Agents of SHIELD, Season 4, Episode 2: Meet the New Boss
Well, what an episode! We start off with a bit of a horror scene. I'm... not very big on horror, so it's just as well that the ghosts aren't that scary. I mean, they're still ghosts that look like how you would expect ghosts to look, but there isn't just jumpscares or horrifying distortions beyond the pale skin, transparent body, fading in and out of existence and the dark mascara around the eyes. It's still pretty creepy nonetheless to see a ghost from the eyes of a child, and this leads to a bit more exploration about Lucy the Ghost... which, this being Agents of SHIELD, is still kept vague and noncommitant. We get names thrown around, some characters introduced, but nothing too revealing.
This episode tries to juggle a couple plotlines -- the ghost ladies, the new director, and Quake's investigations regarding Ghost Rider, and all of them intersect with each other at some point. Let's talk about Quake and Ghost Rider first, which is entertaining. It's a nice, rare moment where Quake isn't just brooding or fighting, when she delivers that cheery Skye vibe when she pretends to be Robbie Reyes' old friend and shows up at the auto stop, using the surrounding civilians and using her quake powers to giver her an excuse to stick around and interrogate Robbie, so to speak.
Robbie is understandably angry, and granted Quake could've chosen her words a lot more carefully... but Robbie does note that, yeah, Quake is a bit of a death-seeker. There's a nice acknowledgement that Quake thinks Ghost Rider is an Inhuman, before quickly surmising that he's another type of Enhanced. The two talk a bit about Quake discussing living with his powers (your basic 'Did You Know You're An Inhuman?' starter kit), and later on telling Ghost Rider to look at the bigger picture, not just executing the random hoodlums in the streets. Ghost Rider, meanwhile, notes how Quake is absolutely spotless despite her insistence that she's guilty and deserve to be killed, almost begging for it at one point, and noting that Quake is looking for penance for letting Lincoln die.
The investigation eventually leads Ghost Rider and a hot-in-pursuit Quake to reach the laboratories just as the ghost gang is attacking Fitz and Mack, allowing Ghost Rider to show off his cool flaming skull again and literally burn the ghost that stayed behind into nothingness. Very cool to have Ghost Rider keep showing up in the (lack of) flesh, and on a television budget it's definitely very fun to see this definitely-not-at-all-easy effects pop up every episode. Not that Ghost Rider's car flaming up or Quake launching herself and latching on top of the muscle car aren't impressive either, but flaming demon skulls they ain't.
Quake herself gets confronted by Mack and Fitz for her betrayal. Brooding and wanting to be alone from the team is something that both Fitz and Mack understand very well, Fitz having literally been isolated for a good chunk of the second season, and Mack wanting to leave several times throughout the series. But it's one thing to bugger off an be a vigilante. It's another to refuse aid, and to go behind their backs with Yo-Yo, steal stuff from SHIELD and generally make life for everyone else hard. Fitz in particular is absolutely livid, in contrast to Mack's more patient and understanding tone. And honestly? I can't blame them. As cool as vigilante detective Quake is and as much as I understand how the current state of SHIELD doesn't sit well with her, y'know, it is kind of a dick move on her part. She's gone off on rather bad terms with her old allies, only to find a new one in Ghost Rider, who thinks he's the connection between all the mystical things that's happening.
Now let's talk about the Ghost Gang, which is what I'm calling them until we get a better name. Fitz, Simmons and Mack discuss just what they are. The box is some kind of sci-fi light spectrum thing, but the ghosts are, y'know, ghosts. Explanations from Inhumans, a nice callback to Tobias Ford from season one and them being actual ghosts are thrown around. We get to see the lady ghost herself in action, where she infiltrates this big Ghostbusters-esque compound and frees three other ghosts. They thought they were trapped there and betrayed by one Joe for hours, when it has been years -- hence Lucy's rage when she returns to her home and sees a new family having inhabited it.
