Agent Carter · Season 1 · Episode 5
The Iron Ceiling
Synopsis
A Leviathan cipher clatters out of a dead man's typewriter. After a professional codebreaker is brought in to decipher the message, Peggy proves her worth yet again by doing what he is unable. The message sets a weapons handoff deep in Soviet Belarus. Worse, it names Howard Stark as the seller and puts one hundred thousand American dollars on his head. The SSR wants Stark bagged red-handed. Jack Thompson wants brawn on his team, not a codebreaker. He tells her so to her face. Peggy answers by delivering the one asset no European tag team can match: the Howling Commandos of the 107th. Dum Dum Dugan greets her with a botched password and an old friend's grin. The men who (supposedly) fought beside Captain America drop into hostile ground with Thompson on point and Peggy at the back.
What waits in the compound is not an armory. It is a nursery of shackled beds and a small girl who is anything but. The team finds two prisoners in place of Stark: an engineer named Nikola, hunched over a stolen Stark blueprint, and the doctor who keeps him from coming apart. The way out costs them. Agent Mike Li dies in the smoke, and Thompson locks up at the trigger. Later, over bourbon, he confesses the truth behind his Navy Cross. The soldiers he cut down on Tsuken Island were carrying a white flag. Peggy carries every survivor home. Back in New York, Dottie Underwood lets herself into Peggy's apartment, and the child from the shackled beds is all grown up.
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
Cracks the Leviathan cipher and muscles her way onto the mission she ends up leading
Corners Peggy at the automat to plead Stark's case. Later has a productive conversation with Agent Dooley
Runs point, freezes under fire, then confesses his war record.
Preps the field kit and finds something while working the blonde-photograph lead.
Leans on a newspaperman for the story behind Stark and Finow. Has a productive conversation with Jarvis.
Commando who reunites with Peggy and floats "Miss Union Jack."
Kills in this episode: 1
Red Room Alumni and now Leviathan operative who slips into Peggy's flat.
Milestone: Freed from Russian prison
Kills in this episode: 1
Rescued captive; the steadying hand behind Nikola who ultimately turns into his demise.
Milestone: Killed by Johann "Dr. Ivchenko" Fennhoff
Imprisoned engineer building from a stolen Stark design. Attempts freedom by taking "Happy Sam" hostage and is killed by Dr. Ivchenko
Howling Commando on the Belarus raid. Shot in the leg during the escape.
Howling Commando; the British one.
Milestone: Killed by someone
Howling Commando on the raid. Killed by the little girl in The Red Room.
Milestone: Killed by someone
SSR agent killed during the escape.
SSR agent on the strike team.
Milestone: Killed by Dorothy 'Dottie' Underwood / Ida
Young girl killed by Dottie in The Red Room
In-Universe Dates
The cold open in The Red Room
Date stated on screen
Peggy at Bletchley and the 107th's wartime service
Dates stated in dialogue
Six Japanese soldiers walk into his camp under a white flag to surrender; Thompson kills them, earns the Navy Cross, and buries the flag.
Thompson stated the year
The decoded Leviathan order sets the exchange for 0800 on April 27, and Thompson clocks it at "less than two days" out, pinning the infiltration to roughly April 25 to 27. The 1946 year carries forward from the season's established timeline.
Comic Roots
Where the episode's people and places come from on the page.
Dugan and company come straight off the page of Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1 (May 1963), by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the same debut that fielded Dum Dum Dugan and "Happy Sam" Sawyer. Pinky Pinkerton followed in #8 (July 1964). The screen version quietly reworks the chain of command: in the comics, Happy Sam is the Commandos' commanding officer, the brass Fury reports to, not a rifleman in the mud beside them. And Junior Juniper carries a heavier footnote than his screen time suggests. In #4 (September 1963) he became the first Howling Commando to die, and one of the first major Marvel characters killed off to prove the characters were not bulletproof. Fitting that he is the first of the Commandos we see perish.
When Dugan tries the nickname on Peggy, he is brushing right up against real Marvel lineage. The original Union Jack is James Montgomery Falsworth, who debuted in The Invaders #7 (July 1976) by Roy Thomas and Frank Robbins, a WWI-vintage hero of Freedom's Five with a vampire brother in Baron Blood, a speedster daughter in Spitfire, and a son, Brian, who later inherits the mantle. The is twofold as the films had already smuggled Falsworth himself into this very unit as the Commandos' British member.
Leviathan is, on paper, a modern invention: the Soviet-descended counterweight to Hydra first surfaced in the Secret Warriors chapter of Dark Reign: The List (2009) by Jonathan Hickman and Stefano Caselli. The series back-dates it to a 1946 Cold War threat, giving a 21st-century comic org a 1940s origin. The compound full of chained girls does similar work for the Black Widow mythology, seeding the training program that fandom knows as the Red Room, whose modern comic conception belongs to Devin Grayson and J.G. Jones. Natasha Romanoff, its most famous graduate, first appeared in Tales of Suspense #52 (April 1964) by Lee, Don Rico, and Don Heck.
Recommended Reading
Where to go next if the episode left you wanting more.
Meet The Commandos and run with them all the way up to Junior Juniper's send-off.
The first Union Jack. Makes Dugan's joke hit a bit better.
Get some good Red Room lineage.
The Snark File
Easter eggs, callbacks and technical tidbits.
The Disney Training Tape is Cutting it Close
The girls learn flat American vowels off Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a film that only premiered in December 1937, tight against the flashback's on-screen year.
The Iron Ceiling
A clever title. Can be interpreted to mean the patriarchal ceiling that Peggy is finally starting to break through, or, more literally, the team parachuting in behind The Iron Curtain.
