SYNOPSIS
While looking at an apartment to rent, Jemma Simmons is confronted by an injured Daisy Johnson, who needs help hacking into SHIELD's database to find out how the Watchdogs are locating Inhumans. When Jemma refuses, Daisy pulls out a gun and demands her help. Meanwhile, at a prison in Los Angeles, Coulson visits Eli Morrow, an engineer who worked at Momentum Lab with Lucy and Joseph Bauer. Eli is in prison for beating Joseph into a coma following the "accident" that took the lives of their other Momentum coworkers. Not wanting to involve himself any deeper, Eli refuses to talk to Coulson and tells him to leave. Outside the prison, Coulson and Mack see Robbie Reyes drive by, and Mack immediately recognizes him as the Ghost Rider that saved him at Momentum Labs. Coulson and Mack chase Robbie through Los Angeles, but in a drainage gulley Robbie drives straight into the cloaked SHIELD Quinjet, knocking him unconscious and wrecking the car.
After getting the information from SHIELD's database, Jemma says that every registered Inhuman has a wristband that acts as a locating device. When they look at SHIELD's database, they see that a third party is indeed searching through the wristband information and has stopped on J.T. James, who Daisy thinks will be the Watchdogs' next victim. Inside the Quinjet, Coulson notices that Reyes' car has "healed itself" from the wreck. He talks to Robbie, who is locked in a containment cell, and calls him a murderer. Robbie states that he only kills those who deserve it, and that he got his power by making a deal with the Devil. Realizing that Daisy trusted Robbie, Coulson unlocks the cell and lets him out. Robbie has a brief stand-off with Coulson, but soon come to an agreement that Robbie will talk to his uncle Eli to get answers about the "ghosts", who are also vulnerable to the Ghost Rider and will be a valuable ally.
Daisy and Jemma find James working in a fireworks store and learn that he's bitter about his life following his experience with Hive. He tells them that if they meet him later at a storage unit he'll give them something that could help them. At the prison, Robbie talks to Eli about what happened at Momentum Labs, with a regretful Eli apologizing for letting his nephews down. When Robbie reveals that Lucy Bauer is still alive and killing people, Eli says that she'll be going after "the book" that gave them the knowledge to build a Quantum Power Generator that would allow them to create matter from nothing. In the Quinjet, Mack gets a signal telling them that "an asset" needs their help. Meanwhile, the comatose Joseph Bauer is visited by Lucy, who wakes him up and demands to know where the book is.
At the storage units, Daisy and Jemma are surrounded by the Watchdogs. James has been working with them because of his own feelings of loathing about being an Inhuman and wants to help exterminate his kind. The women briefly escape into the storage facility, but James finds them using fireworks charged with his flame power. He uses a chain that he sets on fire and whips behind him, only for it to be caught by Robbie, who has arrived with Coulson and Mack to save them. James attempts to blow Robbie up, but Reyes transforms into the Ghost Rider and slams James into a wall. The wall explodes and the two men fall into a bunch of stored fireworks, which quickly light on fire and explode. The others have all escaped outside and after the explosion they see Robbie dragging an unconscious James, having decided not to kill him. Later, on the Quinjet, Coulson tells Robbie and Daisy that SHIELD needs them to stop Lucy and retrieve the book, which is called the Darkhold.
REVIEW
After last week's detour into heavy Inhumans territory, Agents of SHIELD turns the focus back on Robbie Reyes and the Momentum Labs plot line, which makes for a much more interesting and entertaining episode.
Even though I saw all of the promotion for this season and its focus on Ghost Rider's addition to the cast, I don't think I was prepared for just how much the character was going to be incorporated into the show. I'm certainly not complaining, because whenever the focus IS on Robbie Reyes the show grabs my attention and holds it firmly in its grasp. I'm still not much interested in the SHIELD-centric subplots (there's a whole subplot about the Life Model Decoy Aida and Agent May that I didn't even bother to include in the synopsis), but the Ghost Rider stuff is absolutely engaging on just about every level.
Well, just about every level, yeah, because the Momentum Labs stuff is feeling a bit disconnected at this point, and that's probably because the pseudo-science behind it has yet to be adequately explained. The focus on Momentum's mystery is being fed to us in drips, and this week's introduction of Eli Morrow doesn't do a whole lot to shine any light on what's going on. One major event, though, is the revelation of the Darkhold being behind Momentum's experiments. That was one of the two moments in this episode that made me squeal like a 12-year old girl, the Book of Sins being prominently featured as the show seems to fully embrace Marvel's horror-oriented ephemera. With all of the scientific and Inhumans related stuff, SHIELD seems to be fully in its comfort zone; not so much with the Darkhold and Ghost Rider, and it makes the show unpredictable for both the characters and the viewers.
The other squeal-worthy moment was the face of between Robbie Reyes and JT James, who goes by the codename "Hellfire". I understand that in the show James is an Inhuman with flame-power, fair enough, but the comics rooted the character with tertiary connections to Ghost Rider (hence "Hellfire"). That connection may not be in this episode, but seeing the two characters together made for a fantastic moment, especially when that hellfire chain starts getting whipped around. Speaking of Ghost Rider, I again have to say that Gabriel Luna is the absolute MVP of not just this episode, but the season as a whole so far. His portrayal of Robbie Reyes, despite being significantly different from the comics, is captivating and I just keep wanting to see more of him as this character.
So, while last week was a bit of a disappointment, "Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire" (great episode title, by the way) returns the show's forward movement for the Ghost Rider plot and has once again made me desperate to see the next episode.
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