Eli Morrow was a major antagonist in Season 4 of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Originally a mechanical engineer, he had worked at Momentum Labs along with Joseph and Lucy Bauer, helping them to build a quantum particle generator. After learning about how the team had used the Darkhold to advance their work, Eli grew power-hungry and attempted to take the book for himself. When his prize was denied him, he supposedly murdered his colleagues and was sent to prison for his crime. However, Lucy Bauer would return from "death" and free Eli from prison to force him help her in fixing her ghostly condition, but he would once again attempt to gain god-like power for his own selfish desires.
History[]
Past[]
According to himself, Eli was a prodigious young man back in his high-school years, but was transferred several times because his teachers and/or schoolmates accused him of cheating due to not believing in his high intelligence. He eventually became an outcast, causing him to become vengeful against society.
Eli then became an engineer who was assigned to work with Joseph and Lucy Bauer at Momentum Labs after becoming aware of an ancient book known as the Darkhold. After the Bauers built a matter-generating machine in Los Angeles inspired by the Darkhold, Eli was seemingly concerned that Joseph had become obsessed with the machine and tried to warn Lucy, but when Lucy dismissed Eli's concerns, Eli realized that Lucy was just as insane as her husband was. Joseph hired the Fifth Street Locos, a street gang, to kill him in the middle of the night; however, they went after Eli's nephews Robbie and Gabriel instead, which resulted in Robbie being reborn as the supernatural villain-hunter known as the Ghost Rider and Gabriel being put in a wheelchair.
After Eli revealed that he'd gone power-hungry, trapping the rest of his team in strange boxes and turning them into ghost-like beings, he told Lucy, who'd witnessed him at the moment, that he wanted the book's power for himself. He locked Lucy in the laboratory chamber and trapped her inside one of the boxes. He later tracked down Joseph and beat him repeatedly in an attempt to find out what had become of the book, seeking to find it and use its power for himself, but was arrested later on for attempted manslaughter and sent to South Ridge Penitentiary. Joseph was rendered comatose and would remain that way for the next several years.
Scheming from prison[]
Seeking to get the power of the Darkhold and the Momentum Labs technology, he began orchestrating events to lead up to his eventual escape from prison. He tipped off the Chinatown Crew, a local gang, about the location of one of the boxes he trapped his partners inside of, leading to them finding it and opening it, releasing the incorporeal form of Lucy from it.
Following Lucy's re-emergence, Agent Phil Coulson visited Eli in prison to alert him of Lucy's return. He didn't believe Coulson at first, but when Robbie later visited him on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s behalf, he told him everything that happened with Joseph and warned Robbie to steer clear of the Darkhold.
Escape[]
Some time later, Lucy entered South Ridge in order to abduct Eli and force him to help her restore herself to normal. Inside the prison, she used her ghostly touch to drive guards and prisoners alike insane, causing them to become violent. When S.H.I.E.L.D. inevitably followed, Lucy's infected victims attacked the agents. In order to save the agents within the prison, Leo Fitz had to remotely unlock every door in the main cellblock, opening every cell. Eli was able to get out in the midst of the riot that ensued, but Lucy caught up to him outside, threatening to destroy his mind with her power unless he helped her. Together, they fled the scene in a hijacked EMT vehicle and returned to Momentum Labs.
Gaining power[]
Moving their project to a Roxxon energy plant in Pasadena, Eli and Lucy restarted the experiment that had turned Lucy into a spectral apparition. Eli succeeded in recreating the quantum particle generator, but warned Lucy that the excessive power output could potentially threaten thousands of lives, although Lucy wasn't concerned about collateral damage. When S.H.I.E.L.D. later arrived on the scene, Robbie confronted Lucy as Ghost Rider and killed her, though not before she revealed to him Eli's true intentions.
Eli, having replicated the matter-generator from Momentum Labs, entered it as Coulson arrived on-scene to "rescue" him. He had the Darkhold taken away, but Eli had already gotten what he needed. Coulson, realizing that Eli was the one who was after the power all this time, got him to admit that he nearly killed Joseph to learn where the book was. Eli entered the matter-generator chamber, sealing himself inside. The machine turned on and a blast wave was sent through the base, hitting Coulson, Fitz and Robbie and sending them into a pocket reality. Eli later exited the chamber, having gained the ability to create matter from nothing, generating a rock-like solid from his hand and standing victoriously.
Eli walked through the facility with his newfound powers, eventually confronted by four S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in the halls, who aimed at him with their machine-guns. Robbie, having been sent into a pocket reality by the shockwave, tried to talk to Eli, but his uncle didn't hear him. Robbie watched helplessly as Eli killed the agents by making spikes of pure carbon protrude from the agents' bodies. Eli formed a carbon wall in the hallway to block off the rest of the advance and escaped with ease. While in the other plane of existence, Robbie offered the Spirit of Vengeance the chance to stay bonded to him for as long as it wanted if he was allowed to use the power to find and kill Eli; they both returned to the physical world through a portal made by the android Aida and went with Alphonso Mackenzie to find Eli and stop him from using his powers for further evil.
Final battle with S.H.I.E.L.D.[]
Eli began using his newfound powers to create an enlarged and enhanced version of the Bauers' Quantum Battery, powered by a Demon Core of his own making, in order to wipe away all life on Earth and replace it using his own powers of matter generation, and had help from the Chinatown Crew. One of his goons told him that S.H.I.E.L.D. was coming, so he proceeded to speed up the machine's development. The goon asks for more pay for the job, so Eli responded by killing him, spawning diamonds in his lungs that he coughed up, and told the others to cut him open to get the rest of them. To keep the agents away, he set up a trap using a highly-flammable liquid that would ignite when contact is made with the water in the hallways. Agent Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez tried using her Inhuman super-speed powers to enter, but is almost burned alive in the process.
Meanwhile, Robbie, having escaped the dark realm that he'd been sent to, entered the building, walking through the flames and not feeling a thing. He entered the Quantum Battery and saw the Demon Core powering it, but was stopped when Eli used his powers to impale Robbie on a carbon spike. He realized that Robbie wasn't a normal person, given that the plutonium, the flames and the carbon should've killed him on the spot; he declared that justice will be served, revealing himself as the Ghost Rider. Eli, horrified that his own nephew was this monster, tried telling him about his plans, but he didn't want to hear them. Eli explained how he'd been shunned by everyone he knew all his life, and was called a cheater and a fraud, but with his powers, he could prove the world wrong, now being a god. Robbie warned him that the Devil was after him, but he dismissed this.
The Chinatown Crew brought Phil Coulson into the room, having been captured, as he explained that his powers were actually sourced from Hell. He was not pulling matter out of nothing, but was actually pulling it out of the dark realm he'd been sent to before, and the more he used his powers, the more seismic tremors he caused in the area. He warned that Eli should stop using his powers before the quakes build up and destroy Los Angeles, but Eli believed that using the Demon Core, he can wipe out all life on Earth and replace it, having gained the Darkhold's knowledge on mastering life and death. In that moment, Coulson summoned the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. to save him, swiftly defeating the Chinatown Crew.
Elena managed to save the team and sent Eli into the Quantum Battery with Robbie, trapping him inside. Below the room, Fitz, Aida and Simmons manage to build a gateway to the dark realm, hoping to send the Quantum Battery there and save the world. Robbie transformed into the Ghost Rider as the gateway opened. Coulson threw a chain to hopefully pull Robbie out to safety, but he instead stayed and burned Eli alive with the flames of Hell engulfing them both. The gateway opened and the Battery, with both Robbie and the now-screaming Eli being engulfed by the gateway, which promptly shut on them and trapped Robbie there.