Peggy confronted the darkness within and without on the season finale of Agent Carter. Here’s our recap of the monumental “Valediction.”
Killer instinct
As the Captain America Adventure Program replays the poor-man’s version of Peggy’s farewell to Steve, Peggy, Thompson, and Sousa investigate the slaughter at the movie theater.
It’s a grim scene that gets grimmer Sousa gets blasted with the Item 17 gas canister. He tries to murder Thompson and punches Peggy before he is subdued.
Thankfully, Sousa wakes up sore-throated but sensible back in the S.S.R. He remembers an overwhelming desire to kill while affected with the gas.
Peggy’s puzzlement over Ivchenko’s target for the rest of the gas evaporates when Howard Stark arrives.
“The target is me,” he says.
Recent history
With Howard’s help, the pieces come together.
Howard invented the the gas – called “Midnight Oil” – to help soldiers awake for long periods of time. The remarkably unsuccessful project was stolen from him by General McGuiness, who ordered the Midnight Oil dropped on the Russians before the Battle of Finow.
Hence the mysterious carnage, the larynx-less Leviathan operatives, and the involvement of Dr. Ivchenko – aka, Johan Fenhoff.
To Peggy’s exasperation, Howard insists on be the bait in the trap for Ivchenko. He claims he is redeeming her opinion of him, and won’t be able to live with himself if he can’t stop the Russians.
Speaking of whom
Dottie and Dr. Ivchenko kidnap a cop and try to get out of dodge. But Ivchenko changes the plan when he hears about Howard’s press conference.
We believe a “dun, dun, dun!” would be appropriate here.
The best laid plans
Sure enough, Howard’s press conference is interrupted by gunfire (though not until Thompson publicly exonerates him.) Jarvis hustles Howard into a police car, now being driven by the poor bamboozled cop.
“Dr. Fenhoff would like to see you,” he says.
As Jarvis realizes his mistake, Peggy and Thompson find the shooter – a rigged rifle. This was, indeed, a diversion. It is VE Day, and Ivchenko’s target is the massive celebration at Times Square.
Jarvis realizes what else is going on. Ivchenko plans to pin the imminent disaster on Howard by releasing the gas from one of his own planes – stored conveniently in another, even bigger vault.
And oh yeah, Stark totally took Dottie there a few weeks ago.
Judge and jury
The situation is decidedly less amorous now. In the airplane storage place, Ivchenko pretends that he has the moral high ground here and tells Howard that he barely survived the Midnight Oil attack at Finow.
Ivchenko’s brother did not.
Cringing with guilt, Howard tells Ivchenko to kill him. “I probably deserve it,” he says. “Just leave innocent people out of it.”
Ivchenko is like, naaaaah. He continues to twist the blade of Howard’s guilt, and hypnotizes Howard into remembering the moment of his greatest shame.
Howard is riveted back to an icy field, where the signal of Captain America’s ship has been found. Peggy approaches, holding the vibranium shield.
“Bring him home,” she says.
The Peggy, the S.S.R., and Jarvis arrive at at the airfield just as Howard pilots his plane – loaded with all of that lovely Midnight Oil – into the sky.
Fight and flight
Jarvis volunteers to follow Howard and shoot the plane down over the water if Peggy can’t get through to him. (This means that Howard keeps armed war jets in his secret arsenal, what do you even do with a guy like this?)
Peggy finds Ivchenko and Dottie in the radio room. Ivchenko escapes as the two women engage in an very, very long overdue brawl, and it’s as brutally awesome as we could have hoped.
Dottie also explains that she was jealous of Peggy, or something? Anyway, she likes the liquified identity of being a spy, until Peggy hauls her out the window. Dottie lands, broken and bloody, on the wing of a plane.
Such sweet sorrow
Peggy lunges for the radio and – as she did once before – tries desperately to talk sense into a man she cares for.
“I’m gonna bring him home, Peg!” Howard tells her happily. And it’s all the more brutal for how clearly Ivchenko has tapped into the purest, most promising part of Howard Stark, in pursuit of his murderous lie.
As Howard nears New York City, Jarvis radios in; he needs to know if he should to take the shot.
“I can fix this,” Howard tells Peggy, convinced he can see Captain America’s submerged ship in the ice.
“You don’t have to fix anything,” she promises him, but Howard says that his work with Steve Rogers “was the one thing I’ve done that’s brought good into this world.”
“Howard, I know you loved him,” Peggy says. “I loved him too. But this won’t bring him back.” Tears sliding down her cheeks, Peggy faces the truth herself.
“Steve is gone,” she tells Howard. “We have to move on, all of us. As impossible as that may sound, we have to let him go.”
Peggy turns, devastated, to give Jarvis the order – but thankfully, Howard comes back to himself just in time.
We’re not crying, it’s just extremely dusty in here.
A good man is hard to find
Meanwhile, Sousa and Thompson (mostly Sousa) have apprehended Ivchenko, thanks to Sousa’s decision to treat the doctor like a mandrake. Peggy finds that Dottie is gone – for now.
The next day, the men of the S.S.R. give Peggy a round of applause. The warm feelings dissipate when Thompson takes the credit for saving New York.
So… should we cross him off the “Maybe Mr. Carter” List?
Sousa is furious, but Peggy is zen about the whole thing. “I know my value,” she says. “Anyone else’s opinion doesn’t really matter.”
Sousa asks Peggy out for a drink, but she declines.
Bridges
Jarvis moves Peggy and Angie into one of Howard’s apartments. Though life may officially be returning to normal, Jarvis offers his services to Peggy. “I would be honored to assist you at a moment’s notice,” he says.
Jarvis confesses that Howard is destroying his inventions and gives Peggy the vial of Steve’s blood… which Jarvis stole for Peggy!
“I am quite certain there is only one person in the world who knows what to do with this,” he tells her.
And Peggy does, walking to the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset and spilling Steve’s blood into the water.
“Goodbye, my darling,” she says, and we think this time, she means it.
Time will tell
Meanwhile.
Having been fitted with a marvelous muzzle, Dr. Ivchenko is moved into his prison cell, where he meets his chatty roommate.
You guys remember Dr. Zola, right?
Zola offers a pencil and paper to Ivchenko, eager to collaborate on “matters of the mind” – in other words, most of the indoctrinatory shit Hydra is currently up to on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Zola promises Ivchenko that he is a fortunate man. “You are in prison yes,” he says. “But it an American prison. And America is the land of opportunity.”
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