The
fourth season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
has been firing on all cylinders, and the decision to bring in Ghost Rider as the
focus of the first half-season arc was a good one. I love Robbie as a character, what he brings
to the show, and how his presence has affected the team (some Robbie-related
spoilers.)
Right
from the start, something I love about Robbie is how out-of-nowhere he is. He’s been operating, in the shadows, as the
Ghost Rider for a while, but it doesn’t appear that S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever heard
of him until his path intersects with theirs.
They haven’t heard the stories around his LA neighborhood about the
mysterious figure of vengeance with the face of the devil (well, flaming skull,
but let’s not split hairs,) nor have they seen the graffiti keeping record of
the scores he’s settling. On shows like
this, things can sometimes get too insular as time goes on, with everyone being
interconnected somehow and every seemingly-small incident getting tied to a
deeper conspiracy. Robbie, though, is
someone nobody expected. Even though
he’s been there and he’s been noticed, if only enough to become an urban
legend, S.H.I.E.L.D. hasn’t seen him.
He’s
absolutely new. In a world populated by
comic-book insanity, we’ve seen Inhumans and augmented humans, successful
science experiments and science experiments gone horribly wrong, aliens and
powerful alien artifacts in human hands.
But from what we’ve seen, Robbie is none of those things. There’s no one like him (other than the
person who passed the Rider onto him.)
Before meeting Daisy and then coming into contact with S.H.I.E.L.D., the
only people who really know about him
aren’t alive to tell about it. He’s been
living with this alone, contextualizing it the only way he knows how – he
believes the devil is inside him, and though he carries it like a curse, there
are also times when he’s glad to give it the driver’s seat.
It’s not
a Hulk situation, although the Rider can seemingly be “triggered” when Robbie’s
angry (he has some level of control over when the Rider shows its face, but
it’s not entirely clear how much.) The
Rider is a definite, separate entity, as evidenced by the fact that it can be passed from one person to
another. Robbie negotiates with it to an
extent, lets it feed on his anger and vengeance in exchange for taking the
wheel down dark paths he couldn’t take on his own. We’ve seen, though, moments when he’s at odds
with it, when its agenda doesn’t align with his. It’s interesting; obviously, he had no idea
what he was getting into when he signed up for this, but he’s made a kind of
troubled peace with it, seeming to regard the loss of his soul (in his mind) as
a fair price for his vengeance, and yet, he hasn’t given himself entirely over
to it.
There are
plenty of stories about what happens when people lose themselves in their
desire for revenge – from the Count of Monte Cristo to Sweeney Todd – and this
is definitely a compelling one. Robbie
clearly views himself as tainted, damned, beyond redemption, but he also tries
to hold onto his old ties (his reason for starting this in the first place – it
seems that’s how it always goes) by keeping that part of himself hidden. He’s by no stretch a hero, but he’s not a
villain, either. He’s something
different, something in-between, even more so, I’d say, than someone like the
Punisher. Still, stories of people
getting lost in their own vengeance don’t tend to end well; I really hope we
get to see more of him wrestling with his demons.
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