Agents of SHIELD S4E22 Review: The Things We Do For Love

Agents of SHIELD, Season 4, Episode 22: World's End

The finale of the fourth season, easily the strongest season of Agents of SHIELD to date, isn't quite the huge pile of goodness that the rest of the season is, but it's a tense ride nonetheless. We'll leave the cliffhanger for later, because I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of it. But the rest of the season finale is relatively well-done, even if a lot of questions were left unanswered, presumably for the next season to deal with. 

Robbie Reyes, the Ghost Rider, returns after being absent for two-thirds of the season, and quickly talks about how Aida's new Darkhold-enchanted body is such a huge, huge aberration that the Ghost Rider entity is compelled to murder it. But that's basically all we get as far as explanations go, because the Darkhold isn't really explored further beyond that. It's treated as your average plot device, and after fulfilling his end of the bargain and participating in two kick-ass fights against Aida, Robbie takes the Darkhold, creates a portal and buggers off back to his sojourn in hell. 

Though, man, what a fight! The first fight, with Ghost Rider doing his spinning chain-around thing as he rips through Aida's LMDs and would've ended Aida right then and there if she didn't teleport away, is just amazing. The final battle with them teleporting all over the place is also well done, but as Coulson himself notes, one of the most awesome scenes is the team-up between Quake and Ghost Rider as they decimate a small LMD army. 

Sadly, in the face of so many sub-plots and storylines lumped together, not all of them ended satisfactorily. Ivanov just literally buggers off and disappears around halfway throughout the episode, with his brain still unaccounted for, and only several of his bodies being destroyed. The whole world peace summit, with Talbot getting shot in the head by LMD Daisy (though he apparently survived) and the rest of the world leaders being either massacred or are LMD's seemed very truncated and rushed. And as noted, neither the Darkhold nor the Ghost Rider really ended up being explained much. 

Even Aida herself got a relatively reduced role with so many moving pieces. We did get a pretty powerful scene as Fitz tries frantically to talk Aida down while she has a knife to Simmons' throat (well, Inhuman electric powers, but hey) and for a moment I actually believed that the show killed off -- or at least crippled -- poor Simmons. But then it's revealed that it's just an LMD, and Aida walked right into a trap with the very cool sequence of Coulson transforming into the Ghost Rider to bluff Aida.

(Coulson turning into the Ghost Rider isn't really something that came out of nowhere, and in retrospect Mack being possessed by the Rider briefly earlier in the season is definitely to build up for this).

After that, though, it's just a big ol' metahuman fight and Aida dies. Fitz did go through a lot of character moments throughout, though. First through a bit of a guilt complex as he thinks about how he wants to atone for being the Doctor in the Framework, but gets shut down by Daisy, who went through a similar story arc when she tried to run away after blaming herself for a lot of the Inhuman crisis -- noting that her vigilante phase only served to cause a crapton of problems for the team. It's a nice bit of character development for both characters.

But what the episode probably could've worked with is the Yo-Yo storyline. Which, in its defense, is one of the most wonderfully crafted and acted stories in the whole thing. Yo-Yo seeing how much Mack cared for Hope, Yo-Yo trying to get Mack to remember who she is because they love each other, Yo-Yo just wanting to stay with Mack until the end, the reaction on Mack's face as reality literally crumbles and disappears all around him, especially when his daughter disappears.... part of me is screaming that it's an unnecessary plotline that could've been avoided if Daisy thought clearer two episodes back, but at the same time it's just so well-written and acted, and as the characters note, to feel is to be human. And Yo-Yo's feelings for Mack is definitely well-conveyed here. Yo-Yo is a relatively new and minor character compared to a long-standing couple like Fitz and Simmons, but her feelings for Mack is shown amazingly, as is Mack's reaction when Hope disappears.

Radcliffe kind of hung around Yo-Yo and helps her out and tries to get her to see logical reason, but sometimes human emotion just kind of wins over reason. And in easily the standout scene of the scene, is Radcliffe on a beach, drinking and toasting the sky of the dying Framework world, quoting that famous line from Eliot, before disappearing and dying. Just amazing.

There were a lot of cliffhangers, of course. There's Ivanov escaping, of course (who I don't really care about, honestly). There's SHIELD's once-again tarnished reputation with Talbot in a coma and the rest of the world council dead, and presumably Inhumans vilified once more. There's the mysterious deal that Coulson struck with the Ghost Rider entity. The SHIELD base is destroyed, and the organization is reduced to, well, just our main cast. And as the team gathers around for a dinner at the diner, just laughing and enjoying normalcy before time stops and even more madness catches up with them (which they were expecting), it's a pretty cool bit as the scene blacks out, and Coulson apparently wakes up in a space station or some shit.

Time will tell if next season will feature more of this quality, but damn, season four of Agents of SHIELD was super-solid, and while this finale has its problems, it certainly was enjoyable to watch. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Robbie's line "it's all connected", while describing the Darkhold, is an oft-quoted line when describing the Marvel Cinematic Universe during its earlier phases, especially when talking about character cameos, references and Infinity Stones in all the movies.
• Robbie's description of the planes he's been through, about how some of them resemble hell, but not really a single hell, is similar to how the world of the setting is -- both the various planes as described in Thor, as well as the various mystic planes explained in Doctor Strange. The teleporting fight that Aida and Ghost Rider tumbles through also visually resembles the visuals in Doctor Strange and Thor: The Dark World, where in both movies the main hero and the main villain fights while teleporting through the various realms. 
• The portal that Robbie creates with his chain is visually similar to the sling ring portals in Doctor Strange, too. It's all connected indeed.
• The device that the mysterious suited man uses to freeze everyone in place seems to be similar to the device used by Obadiah Stane all the way back in MCU's first installment, Iron Man, to freeze Tony, albeit improved to eliminate the painful side effects.