A man walking around with a flaming skull who can kill ghosts and infuse his Dodge Charger with hellfire sounds as mystical as you can get, but according to the Executive Producers of Agents of SHIELD, their version of Ghost Rider is actually based on science instead of magic.
There’s a precedent for this in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, of course, with the wonders of Thor and Asgard being chalked up to science so advanced it merely looks like magic to us on Midgard. Doctor Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme, got his origin movie last year where it was explained that “spells” are akin to computer code and the bursts of sparks and light that appear out of thin air are the result of channeling the energy of the multiverse. More like the Scientist Supreme. This is the MCU’s attempt at using extraordinary, fantastical elements of Marvel’s lore while still keeping things “grounded” in the real world.
With the Ghost Rider arc having come to a conclusion (for now, at least) in Season 4 of Agents of SHIELD, IGN visited the set along with a group of press to talk to Executive Producers Jed Whedon and Jeffrey Bell, who shed some light on the subject.
Warning: this article contains full spoilers for the episodes of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD that have aired so far this season!
“The Marvel rule is that magic is science we don't understand,” Whedon explained. “But when we are trapped between [dimensions] in [Episode 7], we're in the quantum energy fields between dimensions. The Ghost Rider very clearly says, ‘That's where I came from. I know where you're being dragged down and I don't want to go back.’ One of the things that it allows us, and Doctor Strange allowed us, to do is to have something you would call a ‘hell demon’ on our show because we're opening holes between worlds and between universes. Any time there's something that on another show would be a wave of the wand magic thing, we can chalk it up to, oh, it's from another dimension. There's another set of physics rules in that world and so it's allowed us to put it all under the science umbrella. The word ‘dimensions’ is sort of covering a lot of ground there.”
Essentially, every “magical” thing that happens on the show is the result of oddball physics from another dimension.
“In [Guardians of the Galaxy], if some of these aliens showed up, they might look like a hell demon. It might be named Larry in his world and there might be a lot of other guys with flaming heads going, ‘Good morning, Larry,’ ‘Good morning Frank,’ and it would be normal,” Bell said, clearly aware of how silly their explanation sounds while still committing to it.
Bell pointed to Season 3’s villain Hive as an example.
“Hive was trapped on a world and historically he had been viewed as the devil, the things he had done. We went through all of the incarnations he had through history and we're saying it was an Inhuman who had these abilities and through that became part of all these different stories,” Bell said.
“One thing, we never explained that rock. We never even tried with that thing. It came from another planet! Science? I don't know. I don't know. We didn't even throw the science word in,” Whedon admitted.
“I think we just thought it was the coolest looking effect we had ever seen. A hard rock turning into liquid like that. Sometimes you go with cool,” Bell said. “Sometimes we talk about paying sins for the cool. 'That's so cool!' 'But does it make sense?' 'It doesn't matter.'”
That gets to the crux of it. Agents of SHIELD is a show where weird things happen every episode and exists in the same world as Thor, Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy where there are Frost Giants, Dark Dimensions and talking trees, so it’s best not to get caught up in finding a reasonable explanation for anything so long as it looks really, really cool.
Also check out the Agents of SHIELD EPs comparing the LMD threat to Ultron.
Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.
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