Johnson to the ground and kills Jiaying before escaping. Garrett kidnaps Jemma Simmons and takes her and Malick onto S.H.I.E.L.D.'s mobile headquarters, Zephyr One, and Malick and Garrett hijack it, with Deke Shaw unknowingly trapped inside the engineering bay. After heading into space and out of range of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s satellites, Malick notes to a captured Simmons that every version of events where he does not win the battle with S.H.I.E.L.D. occurs because of her husband Leo Fitz, and demands she reveal his location. Production Development After the sixth season finale of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. aired in August 2019, showrunners Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jeffrey Bell revealed that the seventh season would feature the team trying to save the world from invasion by the Chronicoms. They use time travel to do this, allowing the season to explore the history of S.H.I.E.L.D. Later that month, one of the season's episodes was revealed to be titled "Stolen" and written by George Kitson and Mark Leitner from a story by Mark Linehan Bruner. It was confirmed to be the tenth episode of the season in July 2020, when Garry A. Brown was revealed to have directed it. Bruner was Bell's assistant at the start of the season, and was scheduled to be the writer of the episode as a freelancer. However, after starting the outline of the script, he was hired as a staff writer on Legends of Tomorrow, resulting in Kitson and Leitner taking over writing duties. After completing the script before production began, Leitner also left as he was hired on another series as well. Casting With the season renewal, main cast members Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Elizabeth Henstridge, Henry Simmons, Natalia Cordova-Buckley, and Jeff Ward were confirmed to be returning from previous seasons as Melinda May, Daisy Johnson / Quake, Jemma Simmons, Alphonso "Mack" MacKenzie, Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez, and Deke Shaw, respectively. Series star Clark Gregg also returns as his character Phil Coulson, portraying a Life Model Decoy version of the character. In July 2020, Gregg discussed actors that he wished could return for the seventh season, including Bill Paxton who portrayed John Garrett in the series' first season before his death in February 2017. Gregg said it would be "really amazing if there was some way to feel like we had the spirit of Bill Paxton with us" and teased that could happen in the season. Later that month,