No matter what happened during this week’s double-header, most people will likely be talking about Peggy Carter’s Broadway dream, and how Jarvis looks great in top hat and tails.
The real issue, though, is how we all make decisions or do what we think is the right thing, and what happens afterwards. That applies to Peggy, Whitney Frost, Jarvis and even Jack Thompson.
Let’s start with the dream, which is included in an Entertainment Weekly article. It begins with Peggy in a black and white SSR office, with her late brother Michael (Max Brown). Naturally, she blames him for what has happened to her life. If he hadn’t gotten killed, she’d never have joined the SOE, meet some soldier from Brooklyn and everything else. He insists what happened led her to the life she was meant for. Then she suddenly finds herself in the automat where Angie Martinelli (Lyndsy Fonseca) works. Even Dottie (Bridget Regan) appears, since, as she says, she’s always in Peggy’s head. We even see Peggy have some fancy dance moves with Wilkes (Reggie Austin) and Souza. Man, how come Enver Gjokai was never a song and dance man on Dollhouse? The point of the dream, though, is that she has to choose between Wilkes and Souza. She cares about them both, but fate will likely make that decision for her.
Also, Peggy’s battles with Whitney Frost (Wynn Everett) has seriously affected her relationship with Jarvis. His wife Anna (Lottie Verbeek) was nearly killed by Frost. Although she’ll recover, she’ll never have children. This really upsets him, and he even shoots Whitney to get revenge. She survives the bullets thanks to the zero matter inside her. In a great scene in the desert, he takes his anger out on Peggy. She reminds him that while he may see her life as larks, but it has cost her a lot in personal terms. He wanted to help her, and that means sometimes he’ll get hurt, too. She is quite aware that people around her die, which has been that way since the beginning. That’s when he tells Peggy that Anna can’t have kids, and that he’s too scared to tell her. It’s implied he eventually does, especially when Anna says that he should help Peggy, no matter what, even after all that has happened. Seeing him promise her anything, even a Bernese Mountain Dog, if she only woke up, was really heartbreaking. You could understand his feelings there, and throughout the evening. That’s one very special couple there, and let’s hope they do wind up as adoptive parents.
By the way, we also get more from Rose (Lesley Boone), who’s looking after Anna while Jarvis is otherwise involved, and Samberly (Matt Braunger), who is still asking for respect. Actually, he has a point. He is the 1947 version of Leo Fitz, after all.
Whitney Frost, meanwhile, is determined to control zero matter and get Wilkes to help her. Apparently they both hear a voice coming from the zero matter. She wants to create another rift similar to the one made by an Isodyne nuclear test. A lot of websites have noticed how Frost might be a tragic figure. She’s someone with incredible scientific knowledge who was forced into movies because of her looks. With zero matter, she can get more power and respect than she could ever get in the movies. Her only fault is that she’s a very smart girl in 1947. If she was a smart girl in 2011, she’d be swapping discoveries with Jemma Simmons.
Still, Frost is the big bad here, and Peggy has to stop her. She’s able to fool Frost into trading Wilkes for fake uranium rods. Surprisingly, Wilkes threatens to kill Peggy if she doesn’t get him to the real rods that Frost wants. Souza admits where they are, and Wilkes gets away and back to Frost. He’s really worried what the zero matter will do to him.
She is able to open the rift again, but the zero matter decides to take Wilkes, instead of her. She acts as if she lost the starring role in Key Largo. Peggy and her SSR crew have a gamma cannon, thanks to plans provided by Howard Stark, to seal the rift. This, at least, stalls Frost’s plans, but she still has Wilkes who is now chock-full of zero matter, and he’s worried he could explode.
While that’s happening, Jack Thompson’s loyalties appear to be changing by the second, Last week, Vernon Masters (Kurtwood Smith) wanted him to dig up dirt on Peggy to discredit her. It’s really to help Whitney, though. In London, he gets a redacted file that implied Peggy (as M. Carter) was connected to a massacre that happened in 1944. Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter to Vernon, as long as it comes in handy. However, it turns out Jack is pretending to be Vernon’s ally against Peggy, and then convinces Frost he’ll be loyal to her if he’s part of her new Council of Nine. It seems he thinks he can be smart enough to be a quintuple agent, but it’s a dark side that probably won’t help him. Peggy isn’t too happy Jack allowed Vernon to be part of the battle against Frost, but at least she got to clobber him for a minute.
What Jack really wanted to do is blow up Frost’s new lab, provided by her mobster boyfriend Manfredi (Ken Marino). Peggy won’t hear of it, even though she can’t get Wilkes to leave with her. Just as Frost is about to take care of Vernon with her zero matter,Wilkes apparently explodes from all the zero matter inside him with Frost just a few feet away.
Do they survive? Judging from the previews for next week, she apparently does, but we don’t know about Wilkes.
Also, aside from the dream, where is Dottie? The season can’t end without some hint of what happened to her, like who told her to steal that Arena Club key. Maybe she’ll be back for the season finale next week, along with Howard Stark.