Marvel’s ‘Agents of SHIELD’ gets full-season order at ABC

Who cares about declining ratings? Apparently, ABC does not see the falling numbers for Marvel’s “Agents of SHIELD” as that much of a cause for concern right now; they’ve officially given the freshman drama a full-season order.

This means that in total, the much-hyped series is going to have 22 episodes, which should take it into the May sweeps unless the network does something crazy and decides to air a few of them a little bit early. For fans of the Marvel universe, this is great news; it will allow the Whedon brothers a chance to tell more stories, and also establish some sort of arc that goes straight into the summer movie season. It also should help out the show to continue some creative momentum, given that Tuesday night’s episode was the series’ best so far, and the last thing you want to do is slam on the brakes when you are starting to get a good thing going.

“Agents of SHIELD” did still draw a rating close to 3.0 in the 18-49 demographic on Tuesday night, and its overall average still makes it one of the most impressive series launches in the past decade for ABC. The show itself was promoted perfectly, and the two things that need to be worked on are both its consistency and also its night. The programming block that surrounds the show is beyond awful; “The Goldbergs” is a good new comedy, but it bears no connection to its lead-in. Meanwhile, “Trophy Wife” is mediocre at best, and “Lucky 7” was so terribly unlucky that it was pulled from the schedule after just two airings. ABC needs to scramble to give the show something better in the spring that makes Tuesday nights into more of an event, and not just “we’ll watch this show if we remember, then flip the channel.”

Are you happy for “Agents of SHIELD”? You can read our full review of this past episode here, and stay tuned for some more scoop all about it.

Photo: ABC