REVIEW: Marvel's Agents Of SHIELD, Season Four

 REVIEW: Marvel's Agents Of SHIELD, Season Four 

For its fourth season, Agents Of SHIELD took a slightly different approach to its typical structure. Instead of one long-form narrative across an entire twenty two episode season, Agents Of SHIELD decided to split its fourth season into three mini-arcs: 'Ghost Rider', 'LMD' and Agents Of Hydra. It was a smart decision that saw the show universally praised for its approach, as it offered a tighter and more concise storytelling approach that is rarely seen in U.S. drama productions.

The first arc is something that came as something of a surprise to many. Being a major comic-book protagonist within Marvel's publications, Ghost Rider (Gabriel Luna) is a character you would more typically expect to see debut in a mainline Marvel Cinematic Universe film. And yet here he is, making his screen debut within the MCU on the small screen, a decision that brings a fresh approach to the show in its fourth season. There have been numerous Ghost Riders in the comics, but the one we are introduced to here is Robbie Reyes, a mechanic who looks after his disabled brother Gabe (Lorenzo James Henrie).

They're an immensely likeable duo, a pair with a tragic past who were forced into their current situation both by circumstance, and by Robbie's own reckless behaviour. Whereas it wasn't this foolish decision to partake in a street race against the criminal gang known as the 'Fifth Street Locos' that directly resulted in his brother becoming wheelchair-bound, it was the event which led to the crash in the first place, as the Fifth Street Locos assumed it had been evil uncle Eli Morrow (Jose Zuniga) who had been driving the car. It makes Robbie a fascinatingly flawed character, as he is a man who has made this monumental mistake that has affected the life of his brother, and in the process has essentially sold his soul to the devil in order to become the Ghost Rider.

It's this basis of Robbie Reyes' character that makes his pairing with Daisy Johnson (Chloe Bennet) so interesting. She too is someone who has had these deeply traumatic experiences, and has turned to a life of vigilantism as 'Quake' in order to atone for her own past mistakes. Daisy has clearly been deeply affected by her experiences in the previous season, and particularly by the death of her boyfriend Lincoln Campbell, and it's almost like she finds something of a kindred spirit in her friendship with Robbie Reyes. They make for a great partnership throughout this half of the season, and it makes me wish we had seen more of Daisy and Robbie Reyes together after Season Four, rather than Robbie disappearing from the show entirely.

It's through Daisy and Robbie Reyes, and Daisy's connection to SHIELD, that we get this new development for Agents Of SHIELD in terms of its storytelling.  Before this point, Agents Of SHIELD had been very much a grounded spy drama series within a universe of superpowered beings, but here we see the first introduction of more mystical elements to the series. The Ghost Rider plot revolves around a magical artefact known as the 'Darkhold' (which has since been seen in WandaVision's final episodes), a book made from dark matter which features spells of immense power. Robbie's uncle Eli is eager to grab his hands on said book, and it's up to Ghost Rider and our SHIELD agents to get there first. It's such a unique and captivating direction for the series, incorporating everything from ghosts created by Eli to gateways to hell. This is the point where the show established itself as a programme that could go in all manners of directions, adopting this impressively versatile format that allowed the show to reinvent itself year on year. Want a space opera? Coming right up. How about a time travel adventure series? No problem. These writers will find a way to make it work.

The second arc for Season Four, entitled 'LMD', provides a similarly engaging plot. Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Radcliffe (John Hannah) decide to team up to work on an android that Radcliffe has created known as an LMD (Life Model Decoy). The LMD, it is revealed, is designed to protect and act as substitutes for SHIELD agents against oncoming threats. Their first android is AIDA (Mallory Jansen), who of course goes rogue after becoming corrupted by the Darkhold and decides to replace the agents with robotic duplicates - starting with May (Ming-Na Wen). It's a plot that actually does the robot uprising storyline - a common sci-fi plot thread - more successfully than Avengers: Age Of Ultron, displaying greater personal stakes and a more convincing threat to our agents than Ultron against the Avengers. It's a storyline that toys with the idea of who you can trust when anyone can be an android duplicate, or indeed has been concealing the creation of an android in the wake of Ultron's attack on Sokovia. 

It helps that you have the more human element with AIDA also. As impressive of a visual design as Ultron was, making him a wholly metallic creation means that you lose the emotional touch that's offered from being able to see distinctly humanoid features. Whereas with AIDA we can see these very human facial features on her face, and the lifelike skin that makes her appear as though she is one of us, and yet there's something so cold and distant about her behavioural quirks. It makes for a more eery and unnerving approach, as there is something both humanoid and alien about AIDA and the way she appears. Mallory Jansen plays her brilliantly; her performance has this distinctly robotic feel that's so uneasy to witness. She seems like a machine with computations running through her head, her programming journeying through her veins like blood in a human body. Mallory Jensen brings her to life like nobody else could, and it's hard to imagine how they could have cast this part any better.

