Agent Carter · Season 2 · Episode 4
Smoke and Mirrors
Synopsis
In 1920s Broxton, Oklahoma, young Agnes Cully fixes a radio her mother can't be bothered to admire. By 1928 her mother tells her that her looks are the only currency that will ever matter. Come 1934, she steps off the bus in Hollywood, meets a talent agent who rechristens her Whitney Frost and she hides her brains in favor of a face the cameras will love.
In 1940 England, a young code breaker named Peggy Carter is engaged to Fred, a man who dreams small. She gets the Special Operations Executive offer that could make her enormous. She nearly turns it down. Then her brother Michael, the one person who ever believed she was meant to fight, dies in the war, and she decides to pursue the opportunity, leaving her small life behind.
In 1947 Peggy and Edwin Jarvis tranquilize Council enforcer Rufus Hunt and stuff him in a car boot. Peggy uses yet another defunct Stark invention to break Hunt with a very believable bluff. A dose of, what she claims is Stark-brewed malaria. In reality, is simply a nasty cold. Ultimately, Hunt gives up two names of Council of Nine members, Thomas Gloucester and Roxxon's Hugh Jones. He swears the men he serves killed McKinley, crashed the market, and cannot be run from. A raid on the Arena Club is ready to roll when War Department fixer Vernon Masters walks in with a surprise audit that freezes the whole operation. Determined not to be slowed, Peggy devises a way to plant a bug on Hunt and allow him to believe he freed himself. Naturally, Hunt runs directly to Calvin Chadwick and tries to blackmail his way to safety. Whitney has heard enough. She puts a hand on him and the Zero Matter pulls him apart, absorbing him in front of her horrified husband. The pretty face, it seems, is done hiding.
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
SSR agent; kidnaps and breaks Rufus Hunt, drives the Arena Club investigation, and is shown in flashback choosing the SOE over marriage.
Stark's butler; supplies the tranquilizer rifle, cold compound, and the anecdote. Helps Peggy take Hunt.
L.A. Branch SSR chief; furious at the kidnapping, then joins the interrogation and pushes for the Arena Club raid.
Kills in this episode: 1
Actress and hidden genius; experiments on her growing Zero Matter power and absorbs Rufus Hunt in front of Chadwick.
Intangible Isodyne scientist; works a Zero Matter theory with Jarvis and feels the substance pulling at him.
Whitney's husband and Council member; watches his wife murder Hunt and grasps what she has become.
Milestone: Killed by Agnes "Whitney Frost" Cully for attempting to blackmail her and Chadwick
Council enforcer; broken by Peggy's malaria bluff, then absorbed by Whitney when he tries to blackmail Chadwick.
War Department operative and Council associate; halts the SSR raid with an audit and leans on Peggy.
Milestone: Killed by someone in combat.
Peggy's brother, in 1940 flashback; recommended her for the SOE and told her she was meant to fight.
Agnes's mother, in flashback; beholden to "Uncle Bud"; dismisses her daughter's genius and tells her that beauty is her only ticket in the world.
"Uncle Bud," in flashback; Wilma's controlling boyfriend who belittles young Agnes.
Peggy's Bletchley supervisor, in 1940 flashback; delivers the SOE recruitment offer.
Peggy's fiancé, in flashback; wants a quiet life and ultimately left by Peggy in favor of the SOE after Michael's death.
Peggy's mother, in the earliest childhood flashback.
The 1934 talent agent who "discovers" Agnes and renames her Whitney Frost.
Gallery
In-Universe Dates
Assassination of President William McKinley.
Spoken by Hunt as a Council of Nine operation. Real historical event
Agnes is in the kitchen fixing a radio when 'Uncle Bud' enters and.. takes her mother upstairs.
Stated On Screen
Bud breaks up with Wilma, and Wilma tells Agnes her looks are all that matter.
Stated On Screen
Black Tuesday / The Wall Street Crash
Spoken by Hunt as a Council of Nine operation ("Black Tuesday"). Real historical event.
