How The ‘Agents Of SHIELD’ Team Changed: Photos From Pilot And Series Finale

It’s the final mission for “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” The ABC drama will bring Coulson’s story to an end with Wednesday’s two-hour season finale, so it’s time to take a look back at where our characters started.

Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) didn’t start out on the ABC show. After appearing in several Marvel movies, he died in 2012’s “The Avengers” only to be brought back to life on TV. That was the first of several deaths for the former S.H.I.E.L.D. director. He’s currently a Life Model Decoy after it was determined that his knowledge was necessary to help save the world.

In Season 1, audiences were introduced to Skye (Chloe Bennet), a hacker who got on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s radar. Coulson quickly recruited her for the team, not realizing that she was much more than a hacker. After learning about her biological parents, she took her intended name, Daisy Johnson. Like her mother, she is an Inhuman. Once she went through terrigenesis, she became Quake, a superhero who could create powerful vibrations. Daisy has become a powerful leader in her own right, but the father-daughter dynamic between her and Coulson remains unchanged.

Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) had been on desk duty when Coulson came calling. He just wanted her to fly the plane, but May is more than a bus driver. It wasn’t long before the Cavalry came out in full force and overcame the trauma that put her behind the desk to begin with. In “Aos” Season 7, the typically stone-faced May has become an empath, feeling the emotions of anyone around her.

Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) joined Coulson’s Season 1 S.H.I.E.L.D. team with Leo Fitz straight out of the academy. The biochemist went undercover as a Hydra scientist and returned only to be swallowed by the monolith, which sent her to the planet Maveth. Though she escaped, she later found herself suddenly in space again when she was sent to the future to figure out how to prevent the Earth’s physical destruction.

In the final season, she has been time traveling all through the 20th century to stop the Chronicoms from destroying S.H.I.E.L.D. and taking over the planet. She’s made huge sacrifices for the mission, including leaving Fitz behind and locking part of her memory.

Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) is one of the brilliant minds in the lab at S.H.I.E.L.D., but he got much more than he bargained for when he went out into the field. After suffering brain damage due to an assassination attempt at the end of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” Season 1, Fitz had to regain his skills while Simmons was undercover at Hydra. He went on to continually find new ways to rescue Jemma and the team, from saving her from the planet Maveth to putting himself in suspended animation for 74 years to catch up to his time traveling team.

Now, he is playing a big part in the saving of Earth—so big that no one can know where he is. Though Fitz only appeared in one episode of Season 7 so far, it’s safe to say he’ll play a big part in Wednesday’s series finale as he once again proves to be the key to saving the world.

Those are just the original team members, but Marvel fans can rest assured that Wednesday’s series finale provides lots of closure for later additions like Mack (Henry Simmons), Yo-Yo (Natalia Cordova), Deke (Jeff Ward) and even Sousa (Enver Gjokaj).

The “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” Season 7 finale airs Wednesday at 9 p.m. EDT on ABC.