Agents of Shield Season 4
The 4th season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. can be categorized into 3 sub-arcs: the Ghost Rider Arc, the L.M.D. Arc, and the Framework Arc. The season revolves around a sinister book known as the Book of Sins aka The Darkhold and how it plays a role in each respective arc.
The season begins with the incorporeal form of a woman named Lucy Bauer who is seeking revenge against a former work affiliate named Eli Morrow. Many years before, Eli, Lucy, and her husband Joseph were working on a way to create elements out of nothing at Momentum Energy Labs in Pasadena. To meet their ends, Joseph and Lucy found and utilized the Darkhold, a book of which the text appears in the first language of whoever reads it and can only be read by corporeal beings. Convinced that the book was evil, Eli put Joseph into a coma and that is the story he went by when he told it to his nephew Robbie Reyes. The real story is that Eli coveted the power of the Darkhold and turned Lucy and the rest of his affiliates into ghost-like beings. May implores Dr. Radcliffe to read it and find a solution on bringing Coulson, Fitz, and Robbie back from a limbo dimension between Earth and Hell. Telling her that the Darkhold has too much knowledge that would overwhelm a human mind, he allows his A.I. consort A.I.D.A (Artificial Intelligent Digital Assistant) to read it as it appears in binary and devises a machine which can act as a portal to the limbo dimension bringing Coulson, Robbie, and Fitz back. Robbie feels Eli must serve vengeance and becomes the Ghost Rider but it is not enough to stop him. AIDA constructs another portal machine underneath Eli’s matter-creation machine in an abandoned factory in Los Angeles which teleports Eli’s machine, Eli, and Ghost Rider to Hell as Ghost Rider holds him from escaping.
In the L.M.D. arc, Radcliffe conspires to obtain the Darkhold for himself and had programmed AIDA to carry that out as her M.O. after observing AIDA’s new capabilities and knowledge from the Darkhold. AIDA fails this objective as she’s beheaded by Mack but the team does not know there is another Life Model Decoy stationed in the Playground (S.H.I.E.L.D HQ after Hydra’s conquest) to carry out the same objective- May. Added to the fray are the Watchdogs, an anti-Inhuman terrorist group led by Anton Ivanov aka The Superior who hates Inhumans for being the deviant freaks of nature they are and for being granted with abilities they did not earn. He is financially assisted by U.S. Senator Ellen Nadeer who hates anything affiliated with aliens after the Battle of New York. Going to Nadeer for protection after AIDA’s failed mission knowing she is an enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D, Radcliffe is given to the Superior. He tells the Superior that Billy Koenig had been entrusted with safekeeping the Darkhold and abduct him, and by using Framework technology, extract the location of the book out of his mind. A group of Watchdogs take Billy to the Labyrinth and race against Coulson, Sam and LT Koenig to get the Darkhold. Ultimately, the Darkhold ends up with L.M.D. May which is taken from her by Radcliffe who gets it to the Superior who explains he wishes to use the book to exterminate all Inhumans. Ivanov uses his right hand man Tucker Shockley (who’s become a living bomb after going through Terrigenesis) to act as a decoy while Ivanov takes Jeffrey Mace aka the Patriot and current Director of S.H.I.E.L.D to torture him for emulating Inhumans. During Jeffrey’s rescue and Ivanov’s defeat at the hands of Daisy, AIDA somehow managed to replace Fitz, Mack, Coulson, and Director Mace with L.M.D.s and placed them in the Framework. With both Daisy and Simmons realizing they are the only ones not replaced, they manage to escape the Playground albeit due to a new May L.M.D.’s almost very identical nature to her original counterpart. The two board the Zephyr One (The Bus’s replacement) and enter the Framework while May uses a bomb to destroy the Playground and the other L.M.D.s from pursuing them. Daisy and Jemma wake up to find themselves in an upside down world.
Inside the nightmarish, artificial world of the Framework, Jemma and Daisy find themselves in an America ruled by Hydra. This came to be after May allowed a dangerous Inhuman girl in Bahrain to live and thereafter inadvertently led to the deaths of innocent schoolchildren as an attack staged by Hydra and blamed on S.H.I.E.L.D. , making them public enemy number 1. Coulson is a schoolteacher who teaches Hydra history and that Inhumans are dangerous; May is a 3rd-in-command Hydra operative at the Triskelion after regretting letting the Inhuman girl (Katya Beylakov) go and thinking S.H.I.E.L.D. was behind the school attack; Mack is a neutral father who does whatever is necessary to protect his 10-year old daughter Hope; Jemma is supposed to be dead; Director Jeffrey Mace leads what’s left of S.H.I.E.L.D. as The Patriot; Daisy is an agent for Hydra who lives with Grant Ward who is a double-agent for S.H.I.E.L.D.; and Fitz is known as The Doctor who experiments on Inhumans. At the top of Hydra is Madame Hydra aka Ophelia aka AIDA who is responsible for convincing The Doctor to kill Radcliffe’s (after placing him in the Framework after murdering him in the real world) lover Agnes Kitsworth who AIDA is based off and also had Agnes placed in the Framework after she died of cancer in the real world. She claims that she took away everybody’s single greatest regret and let the Framework flow accordingly according to Radcliffe’s plan as well as following her programming of protecting Radcliffe’s life at all costs (hence why the agents were placed in the Framework) and eliminating the greatest threat to the Framework (Radcliffe, as he’s able to shut AIDA down hence why AIDA killed him). Working from the Framework through Operation Looking Glass and with the aid of the Darkhold, AIDA transferred her consciousness into the real world and became a real human with Inhuman powers. Ghost Rider had found a way to return from Hell and was determined to destroy the new AIDA as she was a product of the Darkhold. Not allowing him to get close, AIDA was tricked when Coulson suddenly transformed into Ghost Rider, having made a deal with the demon and leaving Robbie temporarily and incinerated her (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDLHNmwGOhA). The Framework device is destroyed, Robbie returns to Hell to leave the Darkhold there, Jeffrey Mace is the only casualty from the Framework, and the consequences of Jeffrey’s death and Coulson’s deal with the devil will be discussed in the next season.