“Meet the New Boss” is episode two of season four of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
In the previous episode, “The Ghost”, the Ghost Rider and Daisy were both after the same ‘weapon’ – although it turns out that the Rider was following the guilty, not the supposed weapon. The weapon is a mysterious box which was captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. People who have opened the box have gone crazy and started killing each other, as a ghostly figure of a woman that came out of the box affected how they saw others when it touched them. May has been affected too.
This episode opens with that ghostly figure appearing the bedroom of a young boy at night. He senses something and gets out of bed, seeing the possibly-ghost. He attracts the attention of his father, and the ghost reappears, passing through his father, affecting how he sees people too. It seems that the house used to be the ghost’s, but hasn’t been for years.
The various old members of S.H.I.E.L.D. are not happy with the new director, as they do not trust him. Coulson had stepped down as he did not want to be the visible head of the agency. He and May are waiting to see the new director – the first time this season – and he appears a rather unimpressive political animal. ‘Appears’ not ‘is.’ The director is planning on taking S.H.I.E.L.D. public again and needs Coulson to help deal with Congress, as they need funding. The sources of money that Coulson had access to are apparently not available.
Daisy is following the Ghost Rider, and confronts him at his place of work, having found out an awful lot about his past and present life, enough that she can easily pass as an old school friend. Daisy thinks that the Ghost Rider is an Inhuman – which he isn’t – and demonstrates her own powers to him. She wants his help in working out why the various gangs are all working together. The meeting does not go well.
Fitz has discovered that the empty box is not empty; it is full of some unknown technology that simply couldn’t be seen. The material the box itself is made of has been tracked down to three labs belonging to Momentum Alternative Energy, all of which have been closed for years. One of these is in Pasadena, which is where the affected family at the beginning lived, so Mack and Fitz head out there – Simmons has to stay behind.
At the lab in question, there are a lot of these boxes, and all of them contain ghostly figures. The woman releases them, and it seems they have all been trapped for years. They are not happy about the condition they are in, and one at least partially blames the woman. It seems they were working on something, but were betrayed by an unknown person. The work involved a book and a dark hole. Given the presence of the Ghost Rider, this gives the conversation a bit of a Doom feel to it. Quite what is going on here isn’t revealed as yet.
May is seriously affected by the ghost, but she thinks that it’s everyone else who is, and doesn’t know why anyone else – bar the affected criminals they caught – can’t see what she does. This causes problems.