When Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns from its mini November hiatus, all your questions will finally be answered.

…Well, okay, maybe not all of your questions. Come on now, we’ve still got more than half of the season to go! But at least some of your questions will be answered. For example: What happened to Robbie Reyes/Ghost Rider (Gabriel Luna), Coulson (Clark Gregg), and Fitz (Iain de Caestecker) after Eli Morrow’s (Jose Zuniga) Darkhold experiment succeeded and a blast of energy seemed to make them disappear?

“Everyone is actually just dead,” Chloe Bennet tells Nerdist. “It’s just the end of the show.” Of course, she’s joking… we hope.

Bennet says more sincerely, “No, this episode is a very unique episode. I will say it was one of the hardest episodes to film technically, and you’ll see why when it airs. It’s a lot of action and it’s pretty intense considering where we left off. I don’t want to give away too much though.”

When S.H.I.E.L.D. last left off, Daisy (Bennet) had reunited with her former friends and colleagues to stop Eli from using the mysterious Darkhold book to finish what he had started back before he got locked up and Robbie became the Ghost Rider… but they were too late. Eli can now control and create matter, and the S.H.I.E.L.D. team has taken a major hit with half of the agents mysteriously gone. So what is Daisy’s first move going to be in the wake of all the chaos Eli brought on the team?

“Her first concern is making sure everyone is okay and alive,” Bennet says. “And then there may be some other things that come up that make that difficult. Her first concern is definitely the team. The Darkhold is a type of threat [is one] that we haven’t really had before. We’ve always had threats that were rooted in science and can be explained, but this is something that is definitely new. Is it magic? What is this? We’ve never experienced anything like this before. It’s going to be a big challenge, but I have faith.”

Because this season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has explored a different kind of mythology, especially after the debut of Doctor Strange into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Ghost Rider’s introduction on the show, Bennet can “feel the tone of the show changing.”

“We’ve always been more [about] the agents side of things and rooted in reality,” Bennet says. “When it comes to the Darkhold, anything’s game. And so, technically speaking, it’s been more difficult but it’s been really fun. It feels like a different chapter of our show. It feels fresh and new and I love how much people are loving Ghost Rider.”

As for how Eli’s experiment affected Robbie, Coulson, and Fitz, as they were the closest ones to the energy blast, all Bennet can reveal is this: “I think it’s one of the funniest episodes of the season. Weirdly, and I think Marvel does such a good job of doing this, it’s scary, dark and life-threatening, but it’s also funny. It’s not something that anyone is going to expect. It’s one of the most unique episodes we’ve had and the stakes are high.”

And speaking of Ghost Rider, now that Daisy and Robbie have bonded, expect to see more from their “intense” dynamic moving forward. “We have such a yin and yang thing going between them and it’s done so well in the comics,” Bennet says. “It’s really sweet. It’s easy to have Ghost Rider almost as a bad guy where you don’t feel for him, but with Robbie, he’s vulnerable at the same time, and that’s because of Gabriel [Lorenze James Henrie]. They have such a great dynamic and they balance each other out very well.”

If the first part of the first half of this season was about bringing Daisy back into the fold with her S.H.I.E.L.D. team and introducing Ghost Rider, where does the ABC series go from here?

“What I can say is that this season is broken up into three different parts, and coming up, we’re going to focus more on things like Aida [Mallory Jansen], LMD’s and androids,” Bennet says.

And now that Daisy has started to work with her friends at S.H.I.E.L.D. again, Bennet is excited to begin to portray her finally healing from all the loss she endured last season.

“They’re taking their time with her opening up to people about that, and that’s not something that happens very often,” Bennet says. “They’re taking their time with her really getting over everything that happened. I don’t think she’s ever going to get over it, but it’s going to be about her being able to function and deal with her grief in a healthy way. I don’t know if we’ve seen that yet. I don’t think she’s necessarily pushing people away, but there’s definitely not any opening up any time soon. She’s really, really, really hurting.”

With a laugh, Bennet adds, “Hey, she’s been through a lot. She was an orphan, abandoned by her parents, her mom tried to kill her, her dad killed her mom, her boyfriend was a nazi, then her other boyfriend had to kill himself and the nazi! It got crazy there for a while. She’s trying to work it all out and it’s going to be baby steps for her. And that’s hard to play because it makes me sad and I feel bad for her.”

What are you excited to see from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s return? Tweet me your thoughts at @SydneyBucksbaum!

Images: ABC

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