Agents of Shield Season 4 Review (non-spoilery)
Yeah, yeah, I know I'm slow on all my reviews due to not watching shows live, but I still like to post all my reviews for anyone who might be interested. With that said, wowsers, I actually REALLY liked this last season of Agents of Shield. For those unaware, due to dropping TV ratings in previous seasons of the show, many expected this to be the final season of AOS. However, rather than cutting back budgets and throwing in the towel, its almost like Marvel decided to do the complete opposite and go all out on this thing. Not only did they get the go-ahead to use Ghost Rider (Robbie Reyes Ghost Rider, not Johnny Blaze), when many assumed that character was reserved for the movies, but they also really stepped up their game in all other areas, including seemingly their budgets. This is somewhat unheard of too in the TV land when ratings are falling, not climbing.
Well, this last all-in call by Marvel paid off, especially for me. Probably the biggest highlight of the show was Ghost Rider. I thought Gabriel Luna was awesome in the show. When I say awesome, I mean that he acted and was cast so well that his character was pretty much movie quality. In fact, he'd be one of those guys that could cross over into the movies and not seem slightly out of place. Ghost Rider wasn't all about the actor either as I thought they did an amazing job with his special effects as well as how they played him into the story. Obviously, Marvel blew a lot of their visual effects budget on him, but it paid off in the end. Lastly, on the story side of things, how they used him as the key component to blending the AOS world into this new Doctor Strange world of magic, supernatural, and multi-verse different dimensions was key too.
Story-wise, I really liked how the season was essentially broken into pretty much two separate story-lines with one overarching story line, and they did a really good job at this. What this does is helps to avoid a lot of the pitfalls of carrying one story for a whopping 22 episodes. I was also super into where they went with both stories. The first story line is essentially the Ghost Rider story, but I'll avoid naming the second in an attempt to avoid any spoilers.
Lastly, character-wise, I came away super impressed. The highlight characters for me was obviously first of all Ghost Rider, but also probably Fitz. What they did emotionally with Fitz, especially later on, was tremendous. His acting was nuts and took me places I didn't know he could go. The show even took someone like Agent May, who I've brutalized since Season 1, and turned her into someone I can at least tolerate now, and that says a lot. As for others like Coulson, Simmons, Mack and Daisy, they were all solid as usual. Daisy was another one where she went from me not being crazy about her to actually kind of liking her. I guess one character I didn't really care for overall was The Patriot. They made him into too much of an over-the-top character for my liking, but at least he got better as the season went on.
Anyway, if you can't tell, I really liked this season and this will go down easily as one of my favorite Marvel shows yet. In fact, I now can't wait for Season 5, especially with where they are seemingly going with it (think big). I just hope others out there are willing to give this series another shot because I think this show is finally what everyone was hoping the show would be in the first place. I also love how much more-so these series tie with the movies than many of the other shows. Lastly, I'll update my different rankings to include this season in a bit.
For those who have also watched this season, please share your own thoughts. Oh yeah, I've kind of been hating on Marvel TV head Jeff Loeb a lot lately, but I'll at least give him credit for this show right now. However, I still just don't like how much the quality of his shows are just all over the place.