Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will officially end after Season 7

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., currently approaching the end of its sixth season, will officially be ending after Season 7. Per a statement from ABC Entertainment released today, the longest-running Marvel TV show will debut its final 13 episodes next summer.

“When you know that’s what you’re doing, you can take greater risks, of life and death. 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,” said Marvel's Executive VP of Television, Jeph Loeb, while speaking to Deadline at SDCC.

After worries about being cancelled after Season 5, many were surprised to see that the show got renewed for not one, but two more seasons. Now we see why: so S.H.I.E.L.D. can come to a close on its own terms.

Granted, star (and frequent director) Clark Gregg foretold as much earlier this year, when he said that the series would likely come to an end after Season 7.

Fans of the show know that the storyline has gone through many really wild turns, and while it was initially designed to closely match the events of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, recent seasons have departed significantly, including a lot of time travel that might be hard to square with the science Tony Stark concocted in Avengers: Endgame. Although, one supposes "mysterious magic monoliths" might be explanation enough.

The team of S.H.I.E.L.D. commandos led at times by Daisy Johnson, aka Quake, are currently fighting off their own Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with creepy alien monsters called The Shrike. To make things weirder, Gregg's Agent Phil Coulson has been replaced by a mysterious, hard-bitten doppelganger named Sarge. So there's plenty left in the tank.

"Well, the bitter side is nobody ever wants anything to end, but it’s going to be amazing, and here’s the best news: Season 6 isn’t over, and you’ve seen none of Season 7," said Loeb. "That’s the celebration, there’s still more. It’s not as though we’re going to walk off the stage and say goodbye, you’re never going to see another one of these new stories again. You have to see how this ends, you have to."

More to come on this news as Loeb, Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Elizabeth Henstridge, Iain De Caestecker, Henry Simmons, Natalia Cordova-Buckley, and Jeff Ward will be appearing at Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con later this afternoon.