Spoilers for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season three follow!
We've known for a while now that Bobbi Morse and Lance Hunter would be leaving Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., since they're starring in their own spin-off, Marvel's Most Wanted, on ABC next year. But the backdoor pilot might have come a little bit earlier than expected, as last night's episode saw Mockingbird and Hunter disavowed by S.H.I.E.L.D. and leaving the team for good.
"They had to go off and shoot a pilot," Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. EP told EW of the early exit. "That takes a long period of time. We wanted to manufacture a meaningful exit. They had to leave physically to go do a pilot - for them to be on the show, then be absent for a few episodes and then come back to leave felt disingenuous. It just happened naturally based on the schedule for shooting the pilot. We shot it earlier this year, and that really forced us to get them in and get them out at a certain time so they could turn around and do it."
"That just goes to the larger issue: As there are more powered people, it really is a thing to come to terms with. It's something that S.H.I.E.L.D. has to come to terms with. It's a great generator of story moving forward, but I don't want to say that there's a movie called Captain America: Civil War or anything, but there's a movie called Captain America: Civil War, and part of it is there are people with powers and not everybody is happy about that."
He also spoke a little bit about Marvel's Most Wanted, and specified that it would be a very different show than Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. It's technically a spin-off, since the characters started on the other Marvel show, but in terms of tone and content, it is "not a S.H.I.E.L.D. spin-off."
"Part of what we're hoping to do with Bobbi and Hunter in the new show is to stake out some new territory and not make it a S.H.I.E.L.D. show. It is not a S.H.I.E.L.D. show. It is not a S.H.I.E.L.D. spin-off. It's a show about these two characters living their life and the adventures that they have together."
On S.H.I.E.L.D., there's a militaristic, governmental, global scale, and the Netflix shows are very much stories set in a neighborhood, and then Carter's first season took place in New York, then the second season in L.A. What we're trying to do is Bobbi and Hunter, because they are ex-spies, globe-trot. We'll go around the world and we'll go to cool places, but not so much on a giant militaristic scale. They're going into different worlds."
Let's get the pilot picked up. I would be really happy if we can do that. Whether characters can crossover, fans always love it when you can do that kind of thing. Flash and Supergirl are doing it not only across shows, but across networks. That's fun when that can happen, but let's get the show picked up first.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. airs on Tuesdays at 9pm ET on ABC. Marvel's Most Wanted is set to premiere on ABC this fall.