That's not why the show got off to a wrong start. They could've done the whole 'next generations of SHIELD agents' and made it work, but went wrong was how they approached it. The first was the made-up characters for the show, which alienated comic fans and made it hard to give a **** about. Who wants to see a show in the MCU where all the characters are made up for the MCU? A lot of people watch the show to see characters they loved and had an investment in be re-interpreted in live action. If they used characters like Jimmy Woo or Clay Quartermain instead of Fitz or Tripp, then maybe hardcore fans would've stuck around for the long haul because of their prior familiarity with the characters. Also, the writing was atrocious in Season 1, taking all the worst parts of the MCU and making a show based off of terrible attempts at snark and *****ty CGI. It's true that the first impression is the most important, because clearly they haven't been able to win over the people that quit watching the show in the beginning. And lastly, expectations of how the show would connect to the greater MCU where just too damn high. Everyone expected Iron Man or Cap to show up, when we all knew that was going to be impossible. If they did the Defenders approach, where the series use actual comic characters and craft great genre stories that can stand on their own two feet with or without the MCU. If they played up the covert nature of a spy organization like SHIELD since the beginning instead of making a sci-fi version of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, the show would've been much more successful.