Home moved the MCU timeline ahead to 2024, and seemed to show a world that had been restored to some semblance of normality; even the term coined to describe those five horrific years, "The Blip," felt oddly dismissive. It began to look as though Marvel Studios would never trouble to explore that five-year time period, keen to move on.

Fortunately, Marvel's Disney+ TV shows are indeed exploring the Blip - albeit through retrospectives rather than explicitly showing the trauma and horror of it all. The first allusion was in WandaVision, when Director Hayward suggested the world was divided between the restored Thanos victims and those who had lived through those five years. "You know, you people who left, still have the luxury of optimism," Hayward snapped. "You have no idea what it was like. What it took to keep the lights on." Falcon & Winter Soldier has continued this theme, revealing those who lived through the Blip actually created a world some of them considered better, one where humanity united in the wake of this unfathomable tragedy and national borders broke down. The Flag-Smashers are essentially motivated by fury, in that they cannot believe the world is just desperate to reset and pretend it all never happened, rather than actually allow some of the good things that came from the Blip to be maintained.

Karli smiling at Bucky in Falcon Winter Soldier

Back in 2019, Marvel Television's Jeph Loeb explained their decision to ignore Thanos' snap was about to allowing the movies to dictate the shape of the world. "The movies are the lead dog," he told The Wrap. "They’re setting the timeline for the MCU and what’s going on. Our job is to navigate within that world. The only way for us to tell our story is to do them pre-snap. Whether or not you can figure out [how the timeline works], we’ll let 'timelords' figure out." As disappointing as the decision was, it's now clear Marvel Television made the right call, because by setting their shows pre-snap they gave Marvel Studios a remarkable degree of flexibility. Had Agents of SHIELD explored the consequences of the snap, the whole discussion would have been about how the timeline fitted together, while some of Marvel Studios' stories may have had to be dropped because they'd already been told.

Loeb's comments do suggest he recognized the difficult position Marvel Television was in, and that it was entirely possible the timeline wouldn't work out. Fortunately, Agents of SHIELD season 7 ended with a delightful nod to the wider MCU in the introduction of the Quantum Realm, which it used as a way to travel between different timelines; consequently, it can simply be considered part of the Marvel Multiverse even if it isn't in the same worlds as the movies anymore.

More: Falcon & Winter Soldier Is Telling The Post-Blip Story Endgame Couldn't