“Now is Not the End”
Videos by ComicBook.com
The episode opens with the ending of Captain America: The First Avenger, as Captain America speaks to Peggy Carter via radio, while he crashes the Red Skull’s plane in the ocean.
Carter is broken from the daydream by her tea kettle whistling in her dingy apartment. She picks up a newspaper with a story about Howard Stark being in trouble for selling weapons tech. Carter’s morning routine is spliced with flashback clips to The First Avenger. She’s interrupted by her roommate, Colleen, who is returning form an exhausting work shift. Her place of employment is short staffed because they let several women go to make room for untrained, returning soldiers. Carter tries to return a borrowed hat, but Colleen tells her to keep it and teases her about not finding a date. Carter gets read for her real job, while colleen thinks she’ preparing for work at the phone company.
Carter, standing out from the grey male crowd in her bright, red, white and blue outfit, goes to the “phone company.” She greets Rose, who opens the secret door to the office of the SSR (Strategic Scientific Reserve).
A superior calls all hands on deck. He tells her that means she needs to cover the phone, but she refuses to be left behind. She tells Rose to forward all calls to the briefing room, and goes to the meeting.
A news reel detailing Howard Stark’s recent troubles. A congressional hearing questions him about selling weapons to the enemies of the United States. He handles it in a way similar to how his son, Tony Stark, handled his own hearing in the future.
The SSR head explains that six of Stark’s weapons have been found. Stark didn’t show for his final day of hearings, and has gone missing. He is now a fugitive. The SSR needs to find him. He puts an officer named Thompson in charge, but Carter objects to treating Stark like a criminal. The head dismisses Carter’s complaints out of hand because she’s a woman. A disabled agent named Souza sticks up for Carter when another agent makes some lewd remarks. Carter tells Souza she wishes she wouldn’t do that. Thompson passes off his filing and paperwork to Carter.
Carter is reading a paper in a diner and the waitress, Angie comments on Stark’s good looks. Carter gets snippy, and Angie asks what’s wrong. She says just work. She laments losing the sense of purpose she had during the war (though she still codes it as working for the phone company). Angie relates a story of a bad audition, and says everyone has to pay their dues. One of the diner’s regulars starks complaining loudly at Angie and she leaves. Carter gets up to get a slice of pie, and when she returns there is a note on a napkin telling her to meet someone in the alley in five minutes.
She goes to the alley and an unfamiliar man tells her she’s coming with him. She punches him and runs. A car pulls out from across the street and follows her. She shoots out the tire and finds Stark inside.
In the car, Stark tells Carter he was set up. He had a vault with all of his most dangerous inventions that he kept hidden from everyone, even his friends. Someone tunneled inside and stole those inventions and began selling them on the black market. He can’t tell congress because they’ll think he’s pulling off an elaborate ruse to make money on the inside. He needs Carter to clear his name, and says she’s the only he trusts.
They pull up to a dock and get out of the car. Stark says he’s heading overseas to track down some of his inventions that have already shown up on the market. He needs Carter to look for what is still stateside, including the formula for molecular nitroamien, a substance so powerful that even a small drop could level a city block. He introduces the man Carter punched as his butler, Edwin Jarvis. He says she’ll help and tells her there is only about a dozen fences who would handle his formula. She just has to figure out which one has the formula.
She tells Jarvis to introduce himself next time he approaches a woman in an alley. He gives Carter his card and tells her to call any time before nine. After that, he goes to bed.
Carter goes back to SSR headquarters and notices some photos of Stark on a boat with a woman on Souza’s desk. She tells Souza that Stark can’t swim and hates water. She notices something going on in the office nearby. Souza tells him that Thompson is going after a fence named Spider Raymond who is supposed to be selling a Stark invention.
Carter offers to get Souza a refill to check out what intelligence Thompson has and listen in on his conversation. She fakes “lady things” problems to get a sick day from the boss.
At his club, Raymond is talking to the man who stole the weapons from Stark. He offers more business if the thief tells him what else he got from Stark, but the man says nothing. He gives the man an envelope of cash and he leave, silently.
Meanwhile, Carter is in the club, dressed as a glitzy blonde, having heard Raymond favors them. She notices people going upstairs and heads there, saying she’s looking to sell something to Raymond. She puts on some particular lipstick then enters Raymond’s office. Raymond behaves flirtatiously towards her. She tells him she has some friends that are interested in buying the formula. Raymond kisses her and then passes out. Carter uses a device to crack Raymond’s safe. She pulls out a glowing orb.
