“The Good Samaritan” is episode six of season four of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
In the previous episode, “Lockup”, whilst Simmons was helping Director Mace with his live television interview with Senator Nadeer – during which Mace revealed he was an Inhuman, which boosted his popularity – Simmons realised that Mace was not telling the truth about one of his heroic actions. Which she told him she would wind up revealing in a polygraph, so now Mace has decided she doesn’t need to take them. At the end of the episode, Nadeer herself revealed to Mace that she knew about the events in the prison – and the presence of the Ghost Rider – something Mace himself didn’t know. So now she’s presumably blackmailing him as well. Not a good day for him.
Robbie Reyes’ uncle Eli was taken by Lucy Bauer whilst Reyes himself decided to deal with a member of the gang, the Fifth Street Locos, that crippled his brother; possibly the final member. Prior to his death, said banger had revealed that the attack was a contract, not random – so who set it up. Lucy now has Eli, so he can read the Darkhold for her – apparently as a ghost or whatever, it remains blank to her. When Eli read the book, it looked like it may have affected him in some way – just as it did Lucy and her husband when they originally found it. The Darkhold looks like it may be dangerous to read, let alone use.
This episode opens with Eli arriving at Momentum Energy Lab. Joe and Lucy have had a ‘breakthrough’ – one probably related to the Darkhold – and the team are going to do a new test. They succeed in creating a lump of carbon – out of nothing. Eli points out that this breaks the First Law of Thermodynamics and is worried by this. There are more bits from this past, and how what they were trying to do changed. It looks like the Darkhold corrupted Joe in some way.
In the present, Lucy has had Eli take stuff from the Momentum lab. She wants to retry the experiment, to see if it can be successful and so that she can become normal again. This will require more power, and Eli says if anything goes wrong, thousands could be killed.
Daisy visits Robbie’s brother Gabe, and says that she’s going to take him to meet him. Gabe thinks he’s figured out what Robbie is – a secret agent. Back at the S.H.I.E.L.D. base, Mace is sending Simmons off on a mission for the U.S. Government, one that is utterly secret and which he won’t tell her anything about. Could this be what Nadeer blackmailed him to do? Mace himself flies to the Zephyr to take Robbie and Daisy into custody. This does not quite go to plan.
Whilst Robbie, Daisy and Gabe are hiding from Mace, the truth comes out. Robbie had taken Gabe along with him to a street race with a member of the Fifth Street Locos, and they’d taken Eli’s car. On the way they were attacked by the Locos and the car crashes after they were both shot. Gabe says that he was rescued by the titular Good Samaritan who arrived on a motorbike and that he had thought Robbie was dead until the unseen biker bent over him and he moved. Robbie says that he was dead, and that he was offered a chance for revenge – which he took and was brought back to life. The biker – who Robbie says was the devil – had a flaming skull. Presumably the previous incarnation of the Ghost Rider.
At Momentum, May finds items taken that had been manufactured by a company called Isodyne. Isodyne is a company that Peggy Carter tangled with in season two of Agent Carter. The company closed down and its assets were taken over by another company called Roxxon – which is connected to Momentum.
Robbie’s isn’t the only secret revealed – who employed the Locos to attack him and Gabe is revealed and why, as well as what really happened back at Momentum.
No post-logo scene in this one, and where has Simmons been taken and why?