ABC orders pilot for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. spinoff, which isn’t a spinoff now

By William Hughes | August 21, 2015 | 12:50am

Aux Features TV

After months of heming-and-hawing about whether it was or wasn’t launching a spinoff of superhero spy series Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., ABC has finally announced that it’s giving a pilot order to a new show based around Adrianne Palicki’s character Bobbi “Mockingbird” Morse. But because nothing can apparently be easy with this story, the network also announced that the new program, Marvel’s Most Wanted, is no longer being considered a spinoff from S.H.I.E.L.D., even though it stars two characters—Mockingbird, and her ex-husband, Nick Blood’s Lance Hunter—who regularly appear on the show.

Instead, The Hollywood Reporter says that Marvel and ABC are “changing course” for the new series, with a “new take focusing on the same duo and their continuing adventures,” which sounds pretty much like a spinoff to us. But hey, what do we know; “spinoff” might be some super-specific piece of spy TV lingo that doesn’t mean “a show where a popular character goes off and has her own adventures, separate from her show of origin,” even though that’s exactly what it is.