She calls Jarvis and tells him that they weaponized the formula. Jarvis grabs some notes left by Stark. He says if the nitroamine is glowing (it is) it’s highly volatile and will explode if not handled properly. He tells her how to disable the nitroamine.
Thompson and some men show up to take a look around. A man at the bar takes notice of something happening and goes on the move. One of Raymond’s men walks in on Carter and she knocks him out. Carter goes down stairs and grabs a dance partner to blend in with. Raymond wakes up and sees his safe is empty. The man from the bar walks into the office, finds him there, and shoots him. Thompson find Raymond’s body and seals the exits, but Carter has already left.
Carter returns to her apartment and is surprised to find Colleen sick in bed. Carter offeres to make her some tea. Colleen notices her dress. Carter grabs certain items that have the chemicals she needs and heads to the bathroom to disable the nitroamine grenade. She succeeds.
She hears a noise and walks out of the bathroom to find Colleen has been shot in the head. She sees the man from the bar behind her and they fight. She burns his hand on the stove, then throws him out the window. He’s not on the ground when she looks out after him. Carter cries over Colleen’s body.
Carter meets, back-to-back, with Jarvis at the diner. She says there’s no way to trace the murder back to her – her name wasn’t on the lease. She’s losing her confidence. Jarvis passes her a tissue, backwards, and reminds her of everything good she’s done in her career. Carter says they need to figure out where the grenade came from, and Jarvis says he may know someone.
Jarvis brings her to see Dr. Anton Vanko. He studies it and points her to a Roxxon Oil refinery. Vanko says the nitroamine is no longer volatile, but it is active. He mentions vita rays, and Carter takes note and leaves.
Carter goes to a storage room and pulls out a box labelled “Project Rebirth,” with documentation on the program that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America. She flashes back to her final conversation with Rogers. Souza walks in on her staring at a photo of Rogers. He bumps into a filing cabinet with his crutch and she sees him. He tells her a joking story to cheer her up, about his missing leg. She tells him he’s one of the lucky ones. He leaves and she pulls out a vita ray tracking device that belonged to Dr. Erskine from the box.
The man from the bar hooks a device to a typewriter and begins using it as a messaging device. He asks for permission to kill Carter, and is told to complete his mission at all costs.
Jarvis and Carter go to the Roxxon facility and find it well guarded for supposedly being inactive. Carter heads inside, leaving a radio with Jarvis. A scientist pulls another Nitroamine grenade out of a machine. Jarvis sees another truck heading into the factory. He radios Carter and alerts the scientists to her presence. The man who sold the first grenade to Raymond make some adjustments to the machine behind the other scientists’ back. Carter uses a device to blind the scientist with light. She shoots at the man from the club, but he opens the back of a truck and shows it is full of Nitroamine grenades. The man has a scar on his throat that looks like a Y. The man who broke into Carter’s apartment had a similar scar. The man says they’re not friends. He says Leviathan is coming. He throws the grenade and leaves on the truck
Carter makes her getaway, calling Jarvis for a ride. He drives through the gate. Carter jumps on the roof of the car and crawls inside. The Roxxon refinery implodes on itself.
Thompson goes to see the boss, tells him he hears someone saw Raymond with a blonde before he was killed. The photographer may have gotten a shot of her. Souza gets a call about the refinery.
Jarvis and Carter meet at the diner again. Jarvis says he’ll search Stark’s files for more on Leviathan. He seems electrified by all the adventure and excitement. He leaves, and Carter sees the same regular giving Angie a hard time. She stabs him with a fork and tells him he should probably leave a big tip and find someplace else to eat. She leaves.
Jarvis is on the phone with Stark. He says Carter is an excellent choice and that he doesn’t think she’ll have any suspicions at all.
“Bridge and Tunnel”
The episode opens at a broadcast of a radio show based on Captain America. Agent Carter is at the diner, and asks Angie to turn the program off. The two discuss finding a new apartment for Peggy. Angie offers to help her get a place next to where she lives, but the sight of Colleen in the newspaper makes Peggy back off.
Carter goes to Howard Stark’s home. Jarvis says that Stark insists Peggy stay there, but she’s nervous about someone finding out. After laying on the bed, Peggy decides to stay for at least a night. They discuss Leviathan, but neither has been able to come up with anything. Peggy finds a closet of women’s clothing in stark’s bedroom.
The Leviathan agent is seeking instruction from his typewriter communication device. The message says that Leviathan is growing impatient.
Jarvis argues with Carter about coming along for her mission, but Carter tricks him out of the room.
The typewriter sends the agent to find a man named Leet Brannis and the nitromene buyer. He interrogate sa man and gets the name Gino DeLucia. He then kills the man.
