Agents of SHIELD: Brett Dalton Says He Wasn’t Asked to Return for Final Season

Agents of SHIELD‘s seventh and final season saw many throwbacks to the show’s run, and featured the return of actors like Patton Oswalt (as a classic Koenig) and Dichen Lachman (as Daisy’s mother). However, not everyone we wanted to see returned. One actor we were especially rooting to see again was Brett Dalton, who played Grant Ward (and later Hive) on the show. The actor was one of the original series regulars but was killed off at the end of season three. He was last seen on the show during the Framework arc in season four. During a recent interview with ComicBookMovie.com, Dalton revealed he wasn’t asked back for the final season.

“You and me both,” he jokingly responded when CBM wondered why his character didn’t show up again. “I was watching too, thinking, ‘I dunno, maybe they filmed something in secret and will pull up some old footage of me from when I was there!’ [Laughs] No, sadly, I was never asked and I’m trying not to be sad about it, though I am a little bit,” Dalton shared.

“I just like to think about how thankful I am for the time that I did have because the journey was incredible and very complex and probably longer than it would have been on another show. However, I think that they liked me so much that they kept me along for the ride, and just after a while they were like, ‘Okay, this is sort of stretching the [Laughs] imagination here and I don’t know what other iterations we could have for your character, and we’ve reached the end of the road,’” he added.

“It’s okay…I still love them,” Dalton assured CBM. “Because of that show, I moved to LA, and they were the first friends and real family here and I’ll forever be grateful for that.”

Now that we’ve seen the final season, we’re not exactly surprised we didn’t catch a glimpse of Dalton. The whole season took place in the past, and the team only made it as far as the 1980s before returning home in the series finale. However, the penultimate episode did mention Ward and gave us hope that he’ll be a good guy in the new timeline like he was in the Framework.

Were you bummed we didn’t get to see Dalton again on Agents of SHIELD? Tell us in the comments!

The first six seasons of Agents of SHIELD are currently streaming on Netflix.