It’s time for a new season and a new SHIELD, as we pick up with Daisy on the run, a new director being SHIELD, and a new Ghost Rider on the scene. How does the premier go? Read on and find out!
1. Enter the Ghost Rider
Okay, let’s get this one out of the way. It’s the character everyone’s been talking about since it was announced, and the most anticipated introduction of the season. So, how was it handled?
Ghost Rider’s first introduction was pretty well done. After Daisy interrupts a chase scene, his car rolls up, wheels spinning and engine revving. A bazooka blast sends the car flipping, but the fire that engulfs it is its own hellish flames. After Ghost Rider tears through the gangsters, all we see is his silhouette, flaming skull blending in with the fires that burn around him.
Pretty impressive.
2. Gone gone, the form of ghost, now here’s Robbie, his human host
We can’t talk about this Ghost Rider without talking about his human host, Robbie Reyes. (And yes, we share the same first name, which admittedly may make me like him more.) While the Ghost Rider kills the guilty without mercy, Robbie will then beat the survivors for information before finishing them off himself
Just a tad bit different from his behavior in the comics. But he does justify it, pointing out that everyone the Ghost Rider killed, from gang members to pedophile teachers, all had crimes on their souls.
Last entry on the Ghost Rider, but this is an important one. In the comics, the spirit that turns Robbie Reyes into the Ghost Rider is not a spirit of vengeance, but the ghost of a Satanic serial killer. His ghost, Eli, isn’t out to smite evil, but just to kill as much as possible; Robbie’s condition for bonding with his spirit, at least in that version, was that they’d only use their powers to kill those with evil souls.
In the episode, it seems more like this is the classic “spirit of vengeance” Ghost Rider. Robbie explains that everyone he killed had sins on their souls, from the gang members he tortured to the pedophile teacher the ghost burnt.
Additionally, he mentions having a devil inside him, and the next episode’s preview talks about making a deal with the devil. From that, it’s safe to assume that this is the “classic” Ghost Rider spirit, but still using the latest character to carry the name.
4. Quake’s downward spiral
Now then, let’s get back to the actual SHIELD agents, starting with Daisy “Quake” Johnson. When last we saw, she had abandoned SHIELD for reasons unknown, and started wearing all black while running from her former allies.
It seems the pain of constantly losing boyfriends, whether to surprise betrayals or massive fiery explosions, has caught up to Daisy, and she figures the best way to not lose anyone else is to abandon everyone else. But she’s on the trail of the Watchdogs (remember them from last season? They came up now and then, despite being pretty disconnected from the rest of the plot), and is now considered a criminal at large. Her overuse of her powers requires medicine to heal her own bones, showing how little she cares for herself at this point.
Continued belowAnd yet the episode also has a striking moment where we see that the guilt that wracks her is misplaced. This Ghost Rider, as mentioned before, only kills those with nasty dark spots on their souls, yet he spares her. Daisy is clearly wracked with guilt – over betraying SHIELD, letting Lincoln die, and everything she did while under Hive’s control – but it looks like her soul is still clean.
Maybe SHIELD needs to invest in a grief counselor, considering their last one turned into a big bad Inhuman that… also gave his life for her.
No wonder Quake is such a wreck.
5. New SHIELD, new director, new questions
As for the SHIELD team itself, things are changing. Coulson and Mack are spending more time in the air than on the ground, while May has her own strike force. Fitz and Simmons are still working in the lab, but Simmons has a new rank and title that keeps her close to the new director.
At first it seems like the natural drifting apart that can happen to groups with busy lives. As anyone who’s tried to get a steady gaming group together can confirm, sometimes lives change, and the people in them change as well. But it seems that’s not the case, as the new director is intentionally trying to keep the team apart.
Speaking of, this new director is still unknown. What we do know is that none of the characters trust him, and he’s decided to switch from a simple numerical rank system to a confusing color-coded system (a “spectrum of security”) so that no agents feel “less than.”
How he actually became the director, when Coulson was doing the job quite well himself, is unknown. It’s hard to think of what existing characters from the Marvel cinematic universe could possibly fill the role, especially considering what exactly SHIELD has been through these past few seasons, although I will laugh so hard if they’ve taken advantage of Spider-Man’s return to the MCU by bringing in Normal Osborne and HAMMER.
Still, no point in answering every question in the first episode, so maybe we’ll see who this new director is, and why he shouldn’t be trusted, in the coming weeks.
