Agents Of SHIELD Will End After Season 7, Announced At Comic-Con

The second day of San Diego Comic-Con is primed to give us plenty of big new announcements for the most exciting upcoming movies, TV shows, comics, and games. However, a noteworthy story from yesterday's news is that Marvel's long-running TV series Agents of SHIELD is ending after Season 7, which is airing sometime in 2020, reports Deadline. This news came just ahead of an Agents of SHIELD panel at SDCC that took place on Thursday, July 18, at 3:30 PM PT.

The small-screen spin-off from the Marvel Cinematic Universe is currently in its sixth season, airing over the summer. It follows the SHIELD team under the direction of their new leader Mack (Henry Simmons) as they fend off alien threats, after the death of former leader Phil Coulson.

"When you know that's what you're doing, you can take greater risks, of life and death," Marvel TV exec Jeph Loeb told Deadline about the end of the show. "Those kinds of decisions suddenly now are real on the table because you're not playing how do we undo this when we get to the next season. You're playing that this is going to be the end of the story."

Coulson has died before in the MCU, and a large plot element of the first season was explaining his mysterious return. Since then the series has sometimes riffed on the big plot moves of the MCU, while other times forging its own path. The big twist in Captain America: Winter Soldier revealing that SHIELD had been infiltrated by the evil HYDRA organization had a large impact on the show, but it's been just as keen to set its own stakes with cameos from characters like Ghost Rider.

This is the latest in a series of Marvel spin-offs that have come to a close recently. Netflix had five shows--Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, and The Punisher--which all interconnected and briefly joined up for a single-season Defenders series. Those cancellations were announced one-by-one, seemingly as Disney prepared to launch new Marvel shows on its own streaming service, Disney+.

We know some of those shows will feature Falcon and Winter Soldier and Loki, along with shows based around its Star Wars properties as well. That service is set to launch on November 12 for $7 per month, but many of its Marvel offerings will come post-launch.

Check out more Marvel panels at Comic-Con to keep up with all the latest.