Clark Gregg's Blunt Message For Marvel Fans Worried How Agents Of SHIELD Fits Into MCU Canon

After being handed a monumental win with 2012's "The Avengers," it was all but inevitable that the Marvel Cinematic Universe would continue to grow in popularity. The following year not only saw the release of "Iron Man 3" and "Thor: The Dark World," but also a television show on ABC that would serve as a multimedia extension of the movies. "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." resurrected slain fan favorite character Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) to lead the series' ensemble on cases that existed within the periphery of the MCU supers. The connections were often the result of the S.H.I.E.L.D. crew cleaning up the mess, that is, until the big twist of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" blew up the show's entire premise and revealed one of the main cast to have been a secret member of HYDRA the entire time.

"Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." continued to weave threads to the MCU movies, but they happened less and less frequently across its impressive seven-season span. I remember when some folks thought it wouldn't get beyond a season or two. The lack of cinematic references, however, got to the point that sects of the Marvel fandom called its canonical presence into question. During a panel at New York Comic Con 2025, Clark Gregg vigorously pushed back on that notion by paying tribute to the fans who didn't care about all that (via Popverse):

"There's some people who talk about canon [...] You can go f*** yourself. We're proud of what we did. We're proud, really deeply proud, of the connection we have with people like you who come visit and hang with us."

Some of Gregg's words may come across as blunt, but he's got a good reason for feeling that way. For all of the times that "S.H.I.E.L.D." responded to whatever was happening in the movies, like Coulson sending Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) a helicarrier to assist in the climax of "Avengers: Age of Ultron," its big-screen counterpart hardly reciprocated the favor. It was a mostly one-way street that pushed the show to exist on its own merits and, as a result, forged its own legacy. Instead of waiting to see the marquee superheroes, viewers became accustomed to spending time with characters like Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), Daisy (Chloe Bennet), Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker), Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge), and Mack (Henry Simmons), among many others.

Being largely free from the movie's continuity gave "S.H.I.E.L.D." the opportunity to go buck wild with deep cut characters and stories from Marvel comics. As of this moment, it's the ABC series that's responsible for bringing the best screen incarnation of "Ghost Rider" to life. The final episodes of "S.H.I.E.L.D." were a season-long riff on "Avengers: Endgame" that saw the main ensemble hopping through time, and it was a whole lot of fun that gave everyone a sense of closure. The novelty of the MCU's interconnectedness has largely worn off since the MCU started directly tying its movies to its Disney+ projects. It shows how these universes can often be hampered by having to stick to canonical events you may or may not have even known happened. If something's only worth lies in how it ties into something else, then what are we doing here, folks?

Every season of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." is currently streaming on Disney+.