Tradecraft: ABC Officially Orders S.H.I.E.L.D. Spinoff Pilot

The saga of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. spinoff series focusing on romantically entangled secret agents Bobbi "Mockingbird" Morse (Adrianne Palicki) and Lance Hunter (Nick Blood), has been going on for long enough to warrant a Stan Lee level of hyperbole. It was first rumored in April of last year, but by May we'd learned that it wasn't going forward. At that time, anyway. Perhaps ABC was concerned at the time (as I was) that they would neuter the flagship series by removing the two most interesting new characters, who had almost singlehandedly elevated Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in its second year. But the network must have liked the pilot script by Agents executive producers Jeffrey Bell and Paul Zbyszewski, because according to Deadline, ABC President Paul Lee told reporters at the TCA conference yesterday that the network has given a pilot order to the spinoff, now titled (somewhat lamely) Marvel’s Most Wanted, The trade reports the pilot had been quietly greenlit in August, but only officially acknowledged by the network now. As originally conceived, the project was said to be Mr. and Mrs. Smith in the Marvel Universe (which sounds like a great premise to me), but it has since been retooled. Lee told reporters,“We are making [the pilot] in the next few months. It’s a really good script.” Spinning off Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. standouts Palicki and Blood no longer seems like such a bad idea to me. The flagship series has gotten further and further away from spying this season, focusing too much on the sci-fi antics of the deathly dull Skye (sorry, Daisy) and her Inhuman pals. So a more espionage-centric spinoff focusing on Lance and Bobbi would probably appeal to me more than Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in its current incarnation.