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All 7 Agents of SHIELD seasons ranked from worst to best

By Josh Baggins

MARVEL'S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. - "The End is at Hand/What We're Fighting For" - With their backs against the wall and Nathaniel and Sibyl edging ever closer to eliminating S.H.I.E.L.D. from the history books, the agents must rely on their strengths to outsmart and outlast the Chronicoms. This is their most important fight, and it will take the help of friends and teammates, past and present, to survive. Watch the special two-hour series finale of "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," WEDNESDAY, AUG. 12 (9:00 - 11:00 p.m. EDT), on ABC. (ABC)CLARK GREGG
MARVEL'S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. - "The End is at Hand/What We're Fighting For" - With their backs against the wall and Nathaniel and Sibyl edging ever closer to eliminating S.H.I.E.L.D. from the history books, the agents must rely on their strengths to outsmart and outlast the Chronicoms. This is their most important fight, and it will take the help of friends and teammates, past and present, to survive. Watch the special two-hour series finale of "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," WEDNESDAY, AUG. 12 (9:00 - 11:00 p.m. EDT), on ABC. (ABC)CLARK GREGG /
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MARVEL’S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. – ABC’s “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” stars Brett Dalton as Grant Ward. (ABC/Kurt Iswarienkio )
MARVEL’S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. – ABC’s “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” stars Brett Dalton as Grant Ward. (ABC/Kurt Iswarienkio ) /

2. Agents of SHIELD Season 1

The arrival of Agents of SHIELD marked the first Marvel Cinematic Universe venture into television. The series is not created by the same studio that develops the movies, although, at the time, showrunners Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen kept fans on the edge of their seat with fun connections and cool cameos, such as Maria Hill, Lady Sif, and, most importantly, Nick Fury (ten years before Samuel L. Jackson would headline his own MCU series, Secret Invasion).

If the entire Agents of SHIELD’s rookie year was as good as its latter third section, it would likely be on top of the list. But the catch-22 is that the end of the season would not have been as effective without the earlier portion playing its part.

Agents of SHIELD began as an episodic, mission-of-the-week program, that vaguely connected with the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. Then Captain America: The Winter Soldier flipped the entire series on its head with perhaps the most amazing parallel narrative link between a movie and a show ever concocted.

In the movie, Hydra is shown to have been covertly working its way up the SHIELD ranks for decades. This directly impacts the agents in the series that now have to scramble out of this situation, while looking over their shoulders in case a supposed partner is actually an enemy.

Fans nervously witness their suspicions about certain characters get confirmed or contradicted. Having Ward as a Hydra spy all along was hard to see coming and he even kills Eric Koenig, ensuring there is no turning back for the daring agent who once jumped out of a plane to save Simmons. Ward was working with a “clairvoyant” overlord, who is really just another Hydra spy that uses clever methods to gather information – the smug John Garrett is sharply conveyed by Bill Paxton.

Even if the showrunners knew that Agents of SHIELD would need to distance itself from the film productions and take more of its own shape, the first season was a great experience for Marvel enthusiasts. This was the beginning of MCU-adjacent TV content and was an early taste of the high-quality series that Marvel Studios would eventually excavate on the Disney Plus platform.

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