Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4 Episode 1 review - The Ghost

Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. is back baby!

Last year’s season had a strong first half and a second half that proved kinda lacklustre. But we have an interesting premise. Ghost Rider. I’m not all that familiar with the character from the comics and ultimately delving into the mystical elements of the Marvel universe with a rag tag team of mostly normal people kinda worried me. Were my worries justified? Let’s take a look

The Ghost

So has S.H.I.E.L.D. got a new director? I don’t think they mentioned it more than 500 times.

Fortunately, my worries about the series have thus far proven unfounded as this story focuses on what is by far the strongest element of the show when it uses it properly, character.

The Ghost Rider is Robbie Reyes from the comics, distinguishing him from Nicholas Cage’s Johnny Cage from those not very good movies, and that’s fine. I’m not expecting Nicholas Cage to show up on a TV budget which, given the amount of Quake action in this episode, is probably already stretched.

So, plot, we get vague hints of what happened to S.H.I.E.L.D. in the last few months. Basically Talbot reported the location of their base to the government thanks to unregistered inhumans (probably), they installed a new head, legitimised S.H.I.E.L.D., demoted Coulson and split the gang across multiple departments. Daisy left because reasons and is now hunting the anti-inhuman group The Watchdogs on her own, taking down bridges because they’re “escape routes” and banks that fund them. Nice to see she’s being subtle.

So Coulson and Mack are field agents together now and were trying to bring her in, but she keeps escaping and the new director has taken them off the case and is ready to call in the national guard, with orders to kill. Lovely. So she’s out doing what’s she’s doing and what’s she’s doing brings into contact with Ghost Rider. May discreetly calls Coulson and Mack to find out what’s going on and we get contagions, gang buyouts, lots and lots of secrets, Simmons having power, May being frustrated and training some new recruits, Coulson and Mack never seeing Daisy at all, Yo-Yo being the in-between, and lots of violence. Yeah, the gore has increased a bit from previous seasons of the show, they’re taking advantage of the later air time to make the show darker and more graphic.

Whether or not that’s a good thing remains to be seen as we still have 21 episodes to cover this season but it’s certainly not tainted my interest in the show thus far. The gore isn’t overly explicit and it fits with the character of Ghost Rider to be associated with a bit more gore than what you’d be used to.

Complaints? The vague mystery box was vague and what it did it May is… I don’t have a clue.

Oh and we get the continuation of the life model decoy arc, thus far it’s not particularly interesting other than providing something to strain that oh so fragile relationship between Fitz and Simmons.

Overall it’s a strong start with a great number of threads that can be tugged on later down the line.

Rating: 8.5/10 

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Images/clips used are from Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. All images in this review are subject to fair use