At long last, Ghost Rider and SHIELD clash and team up. Some questions will be answered, more will be raised, but most importantly: we get car chases and big explosions.
1. Car chase of the season
Ever since the first episode of the show, we’ve seen Coulson’s car, Lola. Well, Ghost Rider has a pretty sweet car too, so it was only a matter of time before they squared off. And so, we get a rather fun car chase between the two.
It hits all the usual necessities of a car chase – driving around oncoming traffic, heading off-road, and the cars racing next to each other for just a few moments. There’s even the old oncoming truck trope, which Robbie just barely avoids and Coulson has to drive under.
It’s cliche, sure, but it was still awesome. Nothing like a good car chase to keep the energy levels high.
And yes, as cool as Lola is, she can’t outrun Ghost Rider’s spirit-powered car, at least without flight capabilities.
2. Eli Morrow
Eli Morrow (played by Jose Zuniga) was mentioned in the previous episode as Robbie’s uncle, a good man who was imprisoned for attacking a bad one. This, of course, is a huge difference from the comics, where Eli is the ghost that possesses Robbie and gives him his powers, and a mass-murdering devil worshipper, at that (and if you’re wondering if that means he’s a mass murderer who worships devils, or a person who worships mass-murdering devils, the answer is “both”).
So far, however, it looks as if the Agents of SHIELD version is as good as advertised. Even Coulson comments on how he worked hard to support his sister and her kids, and while Eli initially refuses to cooperate with SHIELD (even with the offer of a possible reduced sentence), he’s still willing to help his nephew, Robbie.
However, he’s still connected to the incident at Momentum Labs that resulted in the ghosts, and he personally attacked the man in charge of the project, so there’s still a decent chance that his hands (and his soul) aren’t as clean as we’ve been lead to believe. Time will tell.
3. Inhumans under watch
Out of all the characters in the show to be impacted by the events of Civil War,, the Inhumans definitely got the short end of the stick. It’s not enough to just sign the Accords and agree not to use their powers – they have to be put under constant surveillance, via wristwatches that track their locations, vital signs, and can be used to call upon them at any given time.
This, of course, raises quite a few red flags, in spite of Simmons’ insistence that “it’s for their own safety.” (Safety that is very easily compromised, considering how easily one rogue Inhuman is all it took to give the Watchdogs complete access to the server that tracks them all.)
Of course, there’s the reasonable argument that these are people who can light things on fire with a touch, teleport, or shoot lightning from their hands like they were Sith lords, therefore keeping a registry of them is no different than registering gun owners. And while that is a fair argument, we don’t track the location and vitals of all gun owners, so this has slightly more worrying implications.
And, as we learn, not all Inhumans are happy about the arrangement…
4. Self-Hating Inhuman
Ever wonder what happened to James, the Inhuman with combustion powers who got Hive’d pretty early on in his Inhuman life? Well, he’s back, and he’s trying to get his life back together. He wasn’t exactly willing when he signed the Sokovia Accords, so his own wristwatch is more akin to being under house arrest, which would be just as worrying if not for the fact that he did cause quite a bit of destruction under Hive’s control.
That, of course, is something that continues to haunt him. His grudge against the Inhumans was established last season, but after finally getting his powers then immediately becoming a pawn of Hive, James has some issues to work through, which turned into him blaming Daisy, a fair amount of self-loathing, and an intense hatred for all Inhumans.
Continued belowAnd it turns out that tracking bracelet isn’t too hard to hack for anyone who wants to access, say, the entire database of Inhumans, including their exact locations at any given time. That might be a bit of a design flaw.
Thus, we have a self-hating Inhuman on our hands, one who will be more than happy to die once all the others have been wiped out. It’s an interesting character twist; most Inhumans we’ve seen so far have the typical shock, confusion, and journey of self-discovery into acceptance, but his is the opposite case, turning from a desire for power into a hatred of it. Perhaps we’ll see more Inhumans who deal with their powers in less-than-healthy ways, although with the Watchdogs robbed of their inside source, it looks like they’re getting benched again while SHIELD chases ghosts.
5. ADA’s Turing Test
The creation story of the Life Model Decoys continues, with ADA (Dr. Radcliffe’s artificially intelligent assistant) being put through a final test.
For those unfamiliar with the terminology, the Turing Test is essentially a test for artificial intelligence to see if it can be mistaken for intelligence of the non-artificial kind in a conversation. As ADA tends to a recovering May, Radcliffe and Fitz watch in anticipation to see if Agent May will catch on.
She doesn’t, in a very amusing moment where she approvingly describes ADA as “No nonsense, all business.”
However, there are still laws of robotics to be considered; ADA is programmed not to lie or harm humans, leaving Fitz to lie for her to answer any questions that would spill the beans on her identity. While Radcliffe explains that there are times when lies may sometimes be necessary, such as to save a life, this explanation does seem to open the door to ADA working around the other restrictions on her programming. Will she have to hurt someone to save a life later down the line? The possible foreshadowing has been set up.
Although ADA does find a clever workaround later on, when she’s talking to Coulson. A line about Radcliffe making her hands is taken by Coulson to mean she lost her hands and was given artificial ones (same as Coulson’s own), an idea she doesn’t reject, thus obfuscating the truth without outright lying. It’s an interesting use of exact language and lies by omission, which fall into a more grey morality zone.
Of course, Simmons immediately sees through it, which is exactly what Fitz and Radcliffe wanted to avoid, given her constant lie detector tests. So now that ADA can successfully skirt around the truth, next week we’ll get to see Simmons try the same.
