Agent Carter · Season 1 · Episode 4
The Blitzkrieg Button
Synopsis
Howard Stark comes home to New York hidden inside a shipping crate with his pool table and comforts. A fugitive worth more to his own government as a headline than as a man. Edwin Jarvis buys that homecoming from Otto Mink's smugglers and the price keeps climbing until a well-placed threat settles it. Peggy Carter stashes the world's richest wanted felon into the one address the SSR will never think to search, the women-only Griffith. Howard wants only one thing back from the vault of confiscated inventions: The Blitzkrieg Button; a device he swears will black out an entire city for years. He hands Peggy a camera pen and a convincing replica of the Button and she manages to walk the real Blitzkrieg straight out of a room full of federal agents.
The button is a lie. Inside its shell sits a vial marked SR-53, the last of Steve Rogers' blood drawn during Project Rebirth. Howard hid its existence from the one who loved the man it came from. Peggy throws him out, disgusted that she trusted him so completely. All the while, Chief Dooley crosses the Atlantic to trade a fake cyanide pill for a condemned Nazi's account of a slaughter at Finow. He discovers there was no battle of Finow. Instead, Russian soldiers were found torn apart.. NOT by German hands. Daniel Sousa works an angle with a drunkard living near the docks and moves ever closer to discovering his Blonde. And Dottie Underwood turns out to be more than a dancer from the middle of nowhere when she snaps Otto Mink's neck in a Griffith hallway, claiming his unique pistol as her own.
Reality Designation
This story takes place in the main continuity: 199999
Reality numbers are Marvel's official designations.
Where a universe has no official number we follow the Marvel Database and use its Temporary Reality Number (TRN-1092). Where there is neither — official or temporary — at the time we watch it, we assign a Snark Industries number of our own (SI-001).
Characters in the Episode
Milestone: Discovers Steve's Blood in the Blizkrieg Button
SSR agent hiding Howard and stealing back his most dangerous invention.
Howard's butler and Peggy's ally; buys off the smugglers
Fugitive inventor whose real prize is the vial of Steve Rogers' blood.
Left in charge of the SSR
Runs down the overlooked wharf witness.
SSR chief; travels to Nuremberg to squeeze a Nazi colonel about Finow.
Peggy's friend and neighbor at the Griffith.
The Griffith's iron-willed matron guarding its no-men rule.
Condemned Wehrmacht colonel who confirms there was no true battle at Finow.
Kills in this episode: 1
New Griffith tenant playing sweet; kills Otto Mink with a single practiced move.
Milestone: Killed by Dorothy 'Dottie' Underwood / Ida
Black-market smuggler who tries to collect on Peggy and dies for it.
The vagrant witness who saw the dockside handoff.
SSR agent
SSR Scientist
One of the women in the Griffith that Stark.. ends up with.
The Griffith resident that smuggles chicken up to her room.
One of the Griffith residents
One of the Griffith residents
Dockside/card-game figure
One of the women at the Griffith that Howard finds himself in the room of.
Borrows Howard's paper
In-Universe Dates
Battle of Finow, near Finow, Germany
Eastern Front, approx. 1944 per continuity references; the installment establishes only that Russian dead were found torn apart, that no German force fought them, and that Howard Stark's plane was logged at the Finow airfield the next day.
Confident on the date: Later-story reveal
This date was worked backward from the date being spoken onscreen in S1 E5&E8 and takes place over roughly 3 days.
The Nuremberg Executions
Real historical anchor
Comic Roots
Where the episode's people and places come from on the page.
Steve Rogers, Captain America, debuted in Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941) from Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, and the Super Soldier Serum has been the most-chased MacGuffin in the line ever since. The show renames the prize sample SR-53, an MCU-only designation, and lets Howard Stark pitch it as a cure for everything down to the common cold. Stark himself is younger and slicker than his page origin: the comics' Howard first appeared in Iron Man #28 (1970), created by Archie Goodwin and designed by Don Heck, and modeled loosely on Howard Hughes.
Dottie Underwood is original to the series, created by showrunners Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas, but her lineage is not subtle once she stops pretending: she is the show's on-ramp to the Red Room, the program the comics tie to Natasha Romanoff, who debuted in Tales of Suspense #52 (April 1964) from Stan Lee, Don Rico, and Don Heck. The modern conception of the Red Room is generally credited to Devin Grayson and J.G. Jones. Most of the supporting bench appears to be MCU-original as well: Roger Dooley, Jack Thompson, Daniel Sousa, Miriam Fry, Angie Martinelli, Otto Mink, and Colonel Ernst Mueller turned up no verified 616 counterparts this session. One recap floated a comics link between Mueller and Baron Strucker; it is unverified and not asserted here.
Recommended Reading
Where to go next if the episode left you wanting more.
The origin of the serum whose final drops sit in Howard's vault.
Peggy Carter named at last
Howard Stark's first comic appearance
A good jumping off point for The Red Room.. You know, for reasons.
The Snark File
Easter eggs, callbacks and technical tidbits.
Stan the Man
The man who leans over to borrow Howard Stark's sports section is Lee himself
The Nuremberg Clock is Real
Mueller's "Keitel was hanged yesterday, twenty-five minutes" lines up with the actual October 16, 1946 executions and Keitel's notoriously slow death, and Dooley's Goering gag nods to Goering cheating the rope the night before. It's a solid historical anchor that actually throws the timeline of this show. This season takes place in April of 1946.. Oops
