But let’s rewind and play things out from the beginning. We started out with Daisy tracking down Ghost Rider and inserting herself as annoyingly as possible into his life. I want to make a pun about playing with fire, but I’ll resist. I wasn’t sure how quickly things would progress here. For a while it just seemed like an excuse for Daisy to give the audience some information on Reyes so that they knew him a little better.
It wasn’t until she got him angry that their scenes became a bit more interesting. We learned a little bit more about his motivations and that there’s some involvement between him and the energy plant in Pasadena.
Over in SHIELD territory, Coulson and May were getting ready to see the principle, i.e., the new head of SHIELD. His identity is being kept something of a secret and I have to wonder why. All we know is that his first name is “Jeffrey” and that’s about it. Oh, and that he’s an Inhuman. It seems that he’s something of a hero as well? Coulson says that he wanted a hero, someone the people would respect, to become the public face of SHIELD. All of these things lead to the theory that he could be Jeffrey Mace, also known as the Patriot or the third Captain America. He seems like he could be an interesting character, but it’s hard to say because we know so little about him.
One of the other plot lines dealt with the ghosts/spirits/demons that we saw a little bit in the first episode. It seems, at for the first set of episodes, that they will be the main draw. This is where the big Doctor Strange connections come in. The book they talked of, the Darkhold, is an artifact from the Doctor Strange comics and there was talk of a Momentum laboratory in New York… which happens to be where Doctor Strange takes place.
But whatever happened to them, happened years ago and it probably involves Ghost Rider? He seemed to know who that angry spirit was when he showed up to the plant and he took that photo. So there’s clearly something there.
It’s worth noting that I wasn’t entirely sure we would see more Ghost Rider transformations. They look good enough to not be cheap effects so I expected we’d get a big show during the opening episode and then just some more flaming weapons until sweeps or the mid-season finale. But nope, we’re already getting more of the Ghost Rider himself here and I hope they keep that up.
The only other interesting scene to note was when Fitz and Mack meant back up with Daisy. It was hard not to feel for Mack and Fitz when Daisy refused to go back with them. Even more so for Mack, who realized that Yo-Yo was stealing the meds behind his back. This whole selfish Daisy thing is getting a little much though. Maybe it’s because Lincoln never really became his own character and was never very interesting. His death didn’t mean anything so there’s a lack this feeling that Daisy lacks motivation for what she’s doing.
My hope is that we won’t be dealing with this for long. Things are starting to connect the story lines, so whether Daisy likes it or not, she’s going to become part of team SHIELD once again. Though… one has to wonder what’s going to become of May right? Where is she headed? Will she be stick around for long?
I’ll admit I totally thought that at least one of Mack and Fitz were going to die with the reactor meltdown. The introduction of Life Model Decoys (LMD) makes it so anyone who dies on the show can pretty much just come back to life. So don’t be surprised if someone is killed in the next few episodes and then revived as a LMD around the time of the mid-season finale.
Written by Peter Freeman, AGENTS OF SHIELD Beat Writer -- Click here to read Peter's posts
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