ABC Passes On 'Marvel's Most Wanted' Pilot Again

For once, a Marvel project isn’t automatically moving forward simply based on the merits of the brand name. ABC’s latest venture into the Marvel universe, Marvel’s Most Wanted, has been passed over at ABC heading into the fall season. Widely expected to move forward after a pilot order, the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. spinoff centered around Mockingbird AKA Bobbi Morse. With Adrianne Palicki as Mockingbird, a character who had proven herself to be entertaining on S.H.I.E.L.D. time and again, it would have made sense for ABC to add another Marvel show to its stable of hour-long action shows. Now we will have to settle for watching her awesome fight skills in John Wick again. As Entertainment Weekly reports, the synopsis of the show didn’t sound half bad either.

Most Wanted was set to follow Bobbi Morse (Adrianne Palicki) and Lance Hunter (Nick Blood) on the run with a long list of enemies looking to claim a bounty on their heads. They form an uneasy alliance with rogue adventurer Dominic Fortune (Delroy Lindo), who agrees to protect them so long as they help with his agenda.

Who doesn’t want Delroy Lindo back on their televisions!? Once Agent Carter bit the dust earlier this afternoon, it looked as if the spinoff had a clear lane to get picked up and replace Peggy and her adventures in that Tuesday slot. Alas, both are now dead and S.H.I.E.L.D. is the last Marvel-verse show standing. To add insult to injury, this is the second time in two years that the S.H.I.E.L.D. spinoff has been close to getting the go-ahead only to get axed at the last minute after execs ran out of room on the schedule or decided it just wasn’t up to snuff.

It wasn’t the same exact pilot as last year, but that still has to hurt for the people trying to push the spinoff to air. After much heeing and hawing over the past 12 months, a concrete pilot pickup by the network instilled some additional confidence that the show had a chance – until cancellations and new show announcements were officially made this week. Now that Morse and Hunter are officially not getting their own show despite getting pretty definitively written off Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., it will be interesting to see whether both or either return for a guest arc next season. That is, if there are still any shows left on ABC for them to guest star.