Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD Recap: “The Ghost”

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD returns for Season 4 and everything’s changed, except nothing changed.

It’s interesting to look back the the original Agents of SHIELD premiere and tonight’s Season 4 premiere episode. How far these characters have come, and how much they’ve changed. Also the pace of the episodes move at blinding speeds now. When AoS premiered back in 2012, “slow TV dramas” were the apple of the Golden Age of television’s eye. Mad Men, Game of Thrones were both praised for long slow builds, and the MCU’s TV people wanted to prove they could do that too.

"Coulson: “You want tech like this? You should have cut off your own hand.”"

They failed, of course. Last season, the pace was dizzying, as we whipped though story after twist, wrapping up threads only to unspool three more. That hasn’t changed with this season’s premiere. In fact, if anything, the move to 10pm just means that we have the same pacing, with a whole lot more extra blood as a bonus.

And yet, the stories remain the same. There’s always a misunderstood hero, who circumstances makes look guilty. And the incompetent bureaucracy in love with acronyms. SHIELD, SADIST, WIMP. (Spectrum of security!) Here we have two good guys (Skye/Daisy/Quake) and the Ghostrider and his beast of a car. Daisy we know is a good guy, who simply has an optics problem. By the end of the hour, we’ve seen Ghostrider and his disabled brother together, letting us know he’s a good guy too. Just one who thinks he has “the devil inside him.” (Who’s going to be the one to tell him it was just those fish oil pills grandma recommended?)

"Mac: “You want a beer?”Coulson: “It’s six o’clock in the morning. What are you Hemmingway?”"

But they’re just the beginning of a SHIELD that’s undergone an entire make over (again) between seasons. It’s almost a hallmark of the series at this point. The massive overhaul between Seasons 1 and 2 were of necessity. Now they’re just what we’ve come to expect. This time the team hasn’t expanded or contracted as much as they’ve been split up. That “bureaucracy” the show paid lip service to, and yet never seem to have all that many people working for it, due to whatever excuse, has finally shown up, and they’ve got a new leader who makes his inner circle take daily lie detector tests and splits everyone up into “color coded” rankings so no one feels lesser than anyone else–mostly because the color codings are indecipherable.

Image via ABC/Richard Cartwright

(Seriously, “orange” is higher than “red,” because it’s “a blend of red and yellow”? Seriously?)

For the first time SHIELD really does feel like a big faceless government agency, and the characters we’ve grown to love and care about merely a bunch of middle management cogs within it, all of whom are struggling to work within a system they’ve gotten used to not having to deal with. Only Simmons has moved up, but in exchange for those aforementioned daily lie detector tests. She says she did it to keep some modicum of control, but what it really means is that no one tells her anything–not even Fitz. (It’s like they’re a real couple now!)

"YoYo: “You don’t have to use a satellite to get to know me better. Just ask me to dinner again.”"

Coulson has been busted down to Mac’s level. May seem to be working as a new recruit trainer. Fitz is middle management scientist, desperately trying to keep pal Holden Radcliffe and his crazy not quite legal experiments in line. (Seriously Radcliffe’s “Aida” and her “I am here as a decoy” is totally proto-Ultron in gratuitously attractive female form.) In the world of powered people Elena “Yo-Yo” Rodriguez stuck around. She’s unable to work for SHIELD due to signing the Sokovia Accords, but that doesn’t stop her from hitting on Mac left right and center when they’re together. (Said accords were mentioned several times. Not quite enough for a drinking game, but close!) She’s also quietly stealing meds from the SHIELD folks every time she stops for a check in, and passing them on to Daisy, whose bones are not taking all this quaking so well.

Image via ABC

(Man I had no trouble switching from Skye to Daisy, but Daisy to Quake seems to be difficult.) 

And then there’s….the Ghostrider. We knew he would be introduced this season, but keeping in tradition of the breakneck pacing of the episodes, he not only was introduced in the cold open, but by the 45 minute mark, he and Daisy were in a powered mano a powered mano fight in a junkyard. Meanwhile, Coulson and Mac were not far away, hoping to catch one or the other at some illegal trade deal, only to have it all go terribly wrong as whatever the gangsters in question purchased turned out to be something (a ghost?) that turned them all into crazed manics who proceeded to rip each other to shreds. Thankfully May was already on her way to pull them off the mission just as they called for backup. (That was efficient.)

"“They say when the Rider burns you, he burns your soul.”"

Efficient, but perhaps not good for May, since whatever the spirit was that made those men tear each other to pieces is traveling back aboard the Quinjet with her. Perhaps said spirit will meet the new boss too, as Coulson and Mac are finally going to meet this color coding, lie detector test loving adversary for the season face to face. (Will he too turn out to be a good guy who is just misunderstood and circumstances make look bad? Or will this turn out to be that the season’s “Big Bad” is actually the man running SHIELD himself?)

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All in all, a very efficient set up of where all our characters stand in the new world, one that has, yet again been effected by the MCU’s movie universe without ever actually getting to be an acknowledged part of it.