Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. made use of a lot of great comic book characters during its run, but Gabriel Luna's Robbie Reyes/Ghost Rider proved himself a highlight. However, early plans called for the spotlight to be put on original Spirit of Vengeance, Johnny Blaze (played by Nic Cage in the movies).
Talking to ComicBook.com, VFX Supervisor Mark Kolpack revealed that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. showrunners Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon planned to end season 3 with a post-credits scene setting the stage for Johnny to ride into the ABC series.
"The tease that never got shot was going to be this," he explained "It was supposed to be a husband and wife at one of those Storage Wars-kind of bidding places. They bid on a storage locker and then they open up the locker and they're going into it and going, 'Wow. What the hell is all this?'"
"Then they started seeing posters of the Daredevil motorcycle stuff and there was a leather jacket there and a motorcycle. There were all these little tidbit clues that were going to be in there to foreshadow and tease everybody for Season 4," Kolpack continued. "But Marvel took away the Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider, so they changed it quickly to the [Life Model Decoy] Aida business where you saw there was a shadowy figure behind fog glass with a female voice. That was actually Maurissa's voice because of having to put together something really quickly."
Marvel Studios wouldn't allow Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to use the Johnny Blaze or Danny Ketch versions of Ghost Rider, likely because they have their own plans for the motorbike-riding demonic entity. Ultimately, they also pulled the plug on that planned Hulu spinoff series, and we've probably seen the last of Robbie in live-action for the foreseeable future if Kevin Feige is that disinterested.
On the plus side, the future now looks a little brighter for Johnny and Danny in the MCU!