Thanks to the fourth episode of WandaVision, Agents of SHIELD has been a hot topic on Twitter today. Since the latest WandaVision episode showed things from SWORD’s perspective, many people were drawing comparisons to the original MCU series. Being the Agents of SHIELD fan that I am, I chimed in to the conversation and tweeted, “If you, like me, can’t stop watching ep 4 of WandaVision BOY OH BOY DO I HAVE A SHOW FOR YOU. It’s called Agents of SHIELD and it’s on Netflix.” The tweet caught the attention of VFX Supervisor Mark Kolpack, who chimed in and confirmed what we’ve long suspected: Agents of SHIELD was not allowed to use “SWORD.”
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“Agree with that. Just one tidbit. Ep 713 @AgentsofSHIELD toward the end Sousa is reading a book on Z-3- cool but no biggy. He had a line that was dropped. Now I can’t remember if it was in the script or shot. I think script — He actually said — SWORD! Loved it. Oh Well,” Kolpack replied to the tweet with a weary face emoji. “I always assumed the Astro Ambassadors line was a joke about the fact that they were not allowed to say SWORD,” I replied. “Marvel,” Kolpack added.
“Man, this combined with Fitz’s cut line about the Snap and the quantum realm, this would have readjusted the show to definitely be MCU proper. This would have fit perfectly with future plans. I can only hope for more references and some crossovers in the future,” @Thanos57612799 chimed in. “To be fair, we became SWORD long before S7 but could never say that acronym. I was excited to see it in the script but not surprised when it got nixed. Clearly, Marvel features had plans for it and here we are,” Kolpack wrote. You can read the tweets below:
Agree with that. Just one tidbit
Ep 713 @AgentsofSHIELD toward the end Sousa is reading a book on Z-3- cool but no biggy. He had a line that was dropped. Now I can’t remember if it was in the script or shot. I think script — He actually said — SWORD! Loved it. Oh Well. 😩 https://t.co/nIovYilUSf
— Mark Kolpack (@MarkKolpack) January 31, 2021
To be fair, we became SWORD long before S7 but could never say that acronym. I was excited to see it in the script but not surprised when it got nixed. Clearly Marvel features had plans for it and here we are. https://t.co/DyHjEHaEss
— Mark Kolpack (@MarkKolpack) January 31, 2021
There you have it! We are not exactly surprised considering Marvel prevented Agents of SHIELD from using other properties in the past. In fact, the Executive Producers shared last year that they almost used MODOK before Marvel changed their minds.
“We had a lot of ideas where we were—and I’ll say this, I don’t care—we were given the green light originally to use certain characters from Marvel, and started to break story based on those characters—[Coughs.] MODOK—and then they retracted it,” Jeffrey Bell explained. “So there were a bunch of things that were going to get a little batsh*t crazy that were above our pay grade, in terms of the toys we were allowed to play with.”
All seven seasons of Agents of SHIELD are now streaming on Netflix.
