Agents of SHIELD was on a break, but it is coming back this week. Here is the recap of the latest episode, The Good Samaritan, where we get Ghost Rider’s origin story, and see some flashbacks to when Eli worked at Momentum Labs. Also, check out our thoughts on the episode!
- His thoughts on The Good Samaritan, Episode 406 of Agents of SHIELD
- Her thoughts on Agents of SHIELD, Season 4 Episode 6: The Good Samaritan
This episode of Agents of SHIELD, titled The Good Samaritan, begins with a flashback, where Eli is very perturbed about an experiment that Joseph had performed—where they essentially made matter from thin air, and wound up with excess energy as a result of the experiment. Eli expresses his concerns to Lucy, who reveals that a book provided the ability to do this. Eli asks about this book, but Joseph interrupts, preventing Eli from asking more questions.
We see that Joseph had become a recluse, not wanting the book to be in anyone else’s hands. The experiments became even more radical too, making matter from nothing.
In the present day, May has a SHIELD team investigating Momentum Labs, Joseph and Lucy’s old lab, and while Fitz watches from a camera feed, he realizes that there is stuff missing from the lab. He also has an epiphany—Lucy must be looking for a place with an excessive amount of energy to try to re-solidify herself.
Meanwhile, Gabriel Reyes, Robbie’s brother has been concerned about his brother, and is calling around to figure out where he is. Daisy then shows up and tells him she will take Gabe to him, and he says he isn’t getting in a “car” with her. Daisy’s response is “Who said anything about a car?” We hear the Quinjet landing outside.
Gabriel talks to his brother, and Gabriel tells Robbie that he knows what he has been up to. Robbie thinks his secret is out, but Gabriel is actually a bit off in what he thinks is going on—he thinks Robbie is a secret agent of some sort. Daisy goes along with this to help Robbie out.
As for Eli and Lucy, they have found a new location to carry out their experiments, which looks to have sufficient power, according to Lucy. Eli tries to insist that these experiments could be dangerous, but Lucy seems to not really care.
Mace, meanwhile, has a secret mission for Simmons, to which she reluctantly agrees. It is so secret of a mission, that it requires her to wear a black hood to head to wherever the mission is. Mace, meanwhile, has his own mission to attend to—locating Daisy and Ghost Rider. Both of which he presumes are aboard Coulson’s Quinjet.
Turns out he is not entirely correct. When Mace boards Coulson’s jet, Mack hurriedly ushers Robbie, Gabriel and Daisy into the Jet’s containment module, which is then put to hang outside the jet. Mace has his men search the plane, and eventually tells Coulson he is not fooled by the ruse, and has the containment module brought up into the plane.
While outside the plane, Robbie decides to come clean about who he is—Ghost Rider. He retells the story of how he convinced Gabriel to come with him to a race rather than do homework, and explains how some gang members attacked them. Gabriel then recounts how he remembers a “Good Samaritan” who had helped them out, and went on his way. As it turns out, Robbie says Gabriel remembered this wrong—this “Good Samaritan” was, as Robbie says, the devil, which passed the ability on to him. Gabriel then realizes how many people Robbie has killed, and Robbie tries to explain it is not his fault, but the Ghost Rider’s fault.
Robbie explained his abilities just in time to Gabriel though, as when the containment module is brought back up, the Ghost Rider senses the danger he is in, and ignites alive in Robbie, and Robbie punches his way out of the containment module. He attacks Mace, who is pretty easily taken down by Robbie. Phil tells Robbie that they will find Eli, and Gabriel chimes in to try to calm Robbie down, which seems to cool him off both figuratively and literally.
After things have calmed down, Mace and Coulson discuss the next move. Mace wants Daisy and especially Robbie to answer for their crimes, even more so since SHIELD has been harboring them. Coulson tells Mace there’s a problem with this—they have no way to contain Robbie. And besides, he could be useful in tracking down Lucy. Mace seems to agree to this for now.
Fitz, meanwhile, has figured out where Lucy and Eli are—Roxxon Corporation. (it is also worth nothing that Fitz is concerned about Simmons, and how she has gone MIA, it seems).
A team is sent down to investigate Roxxon, including Robbie. Unfortunately, Daisy is unable to hack into Roxxon’s system, so the team has little information to go off of. The group runs into Lucy pretty quickly. Robbie decides to hang back and deal with her. As they fight though, Lucy says that Joseph hired gangsters to kill Eli, not him and his brother. Then Lucy says that this whole plan was Eli’s idea—not theirs.
We get one final flashback in the episode, where we see that Eli wasn’t really concerned about anyone else, but just wanted the power for himself. Eli was the one who turned Lucy, Joseph, and the others into ghosts.
Robbie still puts an end to Lucy, burning her up like we have seen him do before. We then see that Fitz and Coulson have tried to find Eli and succeeded, but not before Eli has locked himself in the experimental chamber and initializes the machine. After the machine goes off, Coulson, Fitz, and Robbie have disappeared, and Eli now seems to have gained the ability to produce matter from nothing.
His Thoughts on Agents of SHIELD, Season 4 Episode 6: The Good Samaritan
I am typically am not a fan of how television has these 180 degree turns with characters, making someone who seemingly is a good guy turn out to be the arch nemesis. It seems like a cheap way to pull the rug out from under the audience, and it is overused quite a bit. But in this case, it was at least tolerable. There was enough there that I could believe that Eli was a bad guy—even though he played the part of not wanting to get out of jail (this borderlines on being irritating—wouldn’t he want to get out of jail to get back to this book? Was he really trying to play the long game and hope SHIELD would come crawling back for him again?).
I really thought the back-story was done well for Robbie, and how he became the Ghost Rider. What is interesting is they made it seem like Johnny Blaze (the character Nicholas Cage portrayed) was the person who passed on their power to Robbie, which is a good way to continue the continuity in a way without having to keep going with Johnny Blaze. It also makes me wonder if we will be seeing Robbie pass the power on to someone else by the end of the season, or if Robbie will be keeping it for the long term.
A couple other quick notes about the episode though—it was pretty mysterious how Simmons was sent off to a location without knowing where she was going, and no one knowing how long she would be gone. It was pretty creepy. But the flip side is that so far, Mace has not shown himself to be a villain, and is always working what he believes is the right thing, so I don’t think she is being sent off to her doom.
Overall, I think of the superhero shows currently on TV, Agents of SHIELD has been my favorite this season. Hopefully the season continues to be interesting, as so far I am looking forward to the next episodes, unlike other shows that feel like they are just slogging along.
Her Thoughts on Agents of SHIELD, Season 4 Episode 6: The Good Samaritan
As I may have mentioned before, I’m not really all that familiar with Ghost Rider, or his origin story. I haven’t even seen the movie with Nicholas Cage, mainly because it looked so terrible. I do know that the movie version of Ghost Rider is a different person than Robbie Reyes though. In any case, I thought that the origin story here was done really well and was very interesting. We also got some backstory on Gabe in the process, and get to know what kind of a person both he and Robbie were before the accident. So far, I am really enjoying all the episodes with Ghost Rider, and think that Gabriel Luna is doing a fantastic job portraying Robbie Reyes.
It was kind of random that Eli turned out to be the bad guy, though. I feel a little bad for all those ghost people that Ghost Rider burned up. But yeah, way to leave us hanging with that cliffhanger for so many weeks! Agents of SHIELD is definitely keeping me interested this season.
Scenes from Agents of SHIELD, Season 4 Episode 7: Deals With Our Devils
Preview of Season 4 Episode 7 of Agents of SHIELD
