It was produced by ABC Studios, Marvel Television, and Mutant Enemy Productions, with Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jeffrey Bell serving as showrunners.

Nick Blood, Adrianne Palicki, Henry Simmons, Luke Mitchell, John Hannah, Natalia Cordova-Buckley, and Jeff Ward joined in later seasons.

agents deal with various unusual cases and enemies, including Hydra, Inhumans, Life Model Decoys, alien species such as the Kree and Chronicoms, and time travel.

Composer Bear McCreary recorded each episode's score with a full orchestra, and the visual effects for the series were created by several different vendors and have been nominated for multiple awards.

agents are divided into two groups: one heads to space to find Fitz, who is lost following the last season's time-traveling,[11][12] while the other remains on Earth to face a team of mercenaries led by Sarge, a man that looks just like Coulson.

[11][12][13] The seventh and final season finds the team, including a Life Model Decoy of Coulson,[14] jumping throughout time to prevent the Chronicoms from establishing Earth as their new home, Chronyca-3, and eradicating S.H.I.E.L.D.

[99] The idea of [Coulson] as the long-suffering bureaucrat who deals with Tony Stark's insufferability is delightful and hits the core of something I'm also writing about all the time—the little guy versus the big faceless organization....and that's what Clark Gregg embodies: the Everyman.

[112]: 21  In October 2012, a casting sheet for five lead roles was sent out,[26] with Finn establishing offices in London, Australia, New York, Vancouver, Toronto, and Los Angeles to audition actors.

[68][71] Blood and Palicki left the main cast following the season-three episode "Parting Shot", to star in the then-planned spin-off show Marvel's Most Wanted.

Assistant costume designer Ann Foley took over for subsequent episodes, and worked closely with Tancharoen to create "very strong, different characters" whose "looks evolve along with the show.

[171] Some assets, such as a Quinjet and Helicarrier, are shared from Industrial Light & Magic, though "those models are generally super heavy and dense with data" and need to be made "HD friendly or simply manageable to work in [a] TV schedule.

[175] Unlike on some of his previous scores, ABC and Marvel allowed McCreary to work with a full symphonic orchestra,[176] typically featuring 50 or 70 players,[177] with over 90 for "important" episodes.

[176] By the third and fourth seasons, McCreary noted "the score became a little more intense and more electronically driven... [E]lectronics really moved to the forefront as we got into more stories about Inhumans and the digital world our characters inhabit.

"[188] He explained that each Marvel project is intended to stand alone first before there is any interweaving, and noted that the series has to work with the film division and be aware of their plans so as not to interfere when introducing someone or something to the universe.

[191] The series mimics the films' post credits scenes with "end tags", starting with the episode "0-8-4" which features a Samuel L. Jackson cameo as Nick Fury.

[197][198] The events of "The Frenemy of My Enemy" and "The Dirty Half Dozen" led up to the opening sequence of Avengers: Age of Ultron, while "Scars" deals with the aftermath of that film.

"[207] When the film was removed from Marvel Studios' release schedule, Whedon noted that the series had "a little more freedom" and were "able to do a little bit more" with the species going into the fourth season, including the potential of introducing some of the "classic" Inhumans.

[215] On introducing Ghost Rider, Whedon said that "with Doctor Strange (2016) coming out this year, the Marvel [Cinematic] Universe is moving into new waters," referring to the exploration of magic.

"the black sheep of the Marvel Universe" since "everyone was aware of the fact that we were supposed to be one thing when we started" and ultimately, the writers "had to side-step" many potential opportunities in order to not conflict with the plans for the films.

;[229] co-executive producer Mary Livanos pitched the idea to use the Darkhold in WandaVision to increase the level of danger Agatha Harkness posed to Scarlet Witch.

Verizon Wireless served as Declassified's sponsor and created a hub featuring the aftershow alongside "live social feeds, Twitter polling, and sharable clips and graphics".

"[320][321] In November 2018, Parrot Analytics, which measures "how viewers interact with a TV show's brand online, assessing everything from global file-sharing and peer-to-peer traffic to social media activity", ranked Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

[332] The way that the series is affected by the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier has been called "miraculous",[334][335] with Terri Schwartz at Zap2it writing "the fact that the movie so influenced the show is game-changing in terms of how the mediums of film and television can be interwoven",[334] while Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times stated that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

McCown compared the series' approach to setting up "a world distrustful of superpowers" to the real life events surrounding Cliven Bundy and Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and said that "S.H.I.E.L.D.

already served that purpose well, highlighting the similarities between the X-Men and the Inhumans, both creations of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby during the 1960s consisting of a large group of super-powered people who "are our neighbors and our friends ... both heroes and villains", and face "the same fears and prejudices" from the wider community.

Other similarities Burt discussed were the series' diverse and ensemble cast, its take on the mutant cure storyline, the parallels between Daisy Johnson's second season arc and the introduction of Rogue in the first X-Men film, and its social and political commentary.

"[341] Additionally, Marc N. Kleinhenz at Screen Rant discussed how the series "continues to resist a status quo", from the destruction and rebuilding of S.H.I.E.L.D., to the fallout from the Sokovia Accords.

However, Kleinheinz felt that this mindset also came from within the series crew rather than just from Marvel, saying, "there's also the storytelling modus operandi that showrunners Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen have very obviously demonstrated during their four-year tenure.

[396] In September 2015, Phil Coulson, Daisy Johnson / Quake, Deathlok, Melinda May, Bobbi Morse, Lincoln Campbell, Sif, Raina and Gordon were announced to appear in the Marvel: Future Fight mobile role-playing video game.

[399] The content consisted of a mission based "on the events leading up to the season two finale", which involved facing Jiaying and Daisy in Afterlife while rescuing agents,[400] as well as going up against Gordon and Cal Johnson who have occupied the S.H.I.E.L.D.