Agents Of SHIELD Bosses Discuss That Shocking Season 5 Premiere Reveal

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the season five premiere of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.

Surprisingly, the whole "the heroes are in space" thing wasn't the most startling part of the two-hour premiere of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD season five. 

Agents of SHIELD executive producers Jed Whedon and Jeff Bell sat down with Entertainment Weekly to discuss the shocking reveal seen in the season opener and shed more light onto what exactly is going on with the agents.

During the premiere, viewers watched as Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) and the rest of the team landed in space, where they rifled through options to communicate with Earth. They desperately tried to send a message back to Agent Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker), an effort that proved nearly impossible given that the monolith they were sucked into actually sent them into the future–"between 70 and 100 years from now," according to Bell.

It turns out that somewhere along the future timeline, an event brought about by Daisy Johnson/Quake (Chloe Bennett) cause the complete destruction of Earth–which, in turn, encouraged the Kree to "restore" balance and order on their terms by vanquishing the rest of mankind to a space station. There, the alien race perform experiments on humans and enslave them for their own personal gain. This means that the Agents actually weren't taken by S.W.O.R.D., but rather their arrival in space was an inevitability, a foreseen part of the prophecy. 

When asked if the "driving force" of season five would be the agents' desire to stop the destruction of Earth, Whedon said, "That would be interesting. What we're seeing is a horrible future that no one wants to have exist, so the first problem is trying to repair it, but maybe there's a bigger question of, 'Does it ever need to happen?'"

As for Daisy and how she'll cope with knowing that she was the one who caused the cataclysmic event in the first place, Whedon and Bell agreed that she would likely argue she didn't do it and say that she would remember if she had. "She's going to push back, but at the same time, she has to start paying attention to what's happening around her," said Bell. Whedon added that Daisy is "someone who blames herself already for every death that occurs around her, so that's a natural inclination for her, just magnified at a grand scale."

Now that the team is being held captive on the space station, their "first order of business is survival," Whedon said. "It was made very clear in the two-hour premiere that this isn't an easy place to navigate or even survive, so they have to make sure that they can keep their heads above water before they start swimming in any direction," he explained. "They don't know why they were brought here. They've got a lot of questions. Truthfully, they have the same questions you have."

The uncertainty of it all is part of the fun, however, at least to Bell. "Our characters and the audience have to piece it together going forward. What are the rules here? Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? Who's in charge? What happened to Simmons [Elizabeth Henstridge]? What happens when you do this? Those are all things for us to explore in this new world," he said. 

Though the two couldn't dish up if, when, or how Earth will combust in the fifth season of Agents of SHIELD, they did note that the overall theme is the nature of humanity amongst the Agents and their dwindling resiliency. "Every time they've run up against something, something else arises, so it's that question of, 'Will the fight ever be won, or is our legacy to just keep fighting?'" Whedon remarked.

We'll learn more on the next episode of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, which airs on Fridays at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.