SPOILER WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for "The End," the Season 5 finale of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. may have prevented the end the end of the world, but they paid a major price for it. In "The End," the Season 5 finale, the team lost two major members: Leo Fitz and Phil Coulson. Soon after Fitz was killed by falling debris, Coulson chose to give the cure for his ailment to Daisy, who used it to boost her powers and defeat Graviton. The end of the episode saw the team bid their beloved leader goodbye, but all hope is not lost. Under Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie's direction, S.H.I.E.L.D. will live on, and one of their first missions will send them into deep space to rescue Fitz's past self from his 80-year cryosleep.
Ahead of the Season 6 renewal, S.H.I.E.L.D. executive producers Jeff Bell, Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon spoke to CBR about that explosive Season 5 finale, which was written as a series ender in the event the show didn’t return. They discussed Coulson's chances of returning, why they decided to kill Fitz and how they chose Mack as the next Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. They also teased that the show has "plenty of stories" left to tell, how Avengers: Infinity War will open new areas to explore and more.
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CBR: You know I have to ask: should the show return, how open is the door for Coulson to come back?
Jeff Bell: It was a great question to ask! That's future us' problem and, right now, there is no Season 6, so he's not dead yet is all I'll say.
Jed Whedon: You know enough from watching the show that, even if he were dead, it doesn't necessarily mean the end. So it's a good question and we hope we get to answer it for you.
May's future is a little more ambiguous. What can you tell me about her mindset when we leave her on that beach in Tahiti with Coulson?
Whedon: I think she just wants to spend the time with Phil. I don't know if she's thinking much past that.
Bell: I think Melinda May is pretty zen about it. I think she's very much about in the moment, that they're there and they have that time together and that she's grateful for that and what happens beyond that she'll deal with down the road.
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Why Fitz, you monsters?!
Whedon: You know, we always want the audience to be feeling two things at once: to be feeling happy and sad. We felt like, in writing our time travel season, which was not easy for us in the writers' room, the duplicate Fitz was a problem for us until we realized that it was an opportunity.
Bell: It was a dangling chad in space.
Whedon: We felt like it was a way to change the timeline and feel like there was a real price for it that wasn't just, "Oh! No, we fixed it! Well, that worked out!" But it was painful and that there still had to be loss of life and our team did sacrifice, but without us losing more of our beloved characters. So we felt like it was a good pain to have, but one that you would be a little bit healed by the end.
How did you come to the decision to make Mack the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.?
Whedon: Part of it is Henry [Simmons]. You know, a lot of it comes from his strength and what he brings to the character. We keep moving Mack further towards the foreground, because he just has this strength to him and Henry gives you good humor and he gives you good heart. So that was part of it, and the other part is Daisy coming into her own skin and realizing who she is over the last five years, having this handed to her by Coulson and feeling like she didn't want it. This is sort of her moment of really stepping into the shoes that Coulson asked her to fill. You've got to start making these decisions, and this is her first big decision. I think it was a good one. The team gets behind it, and it shows that her capability as a leader is her stepping aside as one. We thought that was a cool character moment for her and sort of a strong moment for her. She still wants to be leading the charge. She just wants someone else doing the math on how we're going to do it.
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At WonderCon, Jed said that Avengers: Infinity War would "open up a whole new playground" for the series. Now that the movie is out and the season is over, can you elaborate on that?
Bell: Yes, please elaborate on that, Jed.
Maurissa Tancharoen: Yeah, why did you say that? [laughs]
Whedon: You know, every time they release a movie, we sort of play in that universe. Once Doctor Strange was out, we felt like we could do a little bit more magic and have other dimensions. Once Guardians came out and they started playing with that, that's what freed us up to do space this year and I think that Infinity War had so much in it and so many implications that, without describing the movie, there's a lot of implications in the some of the stuff they explore and I think that we can now explore that, should we be given more stories to tell.
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The show has touched on a lot of different facets of the Marvel Universe. Is there something it hasn't yet that you'd like to explore?
Whedon: Elf with a Gun. We just haven't explored Elf with a Gun yet. No, we dipped our toe into a new world this year.
Bell: Space was fun for us this year. Time travel was new.
Whedon: Ghost Rider opened up other dimensions. There's still a lot! That's the thing. That's why people love comic books and why they love cinematic universes. You can go anywhere.
Bell: Let's just say we feel like there's plenty of stories to tell, should we get the opportunity.
Piper and Davis really stepped up a lot at the end of the season. Will they fill the gaps left behind by Coulson and Fitz?
Tancharoen: They're on the Zephyr with the team!
Whedon: Yeah, they're on Z1 at the end. We hope that they get their own little spinoff. No, they're a part of the team, and they're filling our ranks right now. We hope to see more of them.
Returning Summer 2019, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. stars Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Henry Simmons, Ian De Caestecker, Natalia Cordova-Buckley and Elizabeth Henstridge.