1931 CE - Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Season 7, Episode 2: Know Your Onions
- Mar 14
- 5 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
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A car chase tears through the streets of 1931 New York as Mack and Deke ferry young Freddy Malick toward a delivery, pursued by Chronicom hunters wearing stolen police faces. Mack kills the headlights and shakes the tail, while Freddy, letting the agents believe his cargo is only bootleg liquor, quietly slips a vial of green serum inside a bottle. Back at Koenig's speakeasy, Coulson and Daisy fight to save the wounded operative who arranged the delivery, and Simmons digs out the bullet just as the Chronicoms begin pounding on the door. Testing a residue scraped from the woman's shoe, Simmons identifies the green liquid as an early form of Abraham Erskine's super soldier serum, the very batch fated to turn Johann Schmidt into the Red Skull.
The discovery sharpens an unbearable choice. To preserve the future that eventually produces S.H.I.E.L.D., the team must protect HYDRA's supply line and, in effect, help bring one of history's great monsters into being. Daisy cannot stomach it, and in a hard turn she orders Deke to kill Freddy outright, a death that might spare countless lives or might be the precise unraveling the Chronicoms crossed time to cause. Elsewhere, May wakes in Enoch's care, dragged back from a fatal wound into a body and a century that both feel wrong to her, while Enoch settles in behind Koenig's bar after mixing a cocktail that wins the owner over completely. Koenig, delighted and intensely curious, wants to know everything about S.H.I.E.L.D., and everything about robots.
Universe Designation
This story takes place in the main Marvel Continuity: 199999
Note - We at Snark Industries recognize and reject that this universe was named as 616 in Dr. Strange Multiverse of Madness
Characters in the Episode
Character Name | Voice Actor/Status | Role and Description |
Clark Gregg | Works to save the wounded HYDRA contact alongside Daisy and weighs the moral cost of protecting Freddy. | |
Ming-Na Wen | Wakes in Enoch's care after her near-fatal wounds, disoriented to find herself alive and stranded in 1931, and increasingly aware that something in her feels altered. | |
Chloe Bennet | Tends to the wounded contact, then breaks with the plan and orders Deke to assassinate Freddy to prevent HYDRA's rise. | |
Elizabeth Henstridge | Removes the bullet from the contact, then analyzes the residue and identifies the serum as the batch destined to create the Red Skull. Earns Koenig's "knows her onions" praise. | |
Henry Simmons | Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Drives Freddy through the opening chase, shaking the Chronicom pursuit, while wrestling with the mission's ugly logic. | |
Natalia Cordova-Buckley | Arrives at the speakeasy with Simmons to help with the wounded contact, still adjusting to her new arms and struggling to rely on her powers. | |
Jeff Ward | Rides shotgun on the Freddy delivery, clashes with the young Malick, and is handed the order to kill him. | |
Joel Stoffer | Tends to May aboard the vessel, is left in the past, and takes up his post as bartender at Koenig's speakeasy after his specialty drink wins the owner over. | |
Darren Barnet | Hides the serum vial in a liquor bottle and completes his delivery, unaware he is the linchpin both sides are fighting over. His father's ruin and suicide after the crash come into focus. | |
Patton Oswalt | Panics during the speakeasy crisis, then presses the team for the truth about S.H.I.E.L.D., eager to help and fascinated by talk of robots. | |
Nora Zehetner | The wounded HYDRA operative who arranged Freddy's serum delivery. A residue on her shoe gives Simmons the clue that cracks the case open. |
In-Universe Date - 1931
Date: 1931
Defense: The action remains in 1931 New York City, continuing directly from the events surrounding the FDR fundraiser, with the year stated plainly in dialogue ("you are in the year 1931"). Freddy's father is established as having lost his fortune on Black Tuesday in 1929 and taken his own life shortly after, fixing the present action two years on. No specific calendar date is given on screen.
Date Confidence: TIER 1 for the year, stated explicitly in dialogue and consistent with the historical backdrop. Month and day remain unestablished.
Comic Roots
The Red Skull / Johann Schmidt
In the comics, the Red Skull debuted alongside Captain America in Captain America Comics #1 (1941) by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, and his definitive wartime origin was later told in Tales of Suspense #66 (1965) by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. By confirming that the green vials are the precise serum formulation that will create Schmidt, the episode threads its 1931 bootlegging plot directly into the genesis of Marvel's archetypal Nazi supervillain, the same figure realized on screen in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011).
The Super Soldier Serum
Abraham Erskine's formula, introduced in that first 1941 issue, is the scientific cornerstone of the entire Captain America mythos. Placing an early, unstable version of it in the hands of a Depression-era HYDRA courier extends the serum's chain of custody backward by a decade beyond anything the films depict, and ties S.H.I.E.L.D.'s own survival to its preservation.
The Malick Family / HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D.
Gideon Malick, the senior HYDRA financier introduced in Jonathan Hickman's Secret Warriors (2009 to 2011), was a marquee antagonist in the show's third season. Freddy, his forebear, is a show-original creation built on that comics lineage, recasting HYDRA's institutional wealth as something seeded in the speakeasies and ruined fortunes of the early 1930s.
Recommended Reading
Captain America Comics #1 (1941) by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby -- The wartime debut of Captain America and the Super Soldier Serum. Essential context for understanding what the green vials represent in the MCU timeline and why their 1931 delivery chain matters.
Tales of Suspense #66 (1965) by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby -- The classic telling of the Red Skull's origin, useful for understanding the monster the team is wittingly allowing to be created.
Secret Warriors, Vol. 1: Nick Fury, Agent of Nothing #1-6 (2009) by Jonathan Hickman -- Introduces Gideon Malick as a high-level HYDRA operative, providing the comics context for the Malick family's generational HYDRA ties depicted here through Freddy.
Captain America: The First Avenger Prelude (2011) by Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely, and Joe Simon -- Marvel Comics tie-in to the film. Covers the early SSR and HYDRA history that Season 7 is now building backward from.
The Snark File - Easter Eggs, Callbacks, and Technical Tidbits
The Episode's Title
"Know your onions" was 1920s and 1930s American slang for being sharply knowledgeable about something. The phrase lands twice, first as Koenig's praise for Simmons's lab work, then again in connection with Enoch's bartending, giving the title its in-story payoff.
The Zephyr's period-appropriate title card
The "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." title card in the opening is rendered in a 1930s animated cartoon font, matching the visual language of Depression-era theatrical shorts.
Black Tuesday in the Backstory
Freddy's wealthy father is said to have been wiped out in the 1929 stock market crash and to have died by suicide soon after, anchoring the Malick family's fall to a real and specific moment in American history.
