“Smoke & Mirrors” is episode four of season two of Marvel’s Agent Carter.
This episode opens with a young girl playing rescue the princess from the dragon. Only the girl is the knight who is going to slay the dragon; the princess is a doll. An older boy, Michael, takes the girl’s sword and she knocks him to the ground. Then their mother calls the girl’s name – Margaret Elizabeth Carter. For this is a young Peggy. Peggy’s mother tells her that one day she will have to start behaving like a lady. In the present, Peggy is eating in a distinctly unladylike manner, dripping something from her sandwich on Dr Wilkes’s papers. Wilkes is not corporeal, so he can’t exactly clean the papers himself. Wilkes says that he misses food; Peggy asks him if he’s hungry. He says no – or at least he doesn’t think so. He has no sense of his body at all, something he finds very frustrating.
The paper that Peggy dripped on has a design for a fast neutron reactor, one that Wilkes says Los Alamos built the previous year. At full power, it can produce 25 kW. Underneath – Peggy has to move the papers – is a design for another reactor created by Agnes Cully three years previously, one with a theoretical output one thousand times greater. In the previous episode, “Better Angels”, Sousa had discovered that Whitney Frost’s real name was Agnes Cully – and she was the brains behind Isodyne. Peggy says to Wilkes that Frost is a genius then; he replies that he’s a genius – Whitney Frost defies categorisation. Whitney herself is at home and the maid has a package for her. One which the maid says has something moving inside. Well, the package does have air holes. Inside it is a cage of white mice. Or possibly rats.
Jarvis returns to Peggy in the car, having just visited the offices of Chadwick’s senatorial campaign. He tells Peggy that Chadwick is inside but there is no sign of Frost. He did get Peggy a button though. Which she drops out of the car window. No-one has seen Whitney since her director disappeared – when Whitney touched him he converted to zero matter and got sucked inside her, and her scar got slightly larger. Chadwick leaves his offices at that point and a man helps him into a car. Peggy tells Jarvis to look at the man’s hand and Jarvis replies what a coincidence that the man has his hand injured where Peggy shot the intruder who tried to strangle her. Then it clicks.
The man is the person that tried to kill Peggy, and his name is Rufus Hunt. He served in the Pacific but was court-martialled for black market profiteering. He now works as the head of security for the Arena Club. Peggy wants to get Hunt, but preferably without getting both their necks wrung – Hunt very nearly beat both her and Jarvis. Jarvis says he may have just the thing – a tranquiliser gun in the boot. Peggy hasn’t used one. Jarvis has – it seems that Howard’s wildlife sometimes needs a firm hand.
There’s a flashback to Broxton, Oklahoma, 1920. A young girl is playing with a radio. And making notes. She’s actually fixed it. Her mother wants her daughter – Agnes – to be nice to ‘Uncle Bud’ who seems to be how they are affording to live. Agnes doesn’t like him. In the present, Whitney is attempting to absorb the mice/rats, just as happened with her director. Chadwick interrupts her about a photo shoot they need to go to that evening – Whitney seems to tolerate him more than love him – and, after he has gone, Whitney tries again. This time it works, and the zero matter cut gets larger.
Jarvis rousts Hunt, pretending to be the police and he runs out the back door. Where Peggy shoots him with the tranq gun. Which does not take immediate effect and Hunt pulls the dart out. Peggy manages to jab hunt again and she and Jarvis stick Hunt in the car’s boot. Where he rouses again, this time sticking Jarvis with the dart; Jarvis collapses. When Peggy arrives back at Stark’s estate, Sousa is there. He has a file for but Peggy tries to get rid of him. It doesn’t work. The thumping coming from the boot? It’s a possum. Okay, it’s talking, there’s a man stashed there.
Sousa is more annoyed that Peggy didn’t ask for his help than that she kidnapped a man. He wants to know what she has planned for Hunt; she replies she thought she’d kill him. Hunt refuses to talk to Sousa, so Peggy takes over. Hunt says he resisted talking when the Japanese tortured him and he isn’t going to talk now. Peggy replies that they aren’t going to torture Hunt; he says there’s a line her side can’t cross. Peggy corrects Hunt – they aren’t going to torture him because they don’t have time.
Another flashback for Peggy, this time to Bletchley Park, 1940. She’s showing off her engagement ring (?) to the other girls there when their boss, Edwards, comes in. He has another proposal for her; the SOE want Peggy. Not as a code breaker – Peggy’s current job – but to train people in irregular warfare. They want Peggy for field work. Peggy says that women aren’t sent into the field; Edwards replies that the SOE want agents who won’t draw attention – in this case, a woman (the Special Operations Executive was both equal opportunity and very pragmatic; if a person had skills useful to the SOE they were perfectly happen to use them – no matter who they might be). Peggy, rather differently from the young girl who dreamed of slaying dragons, doesn’t think she is cut out for that sort of thing.
In the present, a slightly older Peggy who is most definitely cut out for field work stabs Hunt with a syringe. She tells him it contained malaria, a more virulent type developed by Stark Industries. There is an antidote. The malaria will be fatal in 20 minutes; she’ll allow Hunt ten to think it over. Out of Hunt’s earshot, Sousa asks Peggy what she actually injected him with (it didn’t seem beyond the bounds of possibility that she might have been telling the truth). Apparently Howard Stark attempted to create a cure for the common cold. He created an intense cold that acts in minutes. So, not malaria then.
There are more clips from both Peggy and Whitney’s pasts. Pasts where they had to deal with being women capable of things that women were simply not supposed to be capable of; inventing for Agnes and combat for Peggy. Something that simply wasn’t done – despite the fact both were definitely capable. Which does beg the question – if Agnes Cully had been allowed to use her skills, would she have ended up married to a man belonging to a rather dubious organisation? The zero matter appears to be affecting Wilkes in some way and Masters definitely appears to be in the pocket of the Arena Club.