Carter disguises herself as a health inspector to search a dairy distributer for the milk truck that had the nitromene in it. She uses the vita ray tracker, but finds nothing. She questiosnt he distributor and gets the name of a driver who has been out sick for a couple of days, Sheldon McFee.
The SSR agents examine what’s left of the refinery where the nitromene grenade went off.
At the office, Carter asks Agent Souza to cover for her, but then overhears that they have a picture of whoever killed Spider Raymond. He’s pulled way to help investigate the Roxxon debris before he can look, and Carter is told to work on some transport reports. She calls Jarvis and tells him to dispose of Stark’s car before the SSR can track it down.
The SSR are questioning the head of Roxxon at the company’s office. He says he and Stark used to be friends, until Stark slept with Roxxon’s wife. He says that Stark also tried to buy the refinery, and Roxxon refused. He says he has sources at Stark Industries who have heard of the molecular nitromene, and that it has roots in vita radiation.
Carter tries using a hidden skeleton key to get the photos out of a locked draw in Souza’s desk, but the phones keep ringing. Souza returns to his desk to answer. He hands the phone over the Carter, saying its Chief Dooley. He asks about the vita radiation tracker.
Carter brings the device to the Roxxon office. The conscript her to use the device to check Roxxon employees for radiation. She heads to a restroom to check herself first, and finds her watch is heavily irradiated. She throws it in the trash. The Roxxon employees are lined up for screening. She says the man named Van Ert, the same man she blinded with a flash at the refinery. He shows clear at first screen, but when Carter suggests screening their old clothes for radiation, he bolts. The two male SSR agents give chance, but Carter simply cuts him off and trips him up.
Van Ert is brought into an interrogation room, where chief puts a carrot and a stick in front of him, offering a chance to make a deal for information. Van Ert refuses to give up a name, so Dooley leaves and takes the carrot with him. Thompsons puts the stick in Van Ert’s mouth and starts beating hm. Dooley sends Carter home so that she doesn’t have to watch.
Angie calls Peggy into the diner to ask her about the apartment again, but Carter continues to refuse. Angie is starting to take it personally. Jarvis arrives with the car, and Angie sees them leave.
The Captain America show is playing on the radio again. Carter turns it off. Jarvis says he dropped the car off in Hoboken. They head to Cedar Grove.
Thompson gets the name Leet Brannis, but they can’t find the name anywhere. Souza finds the name of the milk truck driver and they head out to find him, but the Leviathan agent has already gotten the name and his heading there.
Carter arrives at McFee’s place and sends Jarvis home. She finds the milk truck with the nitromene grenades inside. McFee is listening to the radio show and Carter takes him down. She cuffs him to a chair, but hears the Leviathan agent from the refinery trying to take off with the truck. He can’t get it to start because Jarvis sabotaged the motor. Carter interrogates the agent, who is Leet Brannis, but he says he doesn’t work for leviathan anymore. He demands protection before saying anything else. McFee has gotten free. They leave in the milk truck, but the other Leviathan agent drops down on top of it.
Dooley and Thompson find McFee, still attached to the chair, running downt he road. Carter and the agent fight on the top of the truck. A bullet pierces the roof and hits Brannis.. Dooley and Thompson question McFee, but he’s slow to talk. Jarvis grabs Brannis and they and carter jump from the truc as it goes off the road, over a cliff, and the nitromene grenades inside implode. Brannis si badly hurt from the bullet and the jump. As he lays dying, Carter begs for information. He scrawls a symbol in the sand. It looks like a heart with a waving line crossing it horizontally. Brannis dies. Carter wipes the symbol from the sand and she and Jarvis take off.
The SSR agents arrive on the scene and survey the damage. The chief notices women’s footprints around Brannis’ body. Souza finds a key to Hotel Cosmopolitan.
Jarvis patches up Carter. Carter is stubborn about admitting that she need Jarvis’ help, and Jarvis tries to talk some sense into her, reminding her that people in her line of work need support. She says that Steve Rogers was able to stand on his own, and Jarvis says that, from what Howard Stark has told him, Captain America leaned heavily on her for support.
Carter goes to the apartment with Angie. It’s an all-female complex, and requires her to interview. The woman who runs the Griffith Hotel, the complex, is very strict about observing proper code of conduct for young women.
Carter arrives at the SSR office and finds Thompson, Souza, and Dooley looking over some photos. Turns out they’re settling a bet about whether or not Joe DiMaggio was in the hotel. Turns out they only got photos of Carter from her back side.
The radio show is playing again, as the SSR continues to pull apart the ball of refinery debris. They find the bumper and license plate to Howard Stark’s car.
