Wronged Marvel Star Reveals Disney Doesn’t View Its Best Superhero Series As Canon

Recently, I made my annual trip to Dragon Con, the 24/7 “Nerdis Gras” event in Atlanta, Georgia. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. star Chloe Bennett attended, and during a panel, she confirmed that the Marvel powers that be don’t really consider her plucky ABC show canon. She also agreed with fans that she should have been in Secret Invasion and said something I am in complete agreement with: the disappointing Disney+ series would have been better if she had been part of it.

When Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. premiered in 2013, it was fully riding on the success of the 2012 hit film Avengers. At the time, there was no question that the show was meant to be part of the MCU canon thanks to high-profile cameos from stars like Samuel L. Jackson and Cobie Smulders. But after the show seemingly ignored the Blip (the name for the event where half of the planet’s population snapped away by Thanos suddenly blinked back into existence), it seemed like this successful show was in its own universe rather than the familiar MCU of the feature films.

At Dragon Con, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. star Chloe Bennett was quite blunt when she was asked whether she might return to the MCU in a future film such as Avengers: Doomsday. “We are not really considered canon,” she said, “Even though we are.” Here, she seems to be referring to the paradoxical fact that the show always tried to link up to the movies (including, quite memorably, Captain America: The Winter Soldier), but the movies never made any effort to link back to the show. This began speculation that the show wasn’t really canon, and the series’s ignoring the Blip sent that speculation into overdrive.

Chloe Bennett’s words seemed like the final nail in the coffin for fans hoping Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was still somehow part of official canon. However, I found myself more captivated by what she said regarding the Disney+ series Secret Invasion. Specifically, Bennett agreed with the fans who said she should have been part of the series and went on to say that Secret Invasion “probably would have been better” if she were part of it.

That may sound like sour grapes at first, but keep in mind that much of Secret Invasion’s drama came from the characters frantically worrying who might have been quietly replaced by Skrulls when nobody was looking. The titular agents from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. would have made crowd-pleasing cameos in Secret Invasion, and fans would have naturally been interested to learn which of their old favorite characters could have secretly been replaced by an alien. Bennett’s comic counterpart played a major role in the Secret Invasion comic, so it would only have been fitting for the actor to pop up in this show.

Hindsight is obviously 20/20, and the Secret Invasion show on Disney+ had problems that went far beyond its casting decisions. But putting Chloe Bennett in the series would have made it a more faithful comic adaptation while also conferring canon status to her and, by extension, the rest of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. characters. Until Marvel is willing to embrace these beloved old characters and shows rather than trying to shove new IPs in our face, though, Secret Invasion may remain a nasty omen of even more disappointments from a studio in the midst of a creative crisis.