Agents Of SHIELD Season 4 To Be Edgier Says Marvel TV Head

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is making the move from its former 9 p.m. time slot into the 10 p.m. time slot on ABC's Tuesday schedule. This will be the second time that ABC's only remaining entry into the Marvel cinematic universe has been pushed back later into the evening (the show's first season aired at 8 p.m., before getting pushed to 9 p.m. for Seasons 2 and 3), and the given reason for the move is similarly to what it was the first time around, a desire to tell more mature stories.

"By going to 10 o'clock, we're going to be taking on just a little bit more edge, a little bit more grit," Head of Marvel Television Jeph Loeb told CBR at Comic-Con International: San Diego 2016. "The show is pretty violent for something at 9 o'clock, but when we get to 10 o'clock, we're going to be just a little hair of something that I think people are going to really enjoy."

But a little bit more grit in the narrative isn't the only change coming to Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for Season 4. As teased in the epilogue to the Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 3 finale, which jumped six months forward in the timeline, Daisy Johnson (Chloe Bennet) has defected from S.H.I.E.L.D. and is on the run. Daisy also committed a still unknown act that brought her to the attention of the media and earned her the headline-grabbing monicker "Quake" (Daisy's codename in the Marvel Comics universe).

Now she's being pursued by Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), who is no longer the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Mack (Henry Simmons), Daisy's former partner and a former Director himself. Instead of either Coulson or Mack, there is a new Director, played by Jason O'Mara, calling the shots for the newly public S.H.I.E.L.D.

"You got a little tease at the end of last season that clearly something's happened to Daisy," Loeb said. "She seems to be on her own. That dang media has decided to name her Quake, so we have to find out if that's a good thing or a bad thing -- and clearly, S.H.I.E.L.D. is now hunting her. We're seeing that Coulson and Mack are now partners for some reason; they refer to each other as though they are equals. They refer to Phil Coulson as 'Agent Coulson.' They refer to 'the new director.' There are obviously going to be a lot more changes."

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4 premieres Sept. 20 at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.