Marvel’s AGENTS OF SHIELD Launches Season 4 With A Vengeance!

Stewart here…

SPOILERS ahead for the first two episodes of the new season…

After all that happened last season, like HYDRA getting wiped out and everyone’s favorite likable psychopath Grant Ward finally meeting his end, it was hard to see where the next season would go. We knew from that brief time jump glimpse in the season 3 finale, Daisy was a fugitive and Coulson was no longer SHIELD’s head honcho. But what did that really mean for the rest of our team? That part was left vague, but with this week’s season premiere, we finally get a clue to what’s going on with SHIELD now, if at best, its a bit clearer. But let’s run through the bullet points of the season premiere:

Odd not seeing Grant Ward there. Not really, but hey, thought I’d be polite.

SHIELD’s Officially Back, And More Dysfunctional Than Ever. Thanks to HYDRA getting laid to waste (finally, maybe?), what was SHIELD can finally come out of the cold. The downside is our ragtag group is now spread out in the new organization. Coulson and Mack are partners in the field, May is training new agents, Jemma is now a liaison to the new SHIELD Director (more on him in a minute) who outranks her old compatriots, and Fitz seems to be at his usual hijinks. And there’s Daisy, who is still a vigilante being hunted by her former allies, thanks to the events of Captain America: Civil War (and more on that later). So while we never see the new Director in the first episode, we do in the next episode, and that was a surprise, more because of the fact he’s Inhuman than being one of those chummy “potential yuppie serial killer” types. Whether the Band will get back together seems like a certainty, but when is a question that there doesn’t seem like a rush to answer.

Civil War Fallout. The most obvious thing is how Civil War has affected the team we saw last season, from Daisy going rogue to other superpowered/Inhumans like Yo-Yo being under constant watch. While the series has flirted with the fallout from the movies before, this has been the most obvious reflection of events from the MCU since the end of season one. On the plus side (or maybe not, depending on what we are learning about this new iteration), SHIELD is finally back as a non-shadowy group, or at least, on the surface it is.

Been a while since we’ve seen Goth girl Daisy.

It’s Not All Inhumans Anymore. For a while, this series was getting so bogged down in setting up Inhumans that it was hard to remember when SHIELD had other kinds of threats to contend with. Up front this season, we immediately get into the freaking supernatural with the intro of Ghost Rider (a subject we’ll discuss in detail in its own section here) and those odd ghost people that seem to be screwing with the minds of everyone they encounter. It’s certainly a different flavor to play with after the Inhuman-centric stuff of the last season or so. And even there, there’s a ongoing mystery as to what is going on regarding ol’ flaming skull head, the ghost people, the Darkhold book, and what’s going to happen to the people driven mad, like May.

Ghost Rider? Here’s the thing: when I first heard Ghost Rider was coming to the extended MCU after two movies of questionable quality and Nicolas Cage bugeyedness, I was confused. I mean, what, were we about to get Ghost Rider, Agent of SHIELD or something? After watching the first few episodes, I’m a bit more on board. Instead of the Ghost Rider in the movies of Johnny Blaze, we get the more current comic book incarnation of Robbie Reyes, who inflicts vengeance in a muscle car than a motorcycle. Although, unlike the fiery motorcycle helmet of the comics, we get Robbie full on fiery skull here.

“Got any aspirin? Feels like my head’s on fire! Oh wait, it is!”

And for a character that is known to inflict vengeance, Ghost Rider gets away with a bit of bloody stuff in this series. Besides now getting help from Daisy, we find out he has some kind of connection to those creepy ghost people, and the Darkhold book (a pull from the more dark supernatural Marvel books that is a pretty dangerous book to possess). How long the season will go with Ghost Rider seems a bit shaky, as I still can’t believe we got him in this thing in the first place.

Oh Yeah, I Almost Forgot The Robot… Yeah, John Hannah made a very lifelike Life Model Decoy and Fitz wants to help fix it up and keep it a secret, because there’s no way lying to your girlfriend about working on a lady robot that isn’t supposed to exist is going to cause trouble in the future.

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So if you saw the first two episodes of the new season, what are your thoughts? Let’s discuss in the comments below…