It's a little hard to believe, but more than five years have passed since Diego Luna last played the Robbie Reyes Ghost Rider in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The character was a hit with fans, and the plan had been for him to star in his own spin-off series on Hulu.
That all changed when Marvel Studios took control of Marvel Television, of course, and we now wait with bated breath to see what they have planned for the Spirit of Vengeance in the MCU. While we'd haven't to imagine they'll head back down the Johnny Blaze route in that long-rumoured Special Presentation, could there still be a place for Luna's Robbie somewhere?
"Oh, I love that character. It was really special," The Last of Us star tells Forbes. "[He] had only come into existence in 2014, created by Felipe Smith, and then it was in 2016 that we did the show and literally not a day goes by that somebody doesn’t ask me about it."
"It feels like the demand may be there and if the creative is there and it makes sense," Luna adds. "I think with Marvel right now, it’s so intricately woven that it would be a few years out if they started to think about it, to do the character. I’m always open."
The actor would go on to say that his "stock answer" in interviews would typically be that he was happy with what the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. team accomplished with Ghost Rider and that he wouldn't necessarily want to taint that in any way. Now, though, it appears his outlook has changed.
"I feel that I’m a lot more open should it come around. If it makes sense, I’m more than happy to...I try to keep myself in shape, Arnold [Schwarzenegger] demands it," Luca teases. "So I’m still certainly physically capable of doing it and if it’s a great story and they’d have me, of course."
We'd love to see what Luna could do with the character given a bigger budget, but it will largely depend on what Marvel Studios has planned for the hotheaded anti-hero moving forward. A reboot makes sense, especially if the plan is for Ghost Rider to eventually take centre stage in his own movie or TV show, though in recent years, the character has been part of The Avengers too.
Would you like to see more of Luna's Robbie Reyes in the MCU?