Peggy’s risks for Howard Stark had shocking consequences in Agent Carter season 1, episode 4. Read our recap and share your thoughts on “The Blitzkrieg Button”!
A warm welcome on ‘Agent Carter’
Howard Stark has been smuggled back into the U.S. by thugs working for a guy called Mink. The men raise their ransom price to Jarvis, but wind up with no money at all when Peggy intervenes.
Unfortunately for Peggy, all of Howard’s residences and accounts are being watched by the S.S.R. She is forced to smuggle him into the Griffith Hotel through the dumbwaiter, only narrowly avoiding the hawkish attention of Mrs. Frye.
Howard tells Peggy he’s returned to find out which of his inventions were apprehended by the S.S.R. to deduce which remain on the black market. He gives Peggy a camera pen to snap pictures of his inventions.
The hunt
Chief Dooley has sniffed out a suspicious scent around the “Battle of Finow,” at which Leet Brannis and Mr. Mustache were allegedly killed by Nazis four years before turning up in New York. Dooley flies to Germany to interrogate Colonel Mueller, the condemned Nazi who led that battle, and leaves Thompson in charge of the office until his return.
Sipping coffee out of his “World’s Best Boss” mug, Thompson informs the agents that they will not be leaving until they find a break in the case. He orders “Marge” (aka, Peggy) to take lunch orders. Sousa hunts for clues around the harbor, and winds up hauling in a recalcitrant bum for questioning – much to Thompson’s amusement.
Meanwhile, an irritated Mr. Mink murders his thugs and says that he’ll take care of Stark and Peggy.
Ignoramus or genius
Peggy talks to the “lab rats,” who are studying Howard’s inventions with an ineptness that would leave FitzSimmons crimson with shame. (We miss FitzSimmons.) Peggy snaps pen-pictures of the inventory.
Howard develops the pictures and tells Peggy that she needs to steal back one of his inventions, called the Blitzkrieg Button. He claims the innocuous-looking sphere will cause an irreversible city-wide blackout. Peggy takes a fake sphere to switch out for the real city-wide light-switch.
Sad stories
Sousa attempts to bond with the bum. “We’re both people nobody cares about,” he tells him gently, aware that the man is also a veteran.
The bum is radically unimpressed. “We all got sad stories,” he says, as Thompson listens outside. “I still don’t talk to cops – even pathetic ones.”
Ouch.
Thompson interrupts the interrogation with a hamburger and a bottle of scotch, the offer of which immediately pulls out the bum’s information – he saw a well-dressed man and a dark-haired woman board the boat.
“Not everybody came back from the war wanting a hug,” Thompson tells Sousa. Do you want a hug, Agent Sousa? We will totally hug you.
Poison
In Germany, Dooley makes Mueller an offer: A cyanide pill – and a painless death – in exchange for the truth about the Battle of Finow.
“There was no Battle of Finow,” Mueller says. The Russians had already been massacred when the Germans arrived. “Bodies piled high, ripped apart,” the Nazi remembers. “Whoever attacked them was long gone.”
Dooley gives Mueller the cyanide pill… which is actually a breath mint.
Fools
Jarvis drives Peggy to the S.S.R., notably nervous; he tugs on his ear while evading her questions about the Blitzkrieg Button’s potential danger.
Peggy successfully switches out the Button; working on a hunch, she nervously activates the sphere.
The lights stay on, and the sphere ejects a small vial of red liquid.
In her eagerness to smuggle the whatever-it-is out of the S.S.R., Peggy stumbles across Thompson. He accuses her of hiding something, but says she is only fooling herself.
“You’re a woman,” he says. “No man will ever consider you an equal. It’s sad, but it doesn’t make it any less true.”
Seeing red
Peggy returns to the Griffith (followed by Mink) and punches Howard when he reveals that the vial holds Steve Rogers’ blood.
Peggy is furious at being lied to; equally angry, Howard claims he was protecting her. His lies, he says, are a bad habit developed while climbing the “American ladder” from poverty.
It turns out that one of Howard’s perks for working on Project Rebirth was one vial of Steve’s enhanced blood. He believes it may hold the key to curing humanity’s illnesses.
“Steve Rogers may not still be with us,” Howard tells Peggy, “But he can still save millions of people.”
But though Howard may really believe this, Peggy zeroes in on his other angle – the money Howard stands to make by finding the miracle in Steve’s blood.
“Steve Rogers dedicated his mind, his body, his life to the S.S.R. and to this country – not to your bank account,” Peggy says. “I made the same pledge, but I’m not as good as Steve was. I forgot my pledge, running around for you like a corporate spy.”
She thanks Howard for reminding her of what Steve stood for, and orders him to leave.
Nutcracker
Unable to crack Mrs. Frye, Mink infiltrates the Griffith and tries to break into Peggy’s room. Interrupted by Dottie, he turns his gun on her. Dottie’s dreamy expression turns sharp.
“Is that pistol an automatic?” she asks. “I want that.”
And then the “ballerina from Iowa” springs up the walls like a frickety-frakin’ tarantula. Before Mink can so much as blink, she has snapped his neck… and gotten her pistol.
Conspiracy
Jarvis apologizes to Peggy, promising that he and Howard respect her. She is unmoved. “I can trust the actions of men who don’t respect me more than those who do,” she says coldly. “At least when they ask for something, they mean it.”
While Peggy hands out sandwiches at work, Sousa grabs the photo of the mysterious blonde woman and begins to color in her hair.
Dooley returns and tells Thompson what he learned from Mueller. Thompson has his own ace to share – a flight manifest from a plane that landed in Finow two days after the “battle”… and lists Howard Stark as a passenger.
Holes
That evening, Peggy buries the vial and sphere behind her wall. Next door, Dottie plays with her pistol, Mink’s corpse stiffening beneath her bed.
And back at the S.S.R., Dooley freezes as the apprehended typewriter in his office begins to pound out another message.
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