4.4Daisy takes on a blast from the past with an old friend, Mack and Coulson have a fiery showdown of their own, and May is getting bored of the endless tests Radcliffe is doing on her newly rebooted brain, though on the plus (?) side she does seem to have taken a shine to his new assistant.

One of those episodes in which the action is thin on the ground (limited in fact to two scenes) but with plenty of character interaction, you’d be forgiven for thinking this episode was longer than it actually is.

Lured in by what has to be the most obvious setup in history, Simmons ends up helping out Daisy a lot more than either of them probably intended, patching up her wounds and then heading out with her to warn a former associate inhuman that he seems to be next on the Watchdogs hitlist. This being SHIELD, things are never quite as straightforward as they might appear, and the revelation they both find is one that shakes Daisy to her very core.

Meanwhile, Coulson and Mack encounter Robbie once again after going to see if his Uncle might want to tell them anything that might help with tracking down the current major threat of ghostly nasties running around the place. With the Uncle proving less than helpful, they chase after Robbie instead, and after an amusing end to that particular car chase, they persuade him, against his better judgement, to help them out.

The ghostly Doctor Lucy meanwhile, is dead set on her quest to find the mysterious book known as the Darkhold – an artefact of great power and knowledge which it seems pretty much everyone who is anyone has been searching for since time immemorial. It seems that her husband, in a coma since an encounter with Robbie’s uncle, might be the key to finding it, although when she does get hold of it, it might not quite give her the answers that she’s after.

And then there’s May, wired up to various and sundry machines after her (a little more than) near-death experience as Holden tries to get as much data as possible from her to devise an antidote that doesn’t involve killing people. Ada – much to Fitz’s horror – is happily helping out with the process, and May ironically takes quite a shine to the straight-talking Android (while obviously not realising what she is).

It all adds up to an odd episode where the old band is back together, only not quite. An odd, jarring sensation underlies every interaction between characters that you really would expect to be greeting each other with hugs and tears of relief. Whatever else you take from this, this isn’t a reunion that anyone is crazy about – it’s a banding together of people driven by necessity more than anything else. In that respect, it starts to feel like the SHIELD agents are becoming their own little televisual version of the Avengers, with disparate personalities and agendas being subverted only by the existence of a larger threat, and the very real feeling that once that threat is dealt with, that other stuff is going to resurface once again.

But what’s important is that the show really feels like its beating heart is back in earnest. SHIELD at its best was never about big fights and explosive special effects, but the relationships that existed between the characters. The fact that there are only two action sequences here is therefore not a fault, but a strength, and more importantly is done in such a way as to feel organic rather than just hiding the TV budget that can never compete with its cinematic counterparts. This feels like it was always supposed to – a day to day part of that larger, cinema driven franchise. And it feels good.

Verdict: I worried that introducing Ghost Rider into a show that was as (relatively) grounded as SHIELD wouldn’t work. In fact, it has proved exactly the shot in the arm that the series required. The combination of Reyes’ supernatural abilities with the current major antagonist is allowing the series to tread new ground with old characters, and a show that could be starting to feel stale as it hits its fourth season instead feels rejuvenated. Cracking stuff. 9/10

Greg D. Smith