Clark Gregg Gives Blunt Response About Agents Of SHIELD MCU Canon Status

It has been half a decade since Agents of SHIELD season 7 came to an end, marking itself as the longest-running Marvel Cinematic Universe TV show. Despite beginning as a spinoff from 2012’s The Avengers, Marvel Studios has yet to formally acknowledge the series’ place in the overall canon.

up during Agents of SHIELD‘s recent reunion at New York Comic Con, the canon debate was brought up, with Phil Coulson actor Clark Gregg having a very powerful response to it. The MCU veteran, plain and simple, stated: “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 out with us.“

Gregg was a recurring player throughout the MCU timeline in Phase 1, while also fleshing out SHIELD’s existence in the franchise, leading up to The Avengers movie. While he was killed by Loki (Tom Hiddleston) in the 2012 entry, the ABC drama brought him back to life and gave him a leading role, as Marvel Television was beginning its division.

throughou Agents of SHIELDthere are numerous tie-ins to several movies, including a setup for Avengers: Age of Ultron. Gregg also came back to the big screen as Coulson through 2019’s Captain Marvel, showing him as a younger agent in 1995.

While the Marvel-Netflix shows have become formally canonized to the rest of the MCU, the Agents of SHIELD show is a bigger mystery, given how Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige spoke about it as being connected to the timeline when the spy-drama was airing on ABC. Other series, such as Cloak & Dagger and Runaways, have yet to be acknowledged.

During an interview with ScreenRant on December 18, 2024, Brad Winderbaum from Marvel Television stressed that they were trying to get the ABC shows more properly into the canon. The Head of TV, Streaming, and Animation stated: “I’ll tell you this, and put it to you like this. It’s exciting for me to think about how to square those ABC shows with the canon. That, to me, if you know me and the way my brain works, that is fun territory to imagine.”

At DragonCon 2025 on August 31, Agents of SHIELD actress Chloe Bennet, who plays Daisy Johnson, aka Quake, expressed how she thinks the ensemble series will make a comeback down the line. The star also took a jab at one of the worst-received MCU Disney+ shows, following rumblings that she would be in it:

Chloe Bennet: I’m not playing a bit. This is not a joke. I don’t know anything; they haven’t asked me. If they would, you know me, I can’t keep a secret, I would tell you guys. We are not really considered canon. I think the show will make some weird, random comeback. Like if it gets put on another streamer or something. But as of now, no, and I agree that I could have been in Secret Invasion, but I wasn’t. Probably would have been better.

Depending on how things play out, the Agents of SHIELD characters may pop up before or after Avengers: Secret Warsespecially as the MCU is eyeing a reset after the Phase 6 finale ahead of Phase 7.