Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4; Ghost Rider

Ghost Rider appears in Season 4 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4; "Ghost Rider"

Ghost Rider rides again in Season four's first major story arc

When last we left the Ghost Rider saga, Johnny Blaze rode off into the Turkish sunset after saving a young boy. Now he has reappeared in Los Angeles where he's possessed Robbie Reyes, a young latino who drives a supercharged '69 Dodge Charger (why doesn't Ghost Rider ever possess some random dude who drives a beat up old Ford Taurus?).

Normally I hate reboots where the main character is drastically changed, but I am O.K. when it's with characters like Green Lantern, or Ghost Rider, which are really just offices held by different people. So I didn't mind Marvel's obvious attempt to bring diversity to its roster and court the massively growing Latin-American segment of the populace, but I have to admit to being more than a little surprised and pleased to see him popping up in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The Ghost Rider story arc comprises the first 9 episodes of Season 4. Up to this point the supernatural in the on screen Marvel Universe has been comprised of the Jack Kirby, Asgardian, is-it-really-magic-or-is-it-science-so-advanced-it-seems-like-magic variety. With the release of the film Doctor Strange, magic proper is introduced, and in the Ghost Rider arc, the infamous Darkhold from the comics appears. But Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. dials it back a bit, keeping it still a bit ambiguous - is it really magic, or is it inter-dimensional travel. Although, as Coulson puts it at one point when talking to Fitz:

Coulson: He claims he made a deal with the devil.

Fitz: Which is nonsense.
Coulson: You know, the rationalist in me wants to agree, but the skull on fire makes a pretty compelling argument for "Hail Satan".

The Ghost Rider story arc represents a welcome change of pace for the series. Frankly, the Human vs. Inhuman storyline was starting to wear pretty thin, especially since the X-Men films and the Heroes TV shows already explored the concept pretty extensively. It also takes this show into really high end superpower territory (really, can Ghost Rider even be killed?), but fortunately the showrunners have wisely chosen to make this a complete arc in only a third of the season rather than stretch it to a full 24 episodes.

***1/2 / *****