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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Elizabeth Henstridge looks back on 'beautiful' series finale, hopes for MCU return
Both of these series finales were awesome.
It’s easy to get distracted by the new era of Marvel TV, with A-list shows rolling out every few months on Disney+, but for the better part of a decade there was one flagship bringing us our weekly dose of the MCU on the small screen: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
In a recent interview promoting her new Apple TV+ project Suspicion, Elizabeth Henstridge (who played Jemma Simmons on S.H.I.E.L.D.), took some time to reflect on the series finale and the long road to bring the show to an end. The writers famously wrapped the story with what would’ve been a series finale at the end of Season 5, only to learn the show would actually be coming back for two more seasons — so fans basically got an ending, more adventures, then one more ending.
Henstridge said she was pleased with how the story eventually came to an end, with the heart of the show’s final arc framed around the love story of Henstridge’s Simmons and Iain De Caestecher’s Fitz, stretching literally across time and space (and the multiverse). The story wrapped with the two walking off into the sunset together to raise their young daughter and be a family.
"I'm satisfied with how it ended I think at the end of Season 5 we thought that that was it and then to get two more seasons was just such a joy and I feel like we so much. I loved how it ended,” Henstridge told ComicBook. "I didn't think that I would ever feel ready to walk away from that show, and I think the writers did a really great job. I’m so proud of that final episode and I think, yeah, we left it in a beautiful spot.”
With Marvel now tapping into characters from the Netflix corner of the MCU with the return of Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Hawkeye, respectively, Henstridge made it clear she’d absolutely be game to bring Simmons back for more if Marvel ever comes calling.
“I loved being on that show, I loved the family, I loved playing Simmons, so yeah, I'd always be open to reprising the role, definitely,” she said.
Henstridge’s comments echoes what many of the core cast has said since the long-running series came to an end, though at this point there’s been little indication that Marvel is keen to tap those characters for more. The MCU films never really acknowledged the characters or events of the series (though the show did pivot and tell stories that fed off the movie storylines), and the show’s extensive mythology could make things even messier and more complicated if the MCU tried to acknowledge all of it.
That said, the latter half of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s seven season run made for some amazing comic book stories, digging deep into the Marvel canon and crafting some ambitious, twisty and touching tales along the way — regardless of it ever returns to the MCU in any meaningful way or not.
