Agents of SHIELD Final Season Teaser Reveals HYDRA’s Pivotal Role in the MCU

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD will soon be back for its final season, and the teasers for season 7 have been getting more and more interesting, with every new release. The latest teaser is definitely going to get fans buzzing, as it features a not-so-subtle reminder that HYDRA’s presence has been one of the most pivotal factors of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe saga, so far. That reminder comes in the form of a big HYDRA decoder ring, which looks like it’s going to open some big new doors. Since Coulson’s SHIELD team is hopping through time, it also looks like they’ll have to hard choices to make, where HYDRA is concerned.

In new Agents of SHIELD teaser footage, we see Coulson (Clark Gregg) and Quake (Chloe Bennet) looking all snazzy dressed, as they have to consider the classic time traveler conundrum of how to act on the past, in order to foster a brighter future. Well, as Armin Zola reveals in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, HYDRA managed to burrow itself into the the DNA of SHIELD, right from the organization’s very beginning. So, if the SHIELD team is mucking around with the history of the MCU, then HYDRA’s survival is a key aspect of the timeline to maintain, so that SHIELD can become everything that it does. It’s a classic time-travel conundrum, as stated, but also one of deeper moral questions about the ties between bad and good in the more “real world” experience of superheroes.

Seeing HYDRA back in Agents of SHIELD will give Marvel fans a major thrill, as the big twist in season 1 (in coordination with The Winter Soldier) suddenly turned the tired super-agent show premise into a truly thrilling espionage action series. The other added benefit of this HYDRA storyline is that it could be the big crossover between Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter, which was teased as part of the season 7 arc. That would be especially meaningful for longtime fans of both series, as Coulson and Co. would have to weigh letting HYDRA betray the one-day founders of SHIELD, in order to preserve the timeline.

If nothing else, this is testament to how Agents of SHIELD is pulling out all the big stops, to give Marvel fans a finale they deserve.

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD returns to ABC for its final season on May 27th.