Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire

"Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire"
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode
Teaser poster, featuring art by Francesco Francavilla.
Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 4
Directed by	Brad Turner
Written by	Matt Owens
Produced by	Jed Whedon Maurissa Tancharoen Jeffrey Bell
Cinematography by	Allan Westbrook
Original air date	October 18, 2016 (2016-10-18)
Guest appearance(s)
Gabriel Luna as Robbie Reyes / Ghost Rider Axle Whitehead as J.T. James / Hellfire Mallory Jansen as AIDA José Zúñiga as Eli Morrow Lilli Birdsell as Lucy Bauer Kerr Smith as Joseph Bauer
Episode chronology

"Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire" is the fourth episode of the fourth season of the American television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., based on the Marvel Comics organization S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division), revolving around the character of Phil Coulson and his team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents as they deal with the Watchdogs terrorist group and a group of ghosts. It is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), sharing continuity with the films of the franchise. The episode was written by Matt Owens, and directed by Brad Turner.

Clark Gregg reprises his role as Coulson from the film series, and is joined by series regulars Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker, Elizabeth Henstridge, Henry Simmons, and John Hannah. A central action scene sees a car chase featuring Coulson's flying car Lola and Robbie Reyes's (recurring guest Gabriel Luna) "Hell Charger" Lucy. The episode also guest stars José Zúñiga as Reyes' uncle, as backstory for the Ghost Rider character is explored, as well as seeing Axle Whitehead return as J.T. James to continue the season's Inhuman and Watchdogs storyline.

"Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire" originally aired on ABC on October 18, 2016, and according to Nielsen Media Research, was watched by 4.78 million viewers within a week of its release.

Plot

Jemma Simmons is looking for a new home for herself and Leo Fitz to move in, where she finds an injured Daisy Johnson. Johnson tells her that she has a list of Inhumans who are being targeted by the Watchdogs, which she stole from one of the Watchdogs which is the reason why she got injured. Simmons tends to Johnson's wounds, but then Johnson forces Simmons to help her find who is the next Inhuman targeted. Lucy Bauer visits her husband in coma, wakes him up and asks him where the book is, infecting him.

Meanwhile, Phil Coulson visits Eli Morrow in prison, but he refuses to talk. Outside the prison, Mack sees Robbie Reyes - who had come to the prison to talk to Morrow - and recognizes him as the Ghost Rider, and he and Coulson capture him. Coulson says that he and Reyes are interested in the same thing, so he offers to help with his investigation and in return demands answers from Morrow. Simmons and Johnson insert a hard drive into one of the Inhuman's registration servers, through which they learn that J.T. James is the next on the Watchdogs' to-do list.

AIDA supervises Melinda May's recovery which is described as a Turing test by Holden Radcliffe when he is warned by Fitz. Reyes visits Morrow, who quickly figures out that he is working with S.H.I.E.L.D., but Reyes earns his trust and asks him what put him into a penitentiary, Morrow tells that Lucy and Joseph Bauer were the leaders of a privately funded think tank, and they hired Morrow to their cause because they could not find any better engineer. They were making a quantum particle generator, a machine that creates matter out of anything, but although it had gone wrong - causing an explosion which apparently killed Lucy and other scientists, but since Joseph was determined to move on, Morrow was infuriated by it and put him in a coma which led him doing time in South Ridge Penitentiary. When Reyes tells him that Lucy is not dead and asks what she is after, Morrow tells that she is probably going after that book which gave them knowledge of that machine. Simmons and Johnson visit James in a fireworks shop and Johnson persuades him to fight the Watchdogs and also destroy his monitor, to which he agrees. But James reveals he had already met with the Watchdogs and agreed to their initiative, because he himself hates being an Inhuman after what Hive did to him. Johnson uses her powers and runs with Simmons. James finds them and is about to hurt them when Reyes steps in to protect them - he is helping S.H.I.E.L.D. who tracked their location through James' monitor, he turns into Ghost Rider and knocks him out. Coulson and Mack knock out the Watchdogs' men and save Johnson and Simmons.

The book is later found out by Coulson as the Darkhold, about which he tells that not Red Skull, Daniel Whitehall and even Nick Fury could find it. So he enlists the help of Johnson and Reyes, to which they agree and decide to interview Joseph. May is now completely recovered and Coulson and Simmons pay her a visit, where Coulson brings her in to find the Darkhold and Simmons sees AIDA and finds out her true nature, and since her lie-detection test is due for the next day, Fitz tells her that this is the lie which she has to tell.