We don't understand what's going on, just that there are some things they did that turned them into ghosts, and it involves something called 'Darkhold'. I'm not familiar enough with Marvel lore to recognize the name, but it seems to be some kind of necronomicon of sorts? The ghost called Hugo works with Lucy, and another one, Vincent, is mute. But Ghost #4, which I don't quite catch the name off, stays behind to blow the facility up, refusing to hang out with the others, and ends up fighting Fitz, Mack and getting burnt by Ghost Rider's hellfire. Yeah, Ghost Rider's basically the only one that can take down these ghosts, not even Mack's shotgun-rifle manage to do anything but surprise them.
Also, those 'possessed' by the ghost start to see other people's faces rot away. It's not horrifying enough to really understand May's reaction, but the gangsters from last episode, the father from the opening and May suffer the effects, and we see May's calm and collected attempt to understand what's happening drive her slowly and surely crazier and crazier. She is determined that something has infected everyone but her (and considering all the Hive debacle last season, who can blame her?) and she's going to rescue them all. May ends up fighting her way through her entire squad and Coulson -- quite effortlessly -- before being taken down by the new director. Poor May.
Speaking of which, we finally meet the new director. And as been hinted throughout, while being somewhat obstructive... Jeffrey is actually a very, very nice guy! I mean, we know quite little about him, but he's very nice. And while it is probably meant to be some kind of a 'grr he's obstructing our heroes, what a dick' moment, the worst he did in this episode was to straitjacket May and send her to what's allegedly a healing facility while keeping it classified from Coulson. But everything else from Jeffrey seems to paint him as a nice man that's just kind of fair and doing his job as head of an intelligence department. And while I myself might be taken over by his PR-winning stunts, for now Jeffrey seems like a nice bloke.
Yes, he's supposed to be some superhero from the Marvel comics. No, I haven't the fucking slightest clue who he is, not a huge Marvel comics reader, but I'm excited to find out when we gradually explore the character in the series.
Jeffrey is a very well-scripted character, using words like respecting Coulson's team's loyalty and is just the slightest bit miffed that they're getting in the way... but the way Jeffrey delivers it, I actually believe it. He's just concerned with PR because they're going to present SHIELD as a legitimate governmental organization free of all the Hydra stigma. Now this development kind of came a bit out of nowhere, but the timeskip does kind of explain it. There's a nice crack at how it's impossible to run SHIELD like Coulson ran it without insane amounts of funding that was procured without being transparent.
Coulson gets suckered into helping Jeffrey give a tour to the government people with the whole SHIELD trivia master thing (including a shot at the Marvel execs with that 'so many stories about Peggy Carter remain untold' line), and is genuinely helpful when Coulson and Simmons informs him about the situation, quickly allaying concerns, not assigning blame and just going "byyy the way, a better idea is to see the quinjet!"
And the biggest surprise? He's an Inhuman. May's rampage is cut short by Jeffrey literally tanking everything she dishes out, and laying it calmly that he's not a monster, but an Inhuman. It's a nice way to say that, yes, while this season's "gimmick" may be the mystical aspects of Ghost Rider, literal ghosts and Darkhold, the Inhumans subplot isn't going to be completely thrown aside either. Apparently the decision to elect Jeffrey as the new chief was because Coulson stepped down, and the idea that he would be the face of a more public SHIELD kind of doesn't sit well with Coulson, because Steve Rogers he ain't. (Ironically, after the events of Civil War from the point of view of the public, Steve Rogers kind of is the last person PR people would be wanting to represent trustworthiness)
Overall it's a very, very interesting episode. The ghost gang bit was the weakest and I really hope they actually develop it a bit more in future episodes, but Ghost Rider, Quake and Jeffrey are all very interesting plot threads. Add one of the most fun scripts and acting (Quake's civilian scenes is absolutely fun) and we have a rather delightful mix of the grittier tone that was teased in the season premier and the fun-ness of season one that was somewhat lost over the course of the series' lifetime.
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