Similarly as brilliant is John Hannah as Radcliffe. I have long maintained that John Hannah is one of Agents Of SHIELD's greatest castings, and this arc is a testament to his acting capabilities. He gifts the part with this great sense of wonder, as he marvels at his scientific creation, mixed with this fascinating shadiness that shows him as this scientist who has fallen down this murky and amoral path. He has this great mind, but he's messing with things which he can't control, and AIDA truly feels like an experiment too far.  These sort of scientists in film and television are always the most interesting to watch, especially as in Radcliffe's case he actually turns to the dark side and joins his android AIDA in trying to obtain the Darkhold, as well as allying himself with the terrorist organisation known as the Watchdogs, as science always has the potential to destroy as well as save the world we live in.

The third arc is where the Agents Of SHIELD writers really go wild with the direction of the series. 'Agents Of Hydra' sees our SHIELD agents - minus Daisy and Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) - thrown into a computer simulated world, where Hydra have taken over and established a new world order. Our agents can remember nothing about their actual lives outside of the Framework, and it's up to Daisy and Simmons - who have hacked their way inside - to convince their teammates that their world is a lie. It's a storyline that I absolutely adore, as it allows the writers to throw out the rulebook and give themselves free reign to do whatever they please. As this is an alternate simulated world, there are no boundaries as to who our characters could be reimagined as, or where they could align themselves in this new world, and you get these really creative takes on these characters we have grown to know and love as a result of this.

My favourite of this is the Framework version of Fitz, reimagined as a Hydra doctor. This is unquestionably the most evil and corrupt version of any of the SHIELD agents, and you can tell Iain De Caestecker is just relishing this chance to play a different side of Fitz. He's deeply uncaring, unsympathetic and totally unprincipled, living the life of a wealthy individual with absolutely no morals. He enjoys experimenting on people and causing them great pain, he even seems to like people being scared of him, and he's undoubtedly one of the best villains the show has produced. He's such a great piece of character writing that I'm not surprised the writers later established that Fitz was left traumatised by Doctor Fitz's treatment of Daisy and others within this simulated universe, and that they showed Fitz to be tormented by the figure of his evil alternate doppelgänger in his mind.  It's truly Agents Of SHIELD at its finest.

Equally as impressive is the twist regarding the returning Grant Ward (Brett Dalton). In Agents Of SHIELD's real world, Ward was a loyal devotee to Hydra. Naturally, therefore, when he appears we all expect him to be firmly by Hydra's side here too. However the show completely twists our expectations on its head, in what is a fantastic narrative reveal. Ward is, in fact, a double agent pretending to be loyal to Hydra's cause in order to take them down from the inside. It's such an ingenious move, as it makes such perfect sense; if the Framework changes characters and flips their allegiances, then of course Ward - who was a double agent for Hydra in real life - would instead become a double agent working on behalf of SHIELD. It also gives us something of a redemption arc for Ward, as he helps Daisy and Simmons track down their fellow agents and convince them to return to their world, and it's great to see the character firmly on the side of 'Good' for once. By this point we had seen the antagonistic Ward so many times that it had perhaps become a tad predictable by the time of the fourth season, so it's good that the writers decided to shake things up here and give us the exact opposite. It's a very creative use of the character.

God does this arc really pull on the heartstrings though, as the Framework gifts Mack (Henry Simmons) a life where he is the father of a daughter called Hope (Jordan Rivera). The Framework is very cruel indeed, to make a person believe that they have a daughter who doesn't exist. It's so depressing knowing that Mack will have to agree to abandon his daughter and return to the real world, and forms such an emotional end to this most monumental of seasons, and Henry Simmons plays it beautifully. You really do feel his grief and hurt at having to admit his daughter is not real, and turn his back on her in order to head home. It's such a harsh plot point, but it leaves such a devastating and heartfelt impact that the show feels totally justified in going in that direction. What an end to a season, and what a way to just tug at our heartstrings.

Overall, Agents Of SHIELD's fourth season is nothing short of a televisual masterpiece. Adopting the structure of three mini arcs gifts the season an incredibly varied approach; each story strand feels distinctive from anything that came before. It introduces one of the show's greatest supporting characters in Robbie Reyes as Ghost Rider, offers a more successful approach to the robot uprising storyline than Avengers: Age Of Ultron with AIDA and gives us a fascinating 'What If' plot regarding the magnificent concept of the Framework's Hydra-infested world. It's a season full of so much creativity and imagination, and offers some of the MCU's best content yet.

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What are your thoughts on Agents Of SHIELD's fourth season? Let me know in the comments section.