Patrick Warburton has confirmed that he’ll be reprising his role as Agent Rick Stoner in Agents of SHIELD season 7. Marvel’s flagship TV show is set to be coming to an end following next year’s season 7. As such, the writers and showrunners have decided that they’re going out in style, with a time travel plot that explores the history of the MCU - and, particularly, the history of SHIELD.

The Agents of SHIELD season 6 finale took a surprising turn when Simmons revealed that she and Fitz had cracked time travel. She told a stunned Mack that SHIELD was at war with the Chronicoms, who firmly believed that only SHIELD could stop them from successfully invading planet Earth. The Chronicoms’ plan appears to be to rewrite history in order to ensure that SHIELD can no longer be a threat to them, meaning that it now falls on Mack and his team to protect the timeline in order to defeat them. Needless to say, viewers have been thrilled with this idea, and are deeply curious about which time periods will be explored.

Speaking at Dublin Comic-Con (via ComicBook.com), Patrick Warburton confirmed that he will be returning in Agents of SHIELD season 7. Warburton’s character, Rick Stoner, was a high-ranking SHIELD agent during the 1970s who had previously only been seen on the series in holographic form from archival footage. He explained to the ecstatic audience at Dublin Comic-Con that his character will be, “coming back,” and that he’s already, “shot some stuff recently,” exclaiming that it was, “a lot of fun.”

Warburton’s Rick Stoner was introduced back in Agents of SHIELD season 5 as one of the highest-ranking agents in the company who was responsible for Project Reclamation. Back in the 1970s, Earth was facing a Hydrogen Wave, an as-yet-unexplained extinction-level event. To that end, SHIELD constructed the Lighthouse, a base explicitly designed to survive the end of the world. Clearly, the construction of the Lighthouse was something that must have taken up a phenomenal amount of time and resources, and yet for some reason, all record of its existence was mysteriously wiped from SHIELD’s records when the crisis had passed. Coulson later claimed the location as his base of operations in season 5, and Mack continued to do so in season 6. It was finally captured by the Chronicoms in the season 6 finale.

This means that there are really only two ways Rick Stoner could return in the upcoming season. It’s possible that the SHIELD team could travel back to the 1970s and team up with him, perhaps leading to an explanation as to why the records of the Lighthouse were erased in the first place. Alternatively, Stoner had placed a series of holographic messages around the Lighthouse to help the survivors build a new life, so it could be that the Chronicoms have triggered these messages for some reason. With time travel involved in Agents of SHIELD season 7, anything is possible.

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Source: ComicBook.com