Thread:CirUmeUela/@comment-27496405-20180307074410/@comment-26838855-20180518010219

The ongoing debate in my head about whether Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. does the snap or not comes down to: •If they did the snap as the finale but then just picked up in Season 6 with it resolved post-Avengers 4, that'd also be a weird resolution to a season-ending cliffhanger. •The ash/fading effect itself is apparently a very hard effect to do, and I doubt Marvel films are allowed to just lend the template to Marvel TV. They'd have to replicate it exactly, and have known exactly how it was going to look ahead of time to prepare the effect.
 * The episode was written to act, if necessary, as the whole show's final episode. It would be a bit weird if what they prepared as the potential final episode of the show ended in half of the characters just spontaneously dying. Not sacrificing themselves or anything, just... dying. And never revisited.
 * Just how divided Marvel films and TV are is unclear, and with Infinity War shrouded in so much secrecy, I always thought there's a good chance the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. showrunners didn't know about the ending.
 * If they did know, that means the cast of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. knew a few months ago, which would be odd, considering the cast of the actual film weren't clear on plot details and the vibe every film cast member kept giving off was so in-the-dark.
 * With Season 6 premiering after Avengers 4, they could, if they wanted to, just end this finale just before the snap, and then pick up in Season 6 after the resolution to the snap. But they more than likely didn't know the Season 6 status when writing this episode.
 * With so much set to go on in this episode, it feels like a bit much to go through at the end.
 * If they didn't know Season 6 was going to be late, then if they chose to do the snap in this episode, that would mean that they had made the conscious decision to follow that storyline through into a potential full Season 6. This would have meant (as I was thinking when assuming a Season 6 would have been 22 episodes September-May) that 16-20 episodes with only half the cast, and faffing around dealing with something that cannot be resolved until April/May 2019. And then there'd be the resolution itself. For the show to make the decision that it could advance past the end of Infinity War would have been a very bold move because what if it all gets reversed? They have about 18 episodes' worth of content just meaningless, and then S6E19 picks up as if the previous 18 episodes never happened? What if they don't know what happens in Avengers 4, which is a very strong possibility? Granted, we now know that if they were to do the snap in this episode, they would only be catching up with Infinity War and wouldn't have to get any further until Avengers 4 has already come out, but did they know that?

On the other hand: •They're less than 3 hours out from the snap. Theoretically, assuming there some sort of working together to line up the timelines, they would have to catch up. I can't see the events of this finale taking less than 3 hours. •They went out of their way to set these last 4 episodes concurrently with Infinity War. While, yes, they might have just felt that the fans were expecting a tie-in and they couldn't disappoint, they didn't need to. They had themselves placed in January 2018 and Infinity War seemed more like spring, they could have given it a wide berth, but they chose to reference the events. Surely in referencing the events they had some confidence about how those events were going down and how they'd affect their show? •There's the possibility of reshoots/additional shooting, I guess. I don't know how easy that is. And I don't know when they found out they got a Season 6, but if it was like 2+ weeks ago, they could've had time to go, "Oh we can do a cliffhanger then," and change the ending.