Production

Development

In October 2016, Marvel revealed that the fourth episode of the season would be titled "Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire",^[1] a line from the Jimi Hendrix song "Fire".^[2] The episode is written by Matt Owens, with Brad Turner directing.^[1] Owens previously wrote for the Marvel Netflix series Luke Cage.^[3] Ahead of the episode's airing, actor Gabriel Luna promoted it as Lola vs. Lucy, referring to a central action scene in the episode featuring a car chase.^[4]

Casting

In October 2016, Marvel confirmed that main cast members Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, Ming-Na Wen as Melinda May, Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson / Quake, Iain De Caestecker as Leo Fitz, Elizabeth Henstridge as Jemma Simmons, Henry Simmons as Alphonso "Mack" MacKenzie, and John Hannah as Holden Radcliffe would be starring in the episode. It was also revealed that José Zúñiga had been cast as Eli Morrow.^[1] Following the airing of the previous episode, executive producer Jed Whedon teased that "Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire" would explore the dynamic between Robbie Reyes and Morrow, his uncle, saying, "we’re definitely pivoting from the storyline in the comics. We’re pulling the characters, the character names and the relationships, but I think you can already feel that we’ve changed it. Those dynamics will be entirely different. We’re using them as inspiration."^[5]

In addition to Luna as Reyes and Zúñiga as Morrow, guest stars for the episode include Mallory Jansen as Aida, Axle Whitehead as James, José Zúñiga as Eli Morrow, Kerr Smith as Joseph, Phil Tyler as watchdog #1, Sergio Enrique as guard, Tanner Fontana as Elliot and Lilli Birdsell as Lucy.^[1] Luna, Jansen, Whitehead, and Birdsell reprise their roles from earlier in the series.^[6][7] When asked whether the series still wanted pursue stories about Inhumans such as James, Whedon said, "Inhumans are very much still in our world, so we still have some of these people in the mix ... but right now we’re on the Ghost Rider kick." On having Johnson and Reyes join with S.H.I.E.L.D. in the episode, Whedon said, "It’s an uneasy thing for everyone involved. Daisy has made it very clear that she doesn’t want to be with our team. There’s all that history and pain there. For Robbie, this is a guy who has never had a team, and probably doesn’t function well within one. We’ll see pretty quickly that it’s an uneasy alliance and it’s going to cause a lot of drama."^[8]

Filming and effects

The Lola vs. Lucy car chase features Coulson's flying 1962 Chevrolet Corvette chasing Reyes' fiery "Hellcharger", a 1969 Dodge Charger.^[9][10][4] The sequence was filmed in Los Angeles,^[11] with location scouting for the sequence beginning by searching for an ideal corner for the Charger to make "a big hard left". The streets around the corner were then augmented with directed traffic in a "near-miss configuration", to make the sequence more dynamic—it sees the Charger weaving between the other vehicles, and them veering away in the opposite direction for added effect. One stunt sees a large truck backing out of a driveway, with the stunt team timing it so that the Charger can drive around the back, but the much smaller Lola has to drive underneath it.^[12] The sequence finishes with a "race down the LA River".^[11]

In the episode's climactic fight between Reyes and James in a fireworks factory, a moment sees James burn through a brick wall, and the two falling 10 feet (3 m) into the factory below. The sequence was choreographed with two stunt doubles descending through a fake wall on wires, but on the day the filming schedule was changed and there was no longer time to set up the wire rig. Instead, the stunt team had the doubles fall through the wall without wires, and land on pads below, which stunt coordinator Tanner Gill said ultimately "worked really effectively".^[12] For the subsequent fireworks factory explosion, a practical explosion was created by the series effects team, and then CG fireworks were added by Pixomondo.^[13][14]

Release

"Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire" was first aired in the United States on ABC on October 18, 2016.^[1] Ahead of the episode's airing, Marvel released a teaser poster depicting Ghost Rider and the Hellcharger car, with the season's promotional title Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Ghost Rider. The poster was drawn by comic book artist Francesco Francavilla.^[15]

Reception

Ratings

In the United States the episode received a 0.7/3 percent share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49, meaning that it was seen by 0.7 percent of all households, and 3 percent of all of those watching television at the time of the broadcast. It was watched by 2.34 million viewers.^[16] Within a week of its release, "Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire" had been watched by 4.78 million U.S. viewers.^[17]

References

External links

• "Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire" at ABC
• "Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire" at the Internet Movie Database
• "Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire" at TV.com