Marvel's Agents of SHIELD's showrunners are preparing to say goodbye to two of their ensemble of characters. With the news that ABC has ordered a pilot for Marvel's Most Wanted, Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon could be sending off Bobbi Morse (Adrianne Palicki) and Lance Hunter (Nick Blood) if the pilot gets ordered to series.

"Logistically it does mean they're going to be leaving to make that," Whedon told at ABC's Television Critics Association winter press tour part. "They're a part of our show. We definitely think they are capable of carrying an entire other show. That being said, it's sort of bittersweet. We're very excited about the new show."


Tacharoen continued, "It's very bittersweet because we have a bunch of females on the show who kick ass. It was so nice to have Adrianne be one of them, and then also just when it comes to the humor, just having a moment of levity, Hunter was there to have those one-liners. ... That was something we could always bet on."

She noted that just because Morse and Hunter could be getting their own show doesn't mean they'll never return to Agents of SHIELD. "We will miss them, but that doesn't mean they're gone forever because, as everything in the Marvel universe, it's all one universe," she said.

Whedon added, "They'll have to step away for a moment, and we're very proud of that moment."


SHIELD producers Jeff Bell and Paul Zbyszewski co-created Marvel's Most Wanted and co-wrote its pilot, and will also serve as showrunners and executive producers if it gets picked up to series. Morse and Hunter's storyline in Agents of SHIELD: Season 3, which Bell and Zbyszewski are both working on, has offered some hints as to how the two characters could spin off into their own series. Whedon opened up about how SHIELD can be used as a launching board for Most Wanted.

"We're pretending that there's no such thing as a pilot, that it's only characters who live in a world where there's superheroes. We just know at some point they're going to have to go somewhere else," he said. "We have a lot of characters and we're always introducing new characters, so while they're going to be missed, we're certainly not going to try to replace them in any way."


Tancharoen shared that she and Whedon have read the pilot for Most Wanted and called it "awesome."

"It's everything you anticipate as well as things you don't expect at all," she said. "It's just really nice to be able to dive into those characters, and Paul and Jeff have done that exceptionally well."