While Mack and Elena seem to be weathering the storm of space quite well together, Clark Gregg and Ming-Na indicate that the budding feelings between Coulson and May might have cooled somewhat.
“That was a fiendishly complex romantic dynamic,” Gregg says. “[Coulson] finally opened up and really taken a step forward romantically with Melinda, only to discover that it was not Melinda, but a very sexy facsimile! Thank God it didn’t go further,” he chuckles. “That would have been confusing.”
“But at the very end of season four,” Gregg continues, “You see him say that, you know, you can’t own territory we didn’t really walk down together. So they seem to have agreed at the end of season four to go, “Let’s just go back to where we were and start over — and see, you know, what happens.””
“I think there’s something that I really relate to about it, that you don’t get too many friends like that, ever in your life,” he says. “And a work friend who literally has your back in life-or-death situations, seemingly once a week — you don’t you don’t mess around with that if it’s going to take a different place! Apparently Phil treads very carefully!”
Ming-Na expresses a similar sentiment.
“We came out of the Framework without having really resolved a lot of that trauma, and those memories, and the experiences we had in the Framework,” she says. “And then all of sudden, we’re thrust into this new, dire situation. So for Colson and for May, everything, I think, is put on the back burner for for that reason.”
“They’re there to try to figure out how we can get the team back. And romance for them, I think, will have to definitely take a back seat.”
But, she adds, “What’s so beautiful is that as long as they have each other — and that’s what their friendship, and their loyalty, and their history [is] — [that’s what] makes it so compelling for fans wanting them to hook up and get together, and just get it on!”
“I mean, it might be the end of the world!” Ming-Na laughs. “Let’s just do it! It might take that much for them to finally take that leap.”
Still, executive producer Jeph Loeb offers a bit of hope for the Philinda shippers in the audience. In spite of the pressures of survival on the Lighthouse, he says, “The heart wants what the heart wants. So you know, it’s always interesting to see where that goes.”
https://www.hypable.com/agents-of-shield-cast-and-crew-fitzsimmons-philinda/