Full story
After Lincoln's death, Daisy works alone in Los Angeles as the vigilante Quake. S.H.I.E.L.D. is an official agency again, with a new director, Jeffrey Mace, sold to the public as a heroic Inhuman. Coulson and Mack are back to being field agents, and Simmons has to take a lie detector test every week. The season is split into three parts, each with its own threat.
In the first, Daisy runs into Ghost Rider, a spirit of vengeance possessing Robbie Reyes, a mechanic who looks after his brother, who uses a wheelchair. At the same time, ghosts are attacking people tied to a lab called Momentum. There, scientists used the Darkhold, a cursed book that teaches how to bend reality. The villain is Eli Morrow, Robbie's uncle, who gained the power to create matter out of nothing and wants more. Robbie drags Eli into another dimension and vanishes with him, but he finds his way back later.
In the second part, scientist Holden Radcliffe and Fitz build Aida, a Life Model Decoy android. Aida reads the Darkhold and starts acting on her own. She replaces May, Coulson, Mack, Fitz, and Mace with robot copies, and the team no longer knows who to trust. The real agents are held captive and plugged into the Framework, a virtual reality Radcliffe designed to give each person a life without regrets.
In the third part, Daisy and Simmons enter the Framework to rescue their friends. There, Hydra won and runs the world. Coulson is a teacher who remembers nothing, May is a Hydra agent, Mack lives with the daughter he lost, and Fitz is the feared Doctor, right hand to Madame Hydra, who is Aida. Ward shows up on the resistance's side. The team wakes most of them up, but Aida uses the Darkhold to get a real human body with Inhuman powers. Fitz comes back shattered by what he did inside, and Mace dies trying to save the others.
In the end, Coulson makes a deal with the Ghost Rider spirit, takes on the fire for a few moments, and burns Aida. Robbie carries the Darkhold away through a portal. The price of the deal is left hanging. When the team finally relaxes at a diner, mysterious men show up and take them all. Coulson wakes up on a space station, and that mystery comes back later.