Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

My impression is that if the Rider possessed a normal human they'd just die instantly as soon as the Rider left their body. Coulson just got lucky because the Kree blood was keeping him somewhat stable.

Come to think of it, Robbie was already near dead when the Rider came to him.

So that idea makes sense. I'm guessing Mack didn't cross the point of no return when it was in his body.

Getting your skull set on fire probably isn't healthy

And that's without taking the demon from hell into account.

I guess the demon insisted on Coulson because it felt that Coulson had cheated dead.

It was Coulson’s idea in the first place.

Well yeah you probably have got to have a good offer for the demon to hear you out in the first place, and Coulson knew that.

Demonstrably untrue. The Rider left Robbie's body twice with no adverse effect, and Mack hosted it once as well.

Coulson was asking Zarathos to help him do something that Xarathos wanted done, is the thing.

There's really no good justification for the "demon exacts a toll" thing. They gave Zarathos scene to Coulson because he's the Main Character which supercedes all other arcs, then used it to justify killing him off in the season that followed. I doubt any more thought was put into it than that.

Well, it is also possible that Coulson didn't trust the demon to keep his part of the deal, so he rather took the risk himself, even if that meant he would die as a result than to risk one of his people to be stuck with the curse.

Maybe the demon also just decided to being a dick and taking a free life while the opportunity was there. We'll never know.

Yeah. It makes total sense for Coulson to put himself on the Chopping block rather than anyone else. As for Robbie being ok after Zarathos left, the first time the latter was trapped between dimensions (which have negated any possible physical toll from the separation), and the second time, they weren’t separated for very long. We can’t say there’s not a drawback to Robbie losing the Rider.

Also we need to remember that Robbie is already dead. His situation is different from Mac or Coulson.

edited 25th May '18 1:27:32 PM by HandsomeRob

I feel like the toll extracted is "imma make you kill people" and since Coulson was only going to be a host for a short term and wouldn't get much killing done, Zarathos decided to kill Coulson eventually

Got to satisfy that murder lust

By the same definition of "dead" as Coulson's been for the last five seasons, sure.

edited 25th May '18 3:24:12 PM by TobiasDrake

Ok. Fair enough.

Coulson has also been dead for a while.

Can we also consider that Phil didn't know what effect taking on the Rider would have on him. Maybe the Rider didn't either until he was already wearing his Phil Coulson suit.

I mean, ancient Vengeance Demon or not, the guy may not be an alien expert.

But that's pure conjecture.

If he didn't know, then any argument that it had to be him because he'd want to protect his team from the effects of taking on the Rider falls completely apart, and we're right back at "Coulson did it because he's the Main Character and not because it makes any particular sense for either the narrative or his team."

Linking him running out of Kree juice to the Rider possession pretty significantly hurts an already stupid plot point. Coulson died for no good reason. It was the price he had to pay to keep Simmons from having a satisfying resolution to her and Fitz's arc for the season.

edited 25th May '18 6:15:21 PM by TobiasDrake

What would Simmons have to offer to make an actual deal with Ghost Rider?

Agents of Shield: One More Day

Why should she need to offer something in exchange for helping him to achieve his goals?

The idea that they even need to bribe Zarathos to do something that he already wanted to do was always ridiculous.

edited 25th May '18 7:50:15 PM by TobiasDrake

First you're saying it's contrived Simmons didn't get to sacrifice anything and that Coulson was forced to do it because he's the main character. Now you're saying the idea of sacrificing anything was ridiculous to begin with, and that she should have been allowed a resolution without sacrificing anything.

At no point have I said that it's contrived that Simmons didn't have to sacrifice anything. What's contrived is that Coulson did have to sacrifice his life to do it, since anyone else could have hosted the Rider and not died from suddenly no longer having reanimating Kree Juice in their body.

What I'm saying is that Simmons should have been the character who hosts the Rider and annihilates A.I.D.A., since she's Fitzsimmons's personal villain. I've been saying that since the season four finale. It was not satisfying for A.I.D.A. to be taken down by a character who barely even has any interaction with her at all over the course of the season. Coulson got the kill because he's the Main Character and not because it fulfills any of the long-running stories that make up her character history.

It just recently became relevant again because we found out that the price Coulson had to pay in order to host the Rider wouldn't have existed for anyone else, which exterminates the number one argument people had against Simmons hosting the Rider last season: that he wouldn't let anyone else pay the price no one else had to pay anyway to do it.

edited 25th May '18 8:30:40 PM by TobiasDrake

They could've just said that the Kree blood wasn't enough to sustain Coulson long term or something.

That could have worked. Buffy did something similar with one of its characters, Spike. He's a brutal vampire given a behavioral modification chip that's meant to keep him from hurting people. In the seventh season, the chip starts breaking down because the people who gave it to him never meant for it to be any kind of long-term solution; it was just supposed to keep him contained for a short while so that they could experiment on him and learn how vampires tick.

Something like that would have been a better reasoning for why Coulson's dying. Maybe T.A.H.I.T.I. doesn't work long-term without repeated applications. Coulson knows this because he's privy to all the top-secret files but hasn't shared it with anyone. He just figures there's nothing that can be done anyway since the T.A.H.I.T.I. project's long gone, and has been taking his time making peace with his borrowed time's impending deadline.

That'd be a way to do it without, as I mentioned before, making the stupid plot point of Coulson hosting the Rider even stupider.

edited 25th May '18 8:36:48 PM by TobiasDrake

Like, it's simple, yeah, but it's better than suddenly requiring a price where there was none before and cheating Simmons out of an arc that, from a Doylist standpoint, would've been a lot more satisfying to end Season 4 on.

Demons tend to make deals even when they want something so not really seeing the issue especially since why would Coulson have someone else do what he would do himself. He certainly fits with his character and considering he is already a Deadman he would most certainly have less to lose than someone who has not died at all.

That and they all should have a grudge against Aida on some level so one could argue they all would have gained something in some way being the one to make the deal. Coulson as leader makes sense as the person that would take the risk over having someone else do it and would have something to actually bargain with.

Just throwing this out there but,

The rider possessing someone may not be the same thing as the rider's powers being fully utilized. It's Bokurano rules: just 'cause you're the pilot doesn't mean you've activated the controls, y'know?

No, I bet no one gets that reference. Which is for the best.