Tonight’s episode of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD revealed that Robbie Reyes isn’t the only Ghost Rider in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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In a flashback that told Robbie’s Ghost Rider origin story, it was revealed that he was given his powers by another Ghost Rider. The man that Robbie thinks of as “the devil” and Gabe thinks of “the good Samaritan” rode in on a motorcycle and had a blazing skull just like Robbie’s in his Ghost Rider form.
The Ghost Rider was never named, which – assuming this Ghost Rider is the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of a specific Ghost Rider from the Marvel Comics Universe – leaves two possible characters as his identity.
The frontrunner is Johnny Blaze, the original Ghost Rider. Blaze was a motorcycle stuntman who was orphaned by his parents. When his adoptive father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Johnny sold his soul to the devil to save his father. The price was that a demon was bound to his soul, transforming him into Ghost Rider and cursing him to struggle to control the demon’s thirst for violence.
Blaze is the frontrunner both because he was the first and remains the best known version of Ghost Rider (he was the Ghost Rider played by Nicholas Cage in both Ghost Rider live-action movies) and because, in the Marvel Comics Universe, he has been featured in other stories that involve him passing the Spirit of Vengeance on to someone else, much like he did with Robbie Reyes in “The Good Samaritan.”
Blaze is also looked at as a mentor by all other characters to become Ghost Rider. Specifically, he helped Robbie Reyes in All-New Ghost Rider when Robbie was struggling to control the spirit inside of him. This gives Johnny Blaze a role to play later in Robbie’s story on Agents of SHIELD.
While Johnny Blaze is definitely the favorite, we can’t rule out the possibility of this Ghost Rider being Daniel Ketch, Johnny Blaze’s long-lost brother who took over the Ghost Rider mantle when Blaze was freed of his curse for a time. Ketch was the star of the Ghost Rider comic book of the 1990s and, unlike Blaze, had a cooperative relationship with the being who possessed him, which turned out to be Zadkiel, the Angel of Vengeance.
While Ketch is certainly a popular Ghost Rider in his own right, it is hard to see why Marvel and Agents of SHIELD would decide to introduce him ahead of Johnny Blaze, who is such an important part of both Robbie and Danny’s story. On top of that, there was also the Ghost Rider Easter egg in a previous episode this season that points directly at Johnny Blaze.
You can see images of the second Ghost Rider in the gallery below.
Agents of SHIELD airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.
