If you have seen Avengers Endgame, and you’re a fan of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., you may wonder how the events of the former affect the latter. I have an idea but for that I will have to address some aspects of Endgame which may spoil the movie if you have not seen it.
One thing Avengers Endgame did was establish the rules by which time travel works in the MCU. The main point to remember is: No events of the past can affect your present, it simply creates a new timeline. This, I think is important to help explain how the show relates to the movie. But first some context, and this is where spoilers come in
You have been warned!
The end of Endgame sees all the dusted heroes come back as they were the moment they were erased from existence by Thanos in 2018, except five years later in 2023. This will make Spider-man Far From Home an interesting setting where conveniently Peter Parker and all of his friends had been erased and can thus all come back as a group for the sequel. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is the reverse situation. Season 6 picks up one year after the events of season 5, some time in May 2019 (real time for us). However in the main MCU timeline in May 2019, half the population is still gone, the world is in chaos and chances of all the agents being still around are fairly slim. And yet there they are. Coulson died not because of Thanos (well not directly) but because of a combination of Loki, Kree Blood and a deadly pact to give the Spirit of Vengeance a ride. Everyone is, including Deke, is back… or still around.
But as you may recall, Avengers Endgame is not the first time Marvel characters travelled through time. In season 5 of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. the gang was sent 92 years in the future to a planet which had been blown apart by Graviton. They travelled to a timeline already separate from the main MCU timeline and when they returned they brought someone with them.
I posit that Deke’s presence in 2018 creates yet another timeline, one not where the earth ends up blown asunder, nor one where Thanos snapped his fingers. Were Deke to return to his timeline, he would have to return to a broken Earth. Also by the same rules, it shouldn’t matter if anything happens to either Fitz or Simmons as this isn’t Back to the Future. Because of Deke, the two now exist separately in their own timelines, and I suspect that is very much intentional so as to give the show more freedom (and not eliminate half the cast).
What’s more is I suspect Deke is also the reason why fake-Coulson and his merry band come to Earth in the first place. Marvel posted the following trailer earlier and it has a few interesting points in it:
There is a scene where Deke appears to be under heavy protection. Now he’s never been much of a fighter, in spite of his Star-Lordesque demeanour at the start of season 5 but in the scene he very much appears to be some kind of target. Might it be that fake-Coulson’s team are some kind of “time mercenaries” hunting the temporal anomaly that is Deke? Doesn’t the phrase “you and your friends are out of time” at 00:30 suggest someone trying to fix a temporal anomaly (as opposed to “ran out of time”)?
You may say that the events of Infinity War have been addressed in season 5 but in truth, all we had was a reference to “some madness in New York”. For all we know, it could have been something else entirely to the Black Order coming for the time stone.
There may even be grounds for the timeline having split much earlier as the show’s last real interaction with the movies was when the team had to adhere to the Sokovia Accords in season 4 but that season had a few references to parallel universes and it’s not inconceivable it split at some point because of the Darkhold or some other non-time travel related reason. The reason is, if their linear future took them to a world when the earth had been destroyed then by the end of season 4 they already were in a separate timeline, one where no Avengers turn up when Chicago is under siege by a Graviton thirsty for power (and gravitonium)
I spent years waiting for the Avengers to find out that Coulson was alive and (mostly) well. Jeph Loeb promised this would happen in a way that would satisfy the fans (there’s an interview somewhere, if I ever find it again I will link it there) but now that he is dead and the Avengers are … in various states, we can assume this will never happen, unless they decide to do a one-shot where they resolve this before the events of Infinity War.
Let me know what you think of this theory and if you have one of your own. I’d love to continue the conversation I started around the show on Google Plus back in April 2014 on this blog.