“Marvel’s Agents Of SHIELD”: What Is The Darkhold?
“Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD” name-dropped one of the most powerful books in the Marvel Universe. So… what exactly is the Darkhold?
In this week’s Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD episode, the ghostly specters dropped a lot of vague information in a short amount of time. One of the biggest nuggets? Them mentioning the Darkhold.
My ears perked up as soon as the word left ghost-Hugo’s mouth. Because this was something important. This was something I’d heard in passing before. This… could be something very big for the show.
Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics
To find out what the Darkhold is, you have to look at the comics (naturally). Also known as The Book of Sins, it was originally created by the elder god Chthon. He compiled all of his knowledge and spells into this one book that may be one of the most mythical, dangerous artifacts. Also bear in mind that is is indestructible, so no amount of fire will work.
It’s pretty sweet, despite corrupting the souls of those who wield its power. It actually created the first vampire as well as the curse of the werewolf. For a while, it was housed on Atlantis (isn’t that where we thought the Inhumans were a few seasons back?).
So what does any of this have to do with Agents of SHIELD or the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? An educated guess would be that the Darkhold may just be where Ghost Rider gets his powers from.
Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics
We know (even without Daisy guessing) that Robbie isn’t an Inhuman. In this week’s episode, when Daisy mentions the Momentum lab, Robbie seems beside himself. And when he shows up on the scene, he seems almost too familiar with the room. He doesn’t even think twice about turning that ghost into dust.
That seems odd, unless the spirit inhabiting Robbie was part of the experimentation on those people-turned-ghosts. Now, Daisy also mentions Robbie’s uncle while she’s goading him. In the comics, this spirit of Ghost Rider is Eli Morrow, a satanic serial killer.
You don’t find out until later that Eli is Robbie’s uncle.
Now, this may be a stretch, as most people tend to have an uncle and their uncles aren’t usually serial killers. But the other tie the Darkhold has in the MCU is actually to Doctor Strange. That’s right, the Sorcerer Supreme has dabbled with the Darkhold and not lost his soul to it. Most of the time he’s making sure Chthon can’t returning to power. But there’s also that one time where he used it to eliminate all vampires from the planet.
With Doctor Strange just a month away, Agents of SHIELD may just be building to something we’ve yet to see in its repertoire, flaming skulls aside.