In the big screen territory staked out by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thanos’ fateful snap changed everything, literally. But over on the small screen, particularly on ABC's Agents of SHIELD , not so much.

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After closing Season 5 with an expectation that they had likely delivered a series finale as well, the creative team was pleasantly surprised that Agents of SHIELD received shortened orders for both a sixth and seventh season, prompting them to start planning for an unexpected future when they’d found an otherwise satisfying conclusion (including the definitive death of MCU stalwart Phil Coulson , played by Clark Gregg).Further complicating matters was the potential fallout from both Avengers: Infinity War, and the resolution presented in Avengers: Endgame – both films hit theaters before SHIELD’s sixth season debut – which resulted in a complicated scenario involving a five-year-forward time jump and lots of potential chronology challenges after the World’s Mightiest Heroes used time travel to defeat their foe and set things (mostly) right again.SHEILD executive producer Jed Whedon succinctly summed up the course of action the show’s creators chose to take: “We had to dodge it completely.”That is to say, the Agents of SHIELD Season 6 is being referred to as “pre-Snap,” despite seeming references to Thanos’ assault on New York and Wakanda in Season 5. Don’t worry about puzzling out the physics of time travel, alternate timelines, or the Eye of Agamotto: according to the producers, none of the Avengers/Thanos face-off has happened just yet in the SHIELD mini-verse.As Whedon reveals, it was the only course the show could take, once Infinity War and Endgame’s release schedules became fixed, while the show’s return date was still undetermined, making any attempt to directly tie into the intensely secretive Endgame events a dicey proposition at best.“We were told we were going to be on in May, but we planned a path and ABC said, ‘All right, we [might] need you in January,’” said executive producer Jeffrey Bell. “And so because our start date was in flux, we couldn't come in and do something before Endgame happened and then have Endgame happen in the middle of what we were doing.“Imagine if we had incorporated it and then at the last minute the network was like, 'We'd love to have this on in January!'" Whedon said. “Then all of a sudden we've spoiled something horribly. So we made the decision to just be pre-Snap, and tell our story and just carry it forward. And hopefully by the end of these next two [seasons] it'll be satisfying and in no way a thing that bothers you about the show… We have our logic and we don't spend any time saying, ‘So…’ because we just want people to enjoy our story. ”“And I live in a world where there's enough Time Lords and Chronicoms that live in the internet that they'll figure it out and explain it back to us,” added Marvel TV boss Jeph Loeb. “It does work – you just have to figure it out.” That statement suggests a scenario reminiscent of the No-Prize tradition established by Stan Lee back in Marvel's comic book letter columns, where readers vied for bragging rights by writing in with their own logical solutions to continuity gaffes that were missed by the editorial team.“There were just too many questions, too many threads, too many words we were not allowed to say, if that makes sense,” said Bell. “So the easiest way to not have to incorporate or dodge questions about that was for us to just make the decision this season happens pre-Snap.”Bell recalled a period in the first season when the SHIELD team leaned directly into the big surprise reveal of Captain America: The Winter Soldier – that infiltration by Hydra would take the entire organization down – and made it part of their own big surprise moment, when regular team member Grant Ward was exposed as a Hydra agent.“When we first started, we could not say the word ‘Hydra,’” recalled Bell, “because Hydra was hiding in SHIELD, so we had bad guys happening, and we had what looked like a bunch of different things, but what we were not allowed to say was the word, ‘Hydra,’ until after Captain America came out. And then after that, we could go, 'Oh, and Grant Ward is evil – he's part of Hydra,' but we could not do any of that until after the movie. And so there are times when we have this added challenge of, ‘Okay, this is happening, we know this is happening, we can't say anything that this is happening,' and so sometimes we can find a way to [incorporate it] afterwards.”Whedon says he appreciates the freedom and flexibility the studio and network brass afforded his team in making the creative decision to sidestep the Snap.“I have to say that both ABC Studios and Marvel Studios have let us kind of go where we want, “ he said, noting that has been true since the outset of the series. “As long as we're not stepping on some crazy toe that they have coming down the pipeline, they let us build our story, build our characters and take them where we want. So we've felt that liberated feeling for a while now, because they trust us which we're fortunate enough to have that trust.”“But with every season,” he added, “when you get to the end, especially in Season 5 when we really felt like we were gonna wrap it up then we were awarded another season, there's always a sense with the writers and with the actors' characters that there's new ground and it feels refreshing and fresh and fun and so we've felt that same feeling this year. Maybe a little more so, considering that we have a new version of Clark Gregg coming to the picture.”For more on that, check out our Agents of SHIELD Season 6 premiere review