Flashback to Peggy's Childhood, playing with her brother, Michael
The MCU Wiki gives Peggy’s birth date as April 9, 1921, in Hampstead, sourced to her obituary prop. Young Peggy reads as roughly 8 to 10, which would put it around 1929 to 1931. We'll split the difference.
Agnes Cully is discovered in Hollywood
Sousa says she was discovered in front of the Olympic movie house in ‘34, and that she was Anvil Studios’ top earner by ‘38
Peggy's engagement party with Fred. Her conversation with Michael about the job at the SOE.
Stated On Screen
Mr. Edwards offers Peggy the Special Operations Executive (SOE) job.
Stated On Screen
Michael Carter dies
Before the Peggy's wedding and after the wedding party
Chadwick says the paper reports Whitney’s director “hadn’t been heard from since Tuesday,” and Hunt’s hand wound is from “the other day.” With E3 ending Wednesday, July 16, Thursday is the earliest fit.
Comic Roots
Where the episode's people and places come from on the page.
The show's glamorous, hidden-genius villain is Madame Masque on the page. Whitney Frost is created by Stan Lee and Gene Colan, first surfacing as the mysterious crime boss "Big M" in Tales of Suspense #97 (October 1967) and appearing under the Whitney Frost name in #98 (November 1967); she takes up the golden mask and the Madame Masque identity in Iron Man #17 (September 1969). In the comics she is born Giulietta Nefaria, daughter of the crime lord Count Nefaria, and a plane crash scars her face and drives her behind that mask. The series keeps almost none of the Maggia history. It rebuilds her as an Oklahoma prodigy turned Hollywood star, explicitly modeled on Hedy Lamarr, the 1940s actress and inventor who patented a frequency-hopping torpedo guidance system.
Showrunners Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas have confirmed the Council of Nine is, for all intents and purposes, the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Secret Empire. The comic organization debuts in Tales to Astonish #81 (July 1966) by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, a subversive cabal that began as a Hydra subsidiary and is always led by a hooded "Number One." The screen version drops the robes and the flying saucers and reimagines them as a club of pale, rich industrialists who meet at the Arena Club and quietly steer American history. Hunt's boast that they engineered the McKinley assassination and the 1929 crash is the show building its own secret history for the outfit, wealth as a weapon rather than a masked doomsday plot.
Two names Hunt coughs up are lifted straight from the comics. Roxxon, Marvel's go-to soulless oil conglomerate, debuts in Captain America #180 (December 1974) by Steve Englehart and Sal Buscema, and Hugh Jones, the Roxxon executive, is introduced in the same issue. On the page Jones is the man the villainous Serpent Crown eventually controls. The show plants him and his company in 1947 as a founding Council seat, decades before their comic first appearance, seeding the corporation that will haunt Iron Man and half the modern MCU.
Recommended Reading
Where to go next if the episode left you wanting more.
Whitney Frost's debut as "Big M" and then under her own name, the crime-boss root the show reshaped into a Hollywood tragedy.
Whitney takes up the golden mask and becomes Madame Masque, the identity the character is best known for.
The first appearance of the Secret Empire, the subversive cabal the Council of Nine is built from.
The debut of Roxxon and executive Hugh Jones, both dropped into 1947 here decades early.
The Snark File
Easter eggs, callbacks and technical tidbits.
Jarvis's Pop Culture References
Jarvis's throwaway that Hedy Lamarr is "divorcing husband number three" is a wink at the entire season. The real Lamarr was a Hollywood star and a genuine inventor whose frequency-hopping patent underpins modern wireless, and she is the confirmed template for Whitney Frost.
Elliot Ness
Hunt sneers that Peggy runs around "pretending you're Elliot Ness," the real-life Prohibition agent famous for the Untouchables, exactly the incorruptible-lawman self-image she is leaning on.
The Hollywood Ten
Masters ends his threat by invoking the Hollywood Ten, the blacklisted writers and directors, to menace Peggy as "a spy who isn't even American." Nice historical drop... However, the season is set in July 1947, and the real Hollywood Ten hearings did not happen until the coming November, so the show is reaching just a few months into its own future.
