Originally written August 7, 2017

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been interesting with how it’s attempted to run its schedule/segments of the season so far. The first season was kind of sporadic and was mostly of an episodic nature until it reached the end. Seasons 2 and 3 were split up into two halves, with the first halves and the second halves having basic main separate storylines, but still being connected in certain ways. Now, in season 4, the season is basically split up into three sections throughout its 22 episode run.

While there is a main storyline that connects all three sections, they still are pretty self-contained in certain aspects. I’ll briefly talk about each of the three parts without giving away any spoilers. The first part is Ghost Rider, and like the name implies it features famous Marvel superhero Ghost Rider, who now enters the MCU to help S.H.I.E.L.D. take down some strange ghost-like people. The second part is LMD, which stands for Life Model Decoy. This part is basically all about artificial intelligence, and deals a lot with the consequences of making robots that have human-like attributes. The third part is Agents of Hydra, which finds the team inside of an artificially created world. In this world, their life paths have been altered by making certain changes in their lives, and the consequences of these tiny differences take shape in big ways.

If I’m being honest, season 4 was a bit of a step back for me from seasons 2 and 3 (especially 2). I still find it to be better than season 1, but I just didn’t find this season to be as personal for the team as past seasons were. Interestingly, I’d say out of anyone the big focus in this season is on Fitz, who is my favorite character. So, you would think this would be my favorite, but I dunno, it just lacked that special something. My least favorite section of the season was actually Ghost Rider though. I did enjoy the LMD stuff a lot, and the Agents of Hydra stuff was really interesting most of the time too. I dunno though, I just felt like I wasn’t as excited about this season as I’ve been in the past.

In the end though, I will still defend this show. I feel that it was given an unfair shake because of a lackluster first half of its first season, but the show really has had a great bit of entertainment value since then. It’s not top-quality TV or anything, but it always manages to provide me with a fun escape and I like how it explores some of the less grand parts of the MCU that the movies don’t get to. I don’t know how long they can keep something like this going, but for now I did feel like season 4 was another strong addition to the show’s legacy.

4/5