The MCU’s Biggest Loose End: Will Agents of SHIELD Ever Be Canon?

Marvel dusts off one legacy character and, like clockwork, the Agents of SHIELD debate lights up again. The latest spark: word that VisionQuest is bringing back James D'Arcy as Jarvis, the butler he first played on Agent Carter. Cool if true. Also, cue SHIELD fans asking: so when does their show finally count?

The SHIELD-shaped hole

Agents of SHIELD launched in 2013, ran through 2020, and spent seven seasons trying to stitch itself to the big-screen MCU. Clark Gregg returned as Agent Coulson (yes, the same Coulson who died in The Avengers), with Ming-Na Wen as Melinda May, Chloe Bennett as Daisy Johnson, and Brett Dalton as Grant Ward. It was the first major Marvel TV effort of the modern era, and for a while it played like a companion to the films. Then the movies stopped winking back.

'They are acknowledging every OG Marvel TV show but the first one.'

That sentiment popped up a lot after the Jarvis news. Fans pointed out a few things Marvel keeps tiptoeing around:

• A season 2 storyline in SHIELD feeds directly into Avengers: Age of Ultron, which, if you remember those weekly tie-ins, was kind of the whole point of the show at the time.
• SHIELD spent an entire arc wrestling with sentient AI — you know, the exact kind of thing VisionQuest is poised to revisit — and yet it keeps getting left out of the conversation.
• Some viewers even argue the show ended on a cliffhanger that has never been resolved. (Whether you agree with that or not, the feeling of unfinished business is real in the fandom.)
• One popular fix floating around: Kevin Feige could simply park SHIELD in another universe and give the team a single crossover moment in Secret Wars to officially acknowledge and canonize them.

Right now, Marvel still hasn’t formally folded Agents of SHIELD into the main MCU. With the multiverse in play, nothing’s impossible, but the studio’s actions so far say: not today.

Where this leaves VisionQuest, Wonder Man, and the next movie

VisionQuest doesn’t have a release date yet. Wonder Man is up next on the TV side and just dropped its first trailer. On the film side, the next Marvel movie on the calendar is Spider-Man: Brand New Day, arriving next year — schedule subject to change, obviously.

Want to keep track of what’s actually coming and when? I keep an updated guide to all the upcoming Marvel movies and shows, and I’ll slot SHIELD in the moment Marvel finally decides what to do with it.