Agents of SHIELD - 'The Ghost'

"So... do we have a real role in this series anymore?"
"... I have an exploding pen."

The times they are a'changing (again,) and the Agents of SHIELD are moving on. but don't make the mistake of assuming that this means it isn't still all about Daisy, because it is.

Coulson and Mack are running a globe-trotting team on the Zephyr, while May trains and leads the SHIELD strike team; Fitz is head of a large engineering team, and Simmons is the scientific adviser to the - as yet unseen - Director, who was appointed by the President when SHIELD became more public again. and Daisy? Daisy is running around having adventures and taking down the Watchdogs as the vigilante Quake, with help on the QT from Yo-Yo Rodriguez, who is acting as a loosely affiliated and Accord-approved SHIELD asset while failing to get Mack to put out.

After Daisy's takedown of an Aryan Brotherhood heist crew is interrupted by a flaming Dodge Charger, May subtly diverts Team Zephyr to investigate the burning car as an excuse to follow up on the Quake connection. As Daisy is diverted looking into what she takes to be an Inhuman killer vigilante known as 'the Rider', the team actually leapfrog her on the initial case, tracking the sale of a stolen relic which makes people go crazy and kill each other. Back at the lab, meanwhile, Fitz joins dubious transhumanist asset Dr Holden Radcliffe for an evening of niche football (the League Cup, if you will) and the surprise unveiling of Ada(1), a prototype Life Model Decoy driven by his personal digital assistant (not, as he makes clear in the wake of the Ultron brouhaha, an AI.)

I'm... a little conflicted on this matter. Fitz insists on 'she' instead of 'it', presumably to show that he is more likely to treat a creation as an individual than Radcliffe, but does so based on 'her' initial nakedness, which is pretty anatomically deterministic. He also decides that they need to keep the project secret from Simmons until they perfect the technology, as Simmons would have to lie to the Director or risk losing her position of favour, which she angrily defends to May as her attempt to make sure someone is in place to keep an eye on their new boss.

Daisy tracks the Charger to scrapyard mechanic Robbie Reyes, a nice guy who looks after a younger brother in a wheelchair and goes out at night to burn people in the soul. Confronted by her powers, he notes that she 'has the Devil in' her as well. He insists that those he kills are all deserving of punishment, and moreover that he does not decide who is deserving of punishment. Then his entire head burns down to a flaming skull, because surprise(2)! he's the Ghost Rider.

"Damn! My head's on fire. Why didn't you tell me?"
"I thought it was a look!"

Props here for using the lesser known, minority version of the character instead of Johnny Blaze, although I won't be truly happy(3) until we have a wild west flashback episode with the Phantom Rider and the cast playing old timey folks.

He beats Daisy in a fight and she begs him to kill her, because clearly she's still in the whole post-Hive self-loathing thing.

Back with the actual Agents of SHIELD, the relic buy turns ugly when the buyer opens the box and everyone starts shooting. May's strike team turn up and take down the bad guys, but as she is playing a celebratory game of backgammon with Coulson, she sees Coulson's face turn into a hollow-eyed mask of horror, just as those of the buyer's goons did. I'm calling it now that this is a sign that May is infected by the relic, causing her to see others as threatening aliens, which if nothing else is a timely political allegory.

'The Ghost' is a pretty strong episode of Agents of SHIELD, plus a so-so episode of Quake: Action Inhuman. Apparently, Daisy still rates almost half the screen time despite not being an Agent of SHIELD anymore. In fairness, this is part of a major breaking up of the band as SHIELD is restored to government control and tied into enforcement of the Sokovia Accords, and once more it does feel a little as if the show is stuck being the reactive junior partner of the MCU and thus forced to execute radical changes in plot based on the fixed, and often secretive twists of the movies. As a result, the ongoing plot of the series often suffers from a certain inconsistency, not truly offset by the palliative nod of being granted first crack at responding to those twists.

(1) The subtitles said 'Aida', but I'm assuming that a scientist would name his digital personal assistant after Ada Lovelace rather than an opera, or that if he did he would pronounce it Aye-ee-da.
(2) Or, you know, not, since they're billing this season as 'Agents of SHIELD: Ghost Rider'.
(3) With this series. I'm not saying that this is the sole and ultimate goal of my life; I have a daughter I want to see grow up to change the world for starters.