How Does the Avengers: Endgame Time Jump Affect Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.?

The following post contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame

Marvel fans flocked to theaters in droves this weekend to watch the final installment of the Avengers saga, Avengers: Endgame. We won't spoil who wins, who dies, and who got their happily ever after, but we will spoil one big thing for you because it has the potential to majorly affect Season 6 of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. -- and perhaps the rest of the series.

After an opening sequence that takes place mere weeks after Thanos' galaxy-changing snap, Avengers: Endgame jumps five years into the future. That's where the majority of the film takes place, in a world still reeling with the loss of half its living population. Ultimately, the Avengers manage to undo Thanos' devastating attack on the universe, returning those people to life, but canonically speaking, those five years still happened.

Everything We Know About Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 6

Here's where things get tricky. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. made mention of Thanos' (Josh Brolin) attack on Wakanda in the Season 5 finale, and when the show returns for Season 6, one year will have passed from the timing of that episode. That means chronologically, this season will take place when half the universe's population has floated off into dust. Not only is it a huge stretch of the imagination to believe that the entire S.H.I.E.L.D. team was so blessed with plot-armor that all of them were spared from the snap, but now they're supposed to be living in a post-snap world? With no way to fix it, and four years of time until the Avengers manage to undo it, we're forced to accept that unless another major time jump occurs, the rest of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will likely take place before Avengers: Endgame ever happens. (Marvel had no comment on the S.H.I.E.L.D. timeline.)

Is that a sustainable storyline for the show to manage? Or have we finally reached the place where Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. flips the bird to the MCU and just carries on with its own stuff because it's too hard to manage writing their own seasons around whatever is happening in the movies?

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns Friday, May 10 on ABC.