Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Ghost Rider: "Vengeance Comes" Teaser

     The newest teaser for season 4 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been released, featuring the coming vengeance of the Ghost Rider.  It doesn't give us a whole lot to go on for story, but does show us the darker more violent tone the new 10pm time slot would suggest.

     I've got an on-again-off-again relationship with the show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and I'm really torn here about their use of Ghost Rider.  I thought the first 6 episodes of the first season was garbage, but then returned and it got better towards the end of the season.  Then it got terrible once more, and slowly made more headway to become interesting again...  ...only to fall into another awful bout of poor writing and directing.
     Once Ghost Rider was announced they recaptured my attention.  Very skeptical attention.

     When a character that is a demon-possessed machine of vengeance is being added to the show, I'm a bit worried that Agents will turn him into something reminiscent of one of the CW's teen-angst filled heroes.  I've written about how I thought he'd be better off in an R-rated Netflix series, though the teaser holds some decent tones to alleviate my fears.  It has a couple shots right out of Stephen King's Christine, and a dash of the extremely underrated Charlie Sheen movie The Wraith (which is a much better Ghost Rider film than the actual Ghost Rider films).

     The choice of Robbie Reyes does make a bit more sense for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and even though I thought his initial comic book appearance was less-than-spectacular, the idea behind him was great.  He is an interesting new take on the character, and might even get better as the creators say they'll be doing their own version of him.  Hopefully the writers of the show can do better with him than his comic series did.  There's a lot of potential here, don't screw it up Marvel.  They neutered Agent Coulson by taking all his wit-filled secretive badassery away.  Seriously, go back and re-watch Iron Man and Thor and see how much better he is in those roles.  The same thing happened to Agent Carter.  Her television show lost the magic of what made her special by relegating things to petty romantic dramas.

     To be fair, this teaser looks much better than most of the 3rd season, so I remain hesitantly optimistic.  I just wish he was more grimy and dirty looking- like a real mechanic.  Oil stained hands, jacket scuffed to hell, and so on.  He looks too damn clean.
     And they need to fix the skull.  As of now it looks pretty bad.  They really, really should fix it.

     Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns Sept. 20th, @ 10pm ET on ABC.

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