Agents of SHIELD's End Should Coincide With Avengers 4 Premiere

Though its future was in question, Marvel Television's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will live to fight another day.

While the fate of the series had been in doubt, early this week ABC announced that the television series will return for Season 6, albeit at a shorter 13 episodes, down from the usual count of 22. This news came as a welcome surprise for fans of the show, many of whom were prepared for this Friday's Season 5 finale, ominously titled "The End," to serve as the series' final episode.

Coulson, Daisy, Fitz, Simmons, May and the rest of the gang will return for more covert missions and interplanetary travels when the series returns in the summer of 2019. Yes - while the series has been renewed with a truncated episode order, we still don't yet know if Season 6 will serve as its last. ABC president Channing Dungey believes there might be more life left in the series, allowing it to go well beyond Season 7, but, here's the thing: It would actually be a good move for Season 6 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to be its farewell run.

An Unprecedented Experiment

When it premiered in September 2012, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was, basically, an experiment. Its pilot was directed by Joss Whedon, who had just successfully assembled the Avengers on the big screen in what was Marvel Studios' biggest film to date. The series was the first bid to expand the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the small screen, and to cross-pollinate both mediums to create one massive, unprecedented continuity. Before Marvel's next big release would hit theaters, everyone who had watched and loved Whedon's The Avengers had the premiere of S.H.I.E.L.D. to look forward to as some sort of sequel to the events of the film.

The series launched with a record audience, one it would never match with its subsequent episodes. This was, honestly, to be expected. Perhaps audiences hoped to see the Avengers show up on the small screen, or perhaps they just really wanted to see how Phil Coulson was brought back from the dead. Either way, while S.H.I.E.L.D. swiftly lost a large chunk of its initial audience, it found a strong fan following who were more than rewarded for their devotion to the series. The first season started off clunky, but it came alive when it tied into the events of another big Marvel movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The Hydra reveal was the shot in the arm the series needed, and it hasn't stopped running since.

From the revelation that Chloe Bennet's Skye was secretly comic book character Daisy Johnson to the arrival of the Inhumans, from a tie-in episode which served as a lead-in to Joss Whedon's Avengers: Age of Ultron and the arrival of the Ghost Rider, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has turned into can't miss superhero television, week in and week out. Throughout its run, it managed to tie-in directly or thematically with whatever big Marvel movie would release that year, be it Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy or Avengers: Infinity War. But more than that, it managed to stand on its on two feet. With a strong cast and a riveting stories, the series' loyal fan base had every reason to come back for more -- even if the Avengers never showed up.

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This brings us to the next batch of upcoming Marvel movies. As we mentioned earlier, the next season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will begin at an unspecified date in Summer 2019. By that time, Marvel will most assuredly have released (or will be extremely close to releasing) Avengers 4, the still untitled sequel to Infinity War. This next Avengers film will, ultimately, serve as the ending of the current iteration of the MCU. The film has already been billed as the conclusion to a story that began all the way back in 2008's Iron Man, a movie that just to happened to have introduced Phil Coulson to Marvel fandom.

This is why it's important for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to reach its conclusion at the same time as the MCU's Phase 3.

After all, the series was an experiment that began as an off-shoot of the first Avengers film -- to have it end just as the final Avengers film hits theaters would bring things full circle. It would serve as a fitting end point, one that would echo the themes of Avengers 4, a movie that will surely be a swan song for many Marvel mainstays, including at least a few of the original six Avengers.

On top of that, March 2019 will see the release of Captain Marvel, a '90s-set film that will feature Clark Gregg's Agent Coulson in his younger days. This means that nearly seven years since "dying" in The Avengers, Coulson will finally make his long anticipated return to the big screen in a fitting throwback that would be made all the more poignant and important if his Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. story was finally, and officially, over.

Could The Apocalyptic Future Seen In S.H.I.E.L.D Be The Same Future As The MCU?

As they say, all good things should come to an end. While the original Marvel series still manages to find new ways to engage and surprise audiences, it should have the chance to go out on top. Most fans would argue that every new season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been better than the last, and there's no reason to believe Season 6 will prove different. With more than enough prep time ahead of them, the showrunners can craft a final season that could blow all of our expectations out of the water. They can make sure to deliver a definitive ending, while making sure to capitalize on all the rough emotions that will accompany witnessing the end of the MCU as we know it.

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5 finale airs 9 p.m. ET/PT on ABC. The series stars Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Henry Simmons, Ian De Caestecker, Natalia Cordova-Buckley and Elizabeth Henstridge. Avengers 4 hits theaters May 3, 2019.