Gabriel Luna previews Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 4×06 and Robbie Reyes’s expectation-defying transformation into Ghost Rider.
Tonight’s episode, titled “The Good Samaritan,” dives poignantly into Robbie’s past, and explores the tragic events that led to his new career as the Spirit of Vengeance. But as the veil of mystery lifts, Luna tells us to expect the unexpected — and be prepared for a few hair-raising surprises.
What can fans expect to see in “The Good Samaritan,” with Robbie and Ghost Rider taking the spotlight?
Gabriel Luna: Well, it’s funny because we’ve been running the Robbie Reyes/Ghost Rider storyline parallel to what was happening with the rest of the team. And since the first episode, it’s kind of felt we’ve carried a lot of the, I felt like I had to carry some of the weight of the story.
[But] this is the origin story, and everybody’s very excited as it is Robbie-centric. But there’s been a bunch of other episodes that felt like Ghost Rider had his opportunities to shine, but even more so this week.
So I think people are going to be really excited to see where he comes from, and why he is what he is. And [it’s] this new kind of mashup of various plot points and storylines in the All-New Ghost Rider, which is Felipe Smith’s run of the character. And I think they’re going to like it. It’s a bit of an overlap of a few different moments of Robbie’s story in that book, and I think they’re going to dig it.
How do you view the relationship between Robbie and the Ghost Rider? Does that change over Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 4×06?
There have been moments where you can see that there’s some overlap, [where] it’s almost as if [Robbie is] going to fly off the handle completely. But there’s just been a couple of flashes of Robbie inside the monster, instead of the other way around.
You’re going to see a moment in this upcoming episode where there’s definitely a big fight, and it requires whatever’s inside the Ghost Rider to heed to the call of an outside force. And I guess that’s all I can say about that, but you get to see these moments where there is a living, breathing, caring human somewhere inside that thing.
I guess it’s right to assume that — that there’s been some merging, but not so much more than it will be tonight… because it was the birth of Robbie Reyes’ Ghost Rider, and they come together in a big way.
Did the showrunners let you know anything about how Robbie became Ghost Rider before filming this episode?
I did not know. As you well know, we’re very, very secretive over here, and I knew nothing… The scripts come out really late, and they don’t like to tell you too much because things are always evolving and changing, and sometimes you don’t want people to get too attached to a potential storyline that never comes to pass. No one likes disappointment!
So if you don’t set people up with all the info, then they never can be disappointed because everything’s just happening to them, as it does in life, which I kind of like about our process and how we do it. It’s 11:00 p.m. the night before before you get the script.
They did, of course, give me clues to what was happening. ‘Oh, next week, we’re gonna unveil how Robbie becomes the Ghost Rider,’ and I’m was like, “Aw, that’s awesome!” Sure, I want to know, but Christmas is better when you go to bed early and just get up and take a gander under that first page.
Having read Felipe Smith’s run on Ghost Rider, what has it been like to develop the character onscreen?
Jed [Whedon] and Mo [Tancharoen] are great. Throughout the process, I’ve just trusted that they’re going to steward the character in the direction he needs to go, and we haven’t been disappointed.
Robbie has been known to get a little (or extremely) violent; what should fans be prepared for tonight?
I think it’s just going to blow their tops. If last week wasn’t enough, a little bad-guy barbecue in the prison, this week is definitely gonna fill the cup. It’s going to overflow a bit with just general coolness.
There’s a couple of sneak peeks that came out this morning, and usually I’m kind of like, man, they should have saved that. Should have saved that for Tuesday night! But each time I watch it I’m like, oh my God, I can’t wait to see the rest of it.
And we learn that Gabe finds out about Robbie’s identity in one of those clips. What can we look forward to seeing in that relationship?
Yeah, there’s some really, really beautiful moments between the brothers and how you deal with information being kept from each other. [In] such a loving family, trust is important, and there’s going to be feelings of betrayal when you’ve kept such a big secret. So that storyline is really going to start to get it’s feet, we really get to flesh it out from the inside. And in that very same clip, they have us in the “unbreakable” containment module, and we find out how unbreakable it really is!
Robbie has recently became an uncomfortable ally to Coulson and the team. Will that partnership strengthen in “The Good Samaritan”?
We’re going to come into the episode, I think, a few steps further back than we entered in episode 5. Obviously, Jeffrey Mace is now aware of the prisoner who was quote-on-quote murdered — Senator Nadeer’s words — in the prison. Of course, he was a murderer himself who was there on three strikes, so it’s just this moral gray [area] that you have to navigate.
But with someone who’s so rule-oriented, and tries to maintain the book, and is as by-the-book as Jeffrey Mace is, it’s going to be difficult for any kind of integration. For Robbie, at least! However much he’s been an asset in these previous three, four episodes, he’s still doing things on his own terms that certainly don’t align with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s principles.
And so I think we’re just going to find more conflict than resolution, which makes for better storytelling anyway!
And will we see further, maybe unexpected, consequences of Robbie’s quest for vengeance?
Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s what makes the character who he is. That’s the genius of Felipe’s instincts when he started to create the character [in the comics.] The lengths to which the Ghost Rider goes to hand out his justice, which comes in the form of vengeance, is probably difficult for anybody to come to terms with. At some point it feels, as I’m playing him, that Robbie’s superpower — along with his love for his brother, which is what keeps him… a human separate from the Ghost Rider, most times — his other superpower is his ability to compartmentalize these two things.
Killing just hundreds of people, however evil or however bad they may be, I imagine it just takes its toll. And as someone who doesn’t have that instinct himself, I mean, coming from where he comes from and the harshness of his upbringing, and the fact that he was orphaned at such a young age, and all these other things, sure, it will probably [spark] a bit of anger, quite a bit of anger inside of him in his heart.
But I don’t think he would ever be compelled to end people the way that Ghost Rider compels him to do it. Dealing with that on a day-to-day basis, I imagine it’s just an exercise almost in denial. Just kind of push it out of your mind.
But as you’ll see in the upcoming episodes, however many times he tries to shake this thing, it’s only growing to be more and more a part of him. And that’s a terrifying and exciting thought for Robbie Reyes’ character, and we’ll see where that goes from here onward.
When Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 4×06 comes to a close, what feeling do you think fans will be left with?
Well, they’ll have to pick their jaws up off the floor. And then at that point, they’ll be like, “Oh! That’s how it happened!”… And we’ll just marvel at how amazing the Ghost Rider transformations are in this episode. Yes, I did say transformations.
I just think, once this one’s done, we’re going to have a full, spherical sense of who the Ghost Rider is, where he’s come from. A lot of the mystery will be answered, too, and I just think they’ll be primed and ready, and I think we’ll hold them over for those two or three weeks we’re off for the really, really great conclusion to this first Fall story plot that we’ve had for you.
But yeah, I think they’re going to love it. I’m pretty excited myself, I saw some of the VFX stuff. I went to LA Comic Con yesterday to support our VFX supervisor Mark Kolpack, who was doing a panel, and to find out some of the secrets as to how he does what he does. It’s a very talented group, he and his team. And he showed me on his computer — because he can’t help himself, to tell you the truth! — all the cool effects in episode 4×06.
I can’t wait to see it on a big screen, but I watched it on his laptop, and even there it was really, really horrifyingly gorgeous. So I’m looking forward to it like all of us!
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 4×06, “The Good Samaritan,” airs tonight at 10:00 p.m. on ABC.