Agents of SHIELD S04E08 Review: Spirit of Vengeance

Agents of SHIELD, Season 4, Episode 8: The Laws of Inferno Dynamics

Man, what an explosive end to what's presumably the first half of Agents of SHIELD's fourth season. Yes, the Ghost Rider arc was a huge departure from the previously spy or Inhuman-focused narrative, but what a pretty cool story! No, looking back at it, it's not a particularly innovative story. Ghost Rider and SHIELD team up to take a bunch of ghosts, a minor character turns out to be evil, Ghost Rider and Eli have a bit of an emotional confrontation and after some things are put in place, Ghost Rider kills Eli and gets sucked out of the plot in a way that makes coming back later when appropriate.

It's not the most spectacular stories to tell, of course, once the novelty of ZOMG GHOST RAYDER has died down, but it's still a pretty good story and conclusion nonetheless. The fact that Aida is built up as the next villain is a little obvious, but it's done in the background of the Ghost Rider arc -- enough to make us interested and realize that this is being built up, but not so in-your-face that it distracts from the Ghost Rider one, or even the B-plots starring Quake and Jeffrey Mace.

Ah, well, let's talk about this episode itself before I ramble about the worths of this half-season, shall I? We've got a pretty awesome all-hands-on-deck situation as one of the cooler scenes in this show being the shot of Ghost Rider, Quake and Yo-Yo assembled as they prepare to enter Eli's base, though the shot of Jeffrey Mace dressed in his brand-new Patriot uniform to join in the fun is pretty awesome too, and so is Yo-Yo finally showing off how fast she can truly be with some upgraded effects with her being instrumental in the finale.

Ghost Rider is out of the picture for the moment, of course -- after taking out Eli's crew of mooks, we get the emotional confrontation between Robbie and Eli, with Eli callously pinning Robbie with carbon spikes to prevent him from transforming into Ghost Rider. It gives the Eli/Robbie sublpot a very much-needed period to breathe, because the two never really confronted each other after Eli reveals his true colours, and to see that Eli's desire is simple entitlement is a slight disappointment... but it's enough to make him not exactly one-dimensional.

And yes, with everyone participating to take down Eli -- Fitz, Simmons, Radcliffe and Aida constructing a portal thingie to suck out the unstable power, Quake using her powers to absorb the shockwaves generated by the side-effects of Eli's power, while everyone else fights either Eli or his mooks... the slight zigzagging between how the magic works (turns out it doesn't create matter out of nothing, but rather draws it from other dimensions, causing tremors and whatnot), and Ghost Rider ultimately grabbing Eli and burning him with hellfire while his machine overloaded was pretty cool. 

Quake, meanwhile, has absorbed so much shockwaves during the conflict that she's forced to run out of the building and basically expel it all out, blasting herself into the air in a pretty cool scene, before landing in public sight... and, oops, that's just after Jeffrey Mace, earlier in the episode, insisted to the public that Quake is not involved. Mace quickly turns this accident into a PR victory, though, showing up in full Patriot armour and revealing that, hey, Agent Daisy Johnson is actually on a deep-cover mission to dismantle the Watchdogs organization. It helps that Quake's actually on her own warpath to take down the Watchdogs and has been saving people, so the transition is easier for the public to swallow... but this does mean that Quake has little choice but to join Mace's SHIELD. Whether this is actually smart moves from Mace (which I really want it to, I like Mace) or just a dick way to blackmail Quake into joining his SHIELD remains to be seen.

There are still a lot of plotlines to explore, of course. First up there's the whole thing about Mace, Nadeer and the Inhumans, which remain a background problem that's just waiting to rear its head, but more importantly is the reveal that May has actually been replaced with a Life-Model Decoy by Aida, and the real May is kept sedated in Radcliffe's house. That actually explains May's brief disappearance in the storyline, and while I'm not awake enough to nitpick through previous episodes to look for the exact moment May was abducted, it's a pretty clever twist, a little spit in the face that Coulson is drinking that ever-so-dramatic beer foreshadowed a couple of episodes ago not with the real May, but with an impostor. Aida becoming evil isn't a fresh concept -- not even in the MCU, where we already have Ultron -- but the additional wrinkle of her replacing actual members of the cast with her own agents is very interesting. 

Overall, this ties the Ghost Rider and Vigilante Quake storylines neatly with a bow, while segueing into the next set of plotlines -- Aida -- while still building up stories with Mace, as well as the Darkhold still being part of the story. Good stuff, if not particularly spectacular. Looking forward to more.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Coulson briefly jokes that to Quake that he intended an Inhuman to lead SHIELD, but didn't mean Mace, rather Quake herself. In the comics, Quake actually led SHIELD for some time... though she wasn't an Inhuman, of course.
• Mace's Patriot outfit is actually very similar to the stealth tactical suit that Captain America wore in Winter Soldier, a nod that Jeffrey Mace himself donned the Captain America persona after Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes in the comics. 
• The idea of a Life-Model Decoy (has the term actually been used in the series? I cannot remember) replacing a prominent figure in SHIELD has been used multiple times in Marvel comics, of course, one example being how Nick Fury operates as leader of SHIELD via Life-Model Decoy, saving himself from being arrested when Civil War broke out.