Clark Gregg Shares Agents of SHIELD Season 9 Hopes for FitzSimmons

It’s official: Fitz and Simmons are engaged — and that’s good news for everyone, not just the happy couple. According to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. star Clark Gregg, who plays Phil Coulson, this engagement will be what drives his time-displaced team’s final push to get home.

Gregg previewed the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents’ reunion in “Together or Not At All,” next week’s episode, and explained why Fitz and Simmons’ engagement “gives them a renewed sense of purpose.” He also reflected on what it was like to direct “Fun and Games'” big battle to the death between Quake, Destroyer of Worlds, and the Kree assassin Sinara.

Gregg: I just know that Coulson, and I think everybody who discovers that finally Fitz and Simmons are engaged… It gives them a renewed sense of purpose to get home and get things back to normal so that these two are never driven apart again and that maybe someday, in Season 9, we can see them actually get married.

There’s a big action piece in this episode. Can you talk a little about how you approached that?

You know, it was written… it’s something that had been built up that we’ve been kind of waiting for: this terrifying Kree warrior princess Sinara and Daisy, Destroyer of Worlds. It’s kind of the ultimate octagon showdown. Chloe [Bennet] has become an incredible stunt fighter. It was just something we were all really excited about. The stunt team really brought their A-game in terms of using the Kree hyper-strength and powers and these ricocheting spheroids and finding new ways to do stuff with Daisy and to have, within that, the kind of upstairs/downstairs bit of Fitz and everybody watching and the interplay of the escape mission that’s involved with this. So there was a lot going on up in the bullpen and down on the floor and threading those things together was a big part of that challenge.