“Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD” Season 4 Episode 4 Recap: “Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire”

This week’s “Agents of SHIELD” gives us a test run with Aida, a car chase with a Charger and a Corvette, and Daisy teaming up with a SHIELD ally

Welcome to the fourth episode of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD‘s fourth season! Our own Steve was nice enough to cover for me last week while I took yet another trip to Walt Disney World, and I’m prepped and ready to get back into the swing of things. Let’s hop to it!

Not-So-Short Summary

Simmons is apartment shopping for her and Fitz. She got an email offer for the perfect place, and it seems too good to be true. Because it is. Turns out Daisy set it all up. She needs help stitching herself up.

Plus Daisy bought the apartment for them. And she has a present of inhuman assets and locations she stole off a Watch Dog.

That’s not all–Daisy needs Simmons to hack into SHIELD’s servers for her so she can continue to protect Inhumans. Simmons refuses; she can’t do it on principle (lie detectors and all that), so Daisy threatens her at gunpoint.

Daisy hatches a plan, but Simmons doesn’t follow it and makes an easier job of it. She has access, finds out the Watch Dogs are after James, and tries to take off. But Simmons tags along. Everyone is tired of Daisy just showing up when she wants.

Welcome back, off-brand Gambit! James currently works at a fireworks store. The ironing is delicious. They tell him the Watch Dogs are coming and he sets up a time and place for them to meet that night.

As it turns out, he’s working with the Watch Dogs. It’s a setup. Thankfully, Daisyh as enough power for a quake and with Simmons covering her, they hide out in a storage locker…

Eli Morrow, Robbie’s uncle, has a visitor, but it’s not Robbie. It’s Coulson! He shows up to inquire about the “accident” that happened at the labs that sent him to the penitentiary. Coulson says if he helps, there’s a chance he can get him out.

Coulson drops the bomb on Eli: his colleagues didn’t die that day. No, they turned into the crazy specters with abilities. Eli, however, refuses to get involved. He sends Coulson on his way, only for Coulson to run into Robbie.

Then we get our awesome scene of Charger versus Corvette. My dad would be happy (and probably spout horsepower and control issues). It doesn’t matter that the Vette can’t catch up, because Coulson parked the invisible quinjet right in the way. Ow.

They take him into custody. Coulson tries to get information from him, but it’s no use. So Coulson has to do something rash–he also makes a deal with the devil. Apparently everyone wants to be Robert Johnson.

He lets Robbie out of his cell. They want him to talk to Eli and let them listen in on the conversation. Robbie goes along with it. Doctor Lucy Bauer, his boss’s wife (Eli put his boss in a coma, that’s the attempted manslaughter charge). They wanted him to build a quantum particle generator; the generator literally blew up in their faces.

Eli snapped at this. All he wanted was revenge–and Robbie completely understands. Eli also lets him know that Lucy will go after a book. The Darkhold. She heads to her husband to wake him up because he knows where it is.

But first, they have to make a detour.

Off-brand Gambit finds Simmons and Daisy. As he’s about to kill them with his fiery chains, Ghost Rider shows up, giving us our Badass Moment of the Week down below! Daisy and Simmons escape while James has to pay for his sins with Ghost Rider.

Those two find Coulson and Mack. Too bad, because the two fire dudes fall into a warehouse full of fireworks. “You had to see that coming,” Coulson replies before they all run for safety.

Robbie emerges unscathed and victorious, an unconscious James in tow.

On board the quinjet, we get awkward moments between Coulson and Daisy. Coulson fights through it, says the Darkhold is their only focus right now. And right now, he needs the two vigilantes on his team to find it.

And Lucy’s husband just woke up from his coma! Dun dun dun!

Post-Credits Stinger

Coulson and Simmons come to pick up May from Radcliffe’s place. Coulson gets to meet Aida, who tells the truth, but in such a way that only lends humor to the situation.

Simmons sees right through it and talks about it to Fitz in an aside. And her lie detector test is tomorrow!

Badass Moment of the Week

Ghost Rider finally getting his chains thanks to an unlikely source: Off-Brand Gambit, also known as Hellfire! It’s a really awesome, pretty creative way for Agents of SHIELD to give that iconic piece of weaponry to us.

Best One-Liner

“Besides, it’s not easy to find out your colleagues are back from the dead,” Coulson says after talking to Eli, sliding on sunglasses. Is that a shot at him not being in any MCU movies?

In the third storyline of the show, Radcliffe fills in May on her “procedure,” aka killing her. Radcliffe can’t let her leave just yet, as he and Fitz still need to work on a less dangerous cure. So Aida will be taking care of her. Fitz has done so much to improve Aida’s verbal cues that Radcliffe wants to put her to the test.

Turns out May likes her. She’s no nonsense, straight business, and knows Chinese! Well, most of her is from China… I like Aida and can’t wait to see what Agents of SHIELD does with the reveal of her being an LMD to the rest of the crew.

Next week’s Agents of SHIELD shows the Darkhold in its glory. Plus did I see Daisy with gauntlets on again? It’ll be nice to have the band back together for once.