The MCU may have seemingly distanced itself from Agents of SHIELD and other Marvel shows that weren’t under the Marvel Studios banner, but that hasn’t stopped series star Clark Gregg, who played Agent Coulson in some of the MCU films and Agents of SHIELD, from still firmly believing that the show is indeed Marvel canon.
While appearing on the Marvel Movie Minute podcast, Gregg started off by bringing up WandaVision and its apparent retcon of Agents of SHIELDS own story. Gregg said, “I’ve seen places where people felt like SHIELD or something had been de-canonized by stuff that happened in WandaVision in ways I couldn’t even quite follow, and I’m pretty adept at this stuff.” In Gregg’s opinion, none of this has diminished SHIELD’s place in the Marvel canon. Here is more of what he had to say, especially regarding Kevin Feige acknowledging how much the fans love the show:
“I read this comment the other day where someone said, did this diminish Agents of SHIELD? and he[Feige] said, ‘You know, I think you’re really underestimating how powerful and passionate the fans of that show and the Netflix shows are and were, ‘ and I would never underestimate that or them.”
Even though I love the Netflix Marvel shows, I’ve always been a little peeved that there was this effort to distance Agents of SHIELD from the greater MCU. When the series began, that wasn’t the case and they tried to tie the show in as much as they could. I think once the show became more of a fan favorite and less of a ratings juggernaut, the decision was made to not connect SHIELD to the films as much. To the show’s credit, I think the series did become much better when it didn’t have to worry about its MCU connections but Coulson, in particular, is definitely MCU canon since his character did appear in the films so that alone provides a solid connection.
Fans will continue to debate its true place in the MCU. The show ignored the life-altering events of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame but, as mentioned earlier, the first few seasons had connections to the movies that couldn’t be ignored. Marvel Studios made this even more confusing via WandaVision when the series introduced Darkhold, but in a much different way than Agents of SHIELD did during season four. Then on Loki, the series referenced Coulson’s death but failed to mention his resurrection. Maybe Marvel is now a choose your own adventure kind of thing.
Do YOU think Agents of SHIELD is Marvel canon?