With the exception of the tie-in with ‘Thor: The Dark World’ during season one, ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ has had some awesome crossovers with Marvel Studios’ biggest films. Of course, the fallout from ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ comes to mind immediately, but it was pretty cool seeing characters like Lady Sif, Maria Hill, and the Howling Commandos or things like Theta Protocol or Loki’s scepter connect the Marvel Cinematic Universe on the big and small screen together throughout the show’s run so far. However, since Kevin Feige took his division of the House of Ideas and split from Marvel Entertainment back in September so that they fall under the Walt Disney Studios banner, future crossovers between Marvel’s movies and TV shows became questionable. And it seems like that may be the general consensus among the stars of Jeph Loeb’s television projects.

While speaking to Digital Spy , Clark Gregg revealed that he doesn’t expect his ABC series to crossover with the 2019 Phase Three film ‘Inhumans’. Despite the amount of mythology that the show has established for the children of the Terrigen Mists already, the fan favorite actor understands that Director Phil Coulson and his team’s exploits need to stand alone and vice versa (no matter how much fun it may be to cross streams sometimes):  

“The Inhumans movie I suspect will be its own cinematic version. That writer and director will have free reign to do what they want to do with the Inhumans. But hopefully there’ll be some way that our Inhumans connect to that. It’d be too bad if that was wasted. What’s kind of necessary for the show to work is that it is its own thing and it’s not dependant upon those crossovers. They’re just fun stuff that happens once in a while.” 

Honestly, it wouldn’t be that hard to connect ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ to ‘Inhumans’. Assuming that the movie will follow the Inhuman Royal Family, it could be as easy as using Agent Daisy Johnson and her team of Secret Warriors in a cameo role similar to Peggy Carter and Howard Stark’s appearances in ‘Ant-Man’. If it were me writing the script, I would probably include a prologue montage showing the new Inhumans on Earth before moving the story to Attilan to focus on Black Bolt, Medusa, and the rest to get a feel for where the race started. Naturally, I have no idea what direction Feige and the other architects of the MCU are planning on taking, but that’s one of many easy ways to incorporate what’s already out there. The only thing that could hold any sort of mention or reference back though is the politics behind the scenes.

So, like Gregg, I’m hopeful that connections could be made in the future to enrich Marvel’s storytelling within their connect universe, but I also understand that it might not happen. We’ll just have to wait and see how it all plays out as Phase Three comes together over the next few years. 

Do you think that ‘Inhumans’ will use the mythology created by ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ when it hits the big screen? If so, which elements do you think it will draw from? Share your thoughts and theories in the comments below. 

‘Inhumans’ is scheduled to unhatch and emerge in theaters on July 12, 2019.