I look at Now is Not the End, the first half of the Agent Carter premiere, where Peggy Carter is stuck doing the coffee runs at the SSR until Howard Stark goes on the run and asks her to clear his name. I go through the nitramene bomb at the nightclub, Jarvis turning up as her very reluctant sidekick, and the trip out to the Roxxon refinery.
I thought it got the show off on the right foot. There’s a lot happening in one episode, which is a nice change after how slowly the first season of Agents of Shield got going, and while there were a couple of wobbles I found it really entertaining and enjoyable.
Okay, I’m not going to belabor the obvious when I talk all about the inequality of women or the fact that Peggy Carter is wearing some pretty tight tops(!), I think both of these points are covered very well in Agent Carter itself and don’t bear repeating ad nauseam! So with that being said let’s move on to the story itself and what’s going on in TV’s newest superhero prime time show, Marvel’s Agent Carter. It’s set in New York in 1946, a year after the war, and Now is Not the End is the first of the two episodes ABC showed back to back for the premiere, so this post covers the first hour and the second half gets its own write-up.
Agent Carter tells the story of Peggy Carter, whom we first met in Captain America The First Avenger. After Captain America’s death fighting against Hydra and the Red Skull in the First Avenger, Peggy Carter is left shattered and at loose ends. While we’ve seen her turn up in a couple of episodes of Agents of Shield, like the flashbacks in The Things We Bury where she’s still taking the fight to Hydra, Marvel’s Agent Carter portrays her as more of a mourning widow than a hero in her own right, which is actually quite disappointing. She’s still listening to Steve on the radio serials (well, an actor playing him) and you can see she hasn’t moved on, and I get why they’d start there, but I wanted the Peggy who punches first and asks questions later.
Stuck answering the phones at the SSR
After the war, and as a part of the Strategic Science Reserve (S.S.R), Peggy doesn’t receive the respect that she thinks and we know she deserves, but rather is written off as ditzy and someone who only got the position she’s in because of whom she was supposedly sleeping with (in this case the assumption is obviously made that this is due to her relationship with Captain America). As nothing more than a glorified office clerk, “Agent” Peggy Carter is woefully underused. She’s taking lunch orders and filing reports for men like Agent Thompson, and only Agent Sousa treats her like a colleague, which is hard to watch when you know from The Winter Soldier that this is the woman who goes on to help start S.H.I.E.L.D.
However, when Howard Stark (Tony Stark’s father) is accused of selling secrets to the enemy, and is in fact in front of a congressional committee very similar to the one his son had to face in Iron Man 2, he’s forced to flee the country to try and clear his name. Before he leaves though, he gets in touch with Peggy Carter because of their history in Captain America The First Avenger and tells her she’s the only one he can trust. We’re also introduced to Howard Stark’s man servant, Edwin Jarvis, whom we’ve all come to know and love as the entity inhabiting all of the Iron Man suits and all of Tony Stark’s computer systems [note: I’m not implying that this Jarvis becomes the Jarvis used by Tony Stark, I think he only named his trusted friend and adviser after the person who looked after his father … but if somehow this Jarvis does become that Jarvis … well, you saw it here first!] Before he leaves, Stark tells her about his formula for molecular nitramene, which is going to be sold at a club in the city.
A nightclub, a bomb and a dead roommate
When Peggy starts to investigate she’s able to use her “womanly ways” to get into the nightclub, blonde wig and all, and gains access to the room where the nitramene is being stored. Here she learns that this isn’t just a formula but is in fact a weapon! Managing to steal it away from the club owner before the other agents from the S.S.R are able to fully investigate, she takes it to her home, where she’s able to disarm it with Jarvis’ help. Jarvis is great in this, all manners and nerves, and he clearly wants nothing to do with any of it but does it anyway because Mr. Stark asked him to. The two of them together are the best thing in the episode for me and I’m hoping the show leans into that pairing, because they bounce off each other really well.
However, unbeknownst to her, she’s been followed from the club by a villain! This nameless man kills Peggy’s roommate Colleen, but before he can do the same to her, she manages to disarm him (quite a good fight sequence here it must be said, and while it didn’t really compare to the May on May fight in Face My Enemy from Agents of Shield, it was still pretty good!) and knocks him out of the window of her flat, but when she looks for him all she sees are shards of glass, as he’s managed to miraculously disappear. It’s a dark turn for an episode that’s mostly been quite light up to then, and Colleen dying is what gets Peggy properly moving, because now it’s personal and not just a favour for Howard Stark.
Roxxon and Leet Brannis
Peggy, with some assistance from Jarvis and Stark Industries scientist Anton Vanko, works out that the weaponized nitramene came from a Roxxon Oil refinery near the city. Peggy visits the refinery with Jarvis and there she meets Leet Brannis, the thief who actually stole everything from Stark. Peggy also finds that a whole shipment of these lethal weapons has been made by Brannis and his Roxxon associates, and while she’s able to stop Leet from making more, he escapes with all of the already completed bombs save one. This one he uses to destroy the entire building as Carter and Jarvis escape, and it’s a proper race to get out in time, with Jarvis complaining the whole way and Peggy dragging him along by the arm.
The bomb itself is a nice bit of sci-fi too, it doesn’t blow outwards like a normal explosion but sort of implodes and crushes everything around it into a ball, and watching the refinery fold in on itself as Peggy and Jarvis run for it is a big finish for the first hour. Roxxon showing up is a fun touch as well, since they’ve been the evil oil company in the background of the Marvel films for years now, and it’s a bit of a wink to the fans to see them already up to no good in the 1940s. And Brannis clearly isn’t the one in charge, he’s scared of somebody, which is a strong hint that whoever’s really behind this is a lot more dangerous than one man with a truck full of bombs.
Phew, a lot happening in one episode
Phew … lots happening in just one episode, that’s for sure! I think Marvel has learned some lessons from Shield, namely that while we like our story, we don’t want to wait a whole season for it to develop like it did in season 1. I’m not the only one who thought so either, this one starts a lot stronger than Shield did, and the fact that it’s only an eight-episode season probably helps, because there’s simply no room for filler. Shield’s first season didn’t really get going until the Hydra twist late on, and I spent a lot of those early episodes waiting for something to happen, whereas here we’ve got a stolen formula, a dead roommate, a disappearing assassin and a refinery folding in on itself inside the first hour. It’s also airing in Shield’s winter break slot, so it’s basically filling the gap until Coulson and the team come back, and on this evidence that’s a pretty good trade for a few weeks. I’m curious to see whether it can keep that pace up across the whole run, or whether it slows down once the setup’s out of the way.
This episode definitely kick starts the show off on the right foot, and while (I feel) there were a couple of wobbles, the show overall was definitely entertaining and enjoyable. As this was a two-parter though … stay tuned for the second half!
Do you think Edwin Jarvis is where Tony Stark got the name for his computer, or is it just a coincidence? Tell me in the comments.
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