When ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ launched in 2013, it was an extension of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, fronted by Clark Gregg, who had become a fan-favorite for his humorous and charming role as Agent Phil Coulson in ‘Iron Man’, ‘Iron Man 2’, ‘Thor’, and ‘Avengers’ as well as two “One-Shot” shorts. Early episodes of ‘Agents of SHIELD’ dealt with the aftermath of the Battle of New York and featured cameo appearances from Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, Cobie Smulders’ Maria Hill, Jaimie Alexander as Lady Sif, Maximiliano Hernández as Jasper Sitwell, Neal McDonough as Dum Dum Dugan, and of course Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, who went on to star in her own ABC series, ‘Agent Carter’, for two seasons.
At that point in time, Marvel Studios fell under the control of Marvel Entertainment, headed by Isaac Perlmutter. Perlmutter attempted to exert too much control over the films, including only offering them shoestring budgets, refusing to make movies with a Black lead (‘Black Panther’) or female (‘Captain Marvel’) while forcing MS to make an ‘Inhumans’ movie to recast the moon-dwelling superbeings as the new ‘X-Men’, because the film rights to the mutants lied at 20th Century Fox. Eventually, Marvel Studios CEO Kevin Feige balked and threatened to quit. Parent company, Disney, smoothed things over by breaking Marvel Studios off into its own entity that would report directly to Disney and have no interactions with Perlmutter and Marvel Entertainment.
And with Marvel Studios and its movies no longer having anything to do with Marvel Enterprises, that also meant that ‘Agents of SHIELD’ was on its own.
While promoting the series finale of ‘Agents of SHIELD’, Natalia Cordova-Buckley, who joined the cast in Season 3, as Agent Elena “Yo-Yo” Rodriguez lamented that she “would have loved for the movies and our world to connect” more, before she was cut off by Ming-Na Wen, who has been one of the show’s stars from the beginning, portraying Agent Melinda May.
“Oh, no, I was there for that [first] season and no, uh-uh, no. Because It really, completely tied the writers’ hands. They had to write and try and coordinate with the release of the film [Captain America: The Winter Soldier]… and it just hampered us. It hampered the writers, it hampered everyone to have the freedom to be our own entity.
“I think it was a glorious idea to have this all be ‘connected,’ but in the end it was so great because it allowed our writers to just take off and use their imagination and create things that they were allowed to have with different characters and different storylines. But that first season was a bit bumpy, definitely. It definitely had its issues…. There were all kinds of weird things we couldn’t do or say… [Later] We found our own identity.”
The last two episodes of ‘Agents of SHIELD’ air this Wednesday on ABC.
Source: TV Line
