Report: ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ Season 5 Eyes January 2018 Debut
We weren’t entirely surprised that ABC would spin Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s creative momentum into a fifth season, though a full 22-episode order raised eyebrows, given its midseason placement. Reports also now suggest that Season 5 may not get going until 2018, following the debut of Marvel’s The Inhumans.
ABC’s fall 2017 schedule excluded Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., confirming only that Season 5 would follow the eight-episode run of Marvel’s The Inhumans, itself airing on Fridays at 9:00 P.M. The latter’s two-week IMAX run will begin on September 1, potentially placing The Inhumans TV premiere on September 22, which could easily accommodate Agents’ return in either November or December.
That said, now-deleted Twitter posts from VFX supervisor Mark Kolpak (h/t MCUExchange) suggested that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5 would premiere in January of 2018. That could certainly make sense, as both Agent Carter premieres took place in January, though the 22-episode order for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5 would mean – as Kolpak also suggested – that new episodes would air every Friday for twenty-two weeks straight.
Kolpak’s tweets aren’t the final authority (and were likely deleted to avoid appearing as such), but it’s also worth wondering how an unbroken 22-episode run affects Season 5’s plotting. As executive producer Jed Whedon told reporters after the finale, Season 4’s three-“pod” structure owed more to the breaks in scheduling than creative choice, which could negate the format’s use in Season 5.
It remains to be seen if Season 5’s midseason bow affects the filming schedule at all, but are Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fans ready for a 22-Friday run?
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