Agents of SHIELD takes a look at the weird and unusual corners of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For Season 4, the team will have to tackle Ghost Rider and the supernatural dealings while still trying to deal with the growing number of Inhumans.
The move to the 10 o’clock timeslot helped the Agents of SHIELD team, Executive Producer Jeph Loeb told press during a New York Comic Con roundtable, “it helped that it took us in a new direction, some of the supernatural. And moving up to 10 o’clock, if we were going to do Ghost Rider right, it would have to be at a level of action that we might not have done at 9 o’clock.”
But adapting Ghost Rider, let alone for network television, was no small task production-wise or trying to get the many fans of The Spirit of Vengeance behind it as Loeb told us how the process of getting the walking, flaming skull on the screen was made possible.
“That’s where Mark Kolpack [visual effects supervisor] and Chris Jeremy, who is in charge of post [production] for us, make it work,” Loeb said. “All in all, it’s not inexpensive but we seem to have managed to keep the show at the level we always stayed at. [SHIELD’s] never been a big FX show, not at the expense of character, drama or humor but adding a flaming head has certainly been a challenge. But folks seem to like it.”
Many casual fans and comic book purists identify Ghost Rider as Johnny Blaze, who has been adapted in a couple movies already, but Loeb believes that those previous attempts have benefited introducing Robbie Reyes as the new Ghost Rider in Agents of SHIELD, and even compares it to Marvel and Netflix’s Daredevil series.
“[The audience] certainly had something to compare [Ghost Rider] to and I think we hit that same sort of lucky button we hit when we told people we were making a Daredevil television show, to compare it to something else as well,” Loeb said. “That’s something we take a lot of pride in and everybody in Marvel television has been able to take these characters that up to a certain point have not been connecting with the audience, I’m sure they connected with some of the audience, but not in the way that they seem to be now. So whether it’s with SHIELD and Ghost Rider, Daredevil or Punisher, it’s one of the things we really enjoy.”
As for the Inhumans, who were a huge part of Season 2 and 3 of SHIELD, their continued inclusion in the series even after the spotlight has moved onto Ghost Rider is a purposeful one.
“The Inhumans are an important part of what’s going on, and really gives us a nice easy jump on place for the audience to understand what it is that SHIELD does because there’s now the Sokovia Accords. It’s a very simple idea which is they find them they register them and if they don’t want to register they get taken in,” Loeb said. “By using the Inhumans and the magic of the show, any moment that your interaction with the Terrigen Crystals an Inhuman can pop up it gives story. And one of the things Jeffrey Bell [series writer] tells us all the time is there’s no point in introducing a character that doesn’t generate story. And so that’s one of the things that we always look at, which is ‘if we’re going to do this how does it affect not just the first episode or the third episode or the eighth episode but all 22 episodes of a season.”
The new character Loeb is talking about is the new Director of SHIELD, Jeffrey Mace (better known as The Patriot), who is also an Inhuman and will likely be making a lot of waves in the upcoming season. Not to mention everyone’s favorite Inhuman, Daisy Johnson, is still running around solving crimes/mysteries without SHIELD; it will be only a matter of time before these two Inhumans meet.
Agents of SHIELD airs Tuesdays on ABC at 10 p.m.
So what do you think of Loeb’s comments regarding Ghost Rider and the Inhumans this season? Let us know in the comments section below.
