“The Ghost” is episode one of season four of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The tail end of the season three finale, “Ascension”, was set six months after the rest of the episode, and S.H.I.E.L.D. were hunting Daisy – although it appeared to be with an intentional degree of incompetence. There was also a reference to a new director.
This episode opens with a vehicle full of armed men driving really fast as Daisy gets ready somewhere else. The car belonging to the men gets disabled, and they start panicking that he will show up, as Daisy arrives herself. She’s been tracking a weapon that they stole. Then a Dodge Charger arrives, and one of the armed men shoots it with an RPG. The Charger is blown in the air and crashes back down on fire – but it’s still going. Its driver kills most of the men, and the only glimpse that Daisy gets is of something with a flaming skull.
Mack and Coulson are called back to base on the Zephyr, where May is training new recruits. May, it turns out, was the one who called them back, because Daisy was glimpsed at the scene. Coulson and Mack have been ordered not to get involved with her case, as the new director feels that they may have not been putting their all into it. May tells them about the violent killings in Los Angeles, so that they can get there before the military get involved, because if Daisy was responsible, the orders will be shoot to kill. Daisy, known to the public as Quake, is hitting banks, but according to Coulson she’s going after the financing behind the Watchdogs – who seem to be getting to be a much bigger threat. It seems, following Lincoln’s sacrifice, that Daisy has deliberately cut herself off from the others to stop more pain.
In Los Angeles, Daisy is tracking a weapon that presumably the Watchdogs want, and a mysterious person known only as the Ghost Rider is apparently tracking it as well. Only a lot more violently, as he’s killed a lot of people. Coulson and Mack get involved in tracking this weapon as well, at least partially to find out what Daisy is doing.
Fitz and Simmons are now close to the new, unseen and unnamed, director. Nothing much is known, except he’s paranoid about what happened the last time S.H.I.E.L.D. was government-run (as it apparently is again) – HYDRA took control – and that he picks really poor acronyms. There have been a lot of changes at S.H.I.E.L.D., and the previous team has been largely split up. With the Sokovia Accords signed and HYDRA crushed, it seems S.H.I.E.L.D. is once again back in the fold.
Dr Radcliffe, at the end of “Ascension”, was apparently building a body. And he has, a new body for his digital assistant Aida. Fitz is not happy when he finds out about this, as this goes beyond what Radcliffe is allowed to do without permission, especially given fears over what happened with Ultron. Radcliffe says that his creation will be able to cross the uncanny valley.
One complaint about Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been the lack of truly big name characters appearing in it. Nick Fury has had a couple of cameos and the Asgardians Lady Sif and Lorelei appeared in “Yes Men” but overall there haven’t been bigger characters in the show. Even Hive, the main villain for much of season three, is perhaps not that big a character. The Ghost Rider may not be the in top tier of Marvel characters, but he’s big enough to have as been in two feature films starring Nicolas Cage, the fairly decent original film and the truly dreadful Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Finally, one of the bigger names appears in the series.