“The Iron Ceiling” is episode five of season one of Marvel’s Agent Carter.
In the previous episode, “The Blitzkrieg Button”, Stark had returned to New York to find out which of his inventions had been recovered. He asked Peggy to recover one, the titular Blitzkrieg Button, which he said had been activated and would take out a city’s entire electrical grid if used. This wasn’t true; inside was actually a sample of Steve Rogers’ blood. Peggy, when she discovered this – Stark said the blood had many potential medical uses – was not remotely happy with him. Even Jarvis was not totally pleased with Stark.
A new complication arose, one that Peggy doesn’t know about yet. Otto Mink, the man who Howard hired to smuggle him into the country, and then tried gouging him for more money, turned up at The Griffith where Peggy had stashed Stark. Peggy’s neighbour in the building, Dottie Underwood, came out of her room and surprised Mink as he was holding an unusual automatic pistol. Which she decided she liked. So Dottie killed him. Quite effectively. Clearly, Dottie is not what she seems, so what is she?
This episode begins in Russia, 1937, and a young girl wakes up, handcuffed to a bed. She is in a room filled with young girls, all of whom are handcuffed to beds. A woman unfastens all the girls’ handcuffs and two girls share a crust of bread. The girls watch a Disney film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, repeating the words as they are said, in American accents. Then they are seen training in hand to hand combat. The same two girls are fighting and one gets the other in a headlock and, at a nod from the woman instructor, snaps her friend’s neck. In New York in the present, Dottie wakes up in her bed. Clearly, what she is is a Soviet spy, trained from a young age to infiltrate the U.S.
Dottie is later speaking to Peggy in the diner, talking about touring the city. Peggy herself is distracted, looking at Jarvis’ card. When Dottie gets Peggy’s attention back, Peggy tells her that the places she was listing are tourist traps. She needs to meet real people with real jobs, tearing up Jarvis’ card as she does, and suggests that Dottie start with Brooklyn. Dottie accidentally – or not – knocks Peggy’s bag on the floor, and palms her room key as she refills it.
Outside, Jarvis approaches Peggy, who is still angry with Howard – and therefore Jarvis. Jarvis admits Stark has flaws – and then lists a lot – but he says that Stark needs her help. Peggy replies that what Howard needs is a servant, and he has one of those. Peggy says that she is a federal agent and Jarvis points out that she isn’t respected. Undaunted, Peggy says that the SSR will change their minds – because she will make them.
At the office, everything is in a bit of an uproar, as the automatic typewriter has sent a message. It’s in code, but one that hasn’t been cracked. The codebreaker tells Thompson that you can’t beat a code into submission, or shoot it with a gun. Peggy glances and says that it’s a one time pad (actually, that seems unlikely) and proceeds to crack it. The code has map coordinates, in Belarus, and a meeting in two days. Leviathan is buying something called a prototype Havoc Reactor, with a payment of $100,000 to be made to Howard Stark. Leviathan has been mentioned before, and it turns out that Chief Dooley has heard of it, a covert Russian organisation that supposedly was disbanded.
Dooley is going to send Agents Thompson, Ramirez and Li to Russia, and Carter says that she is going to go as well. She knows the language and the area better than anyone else. Dooley says that he can’t; if Carter dies, he will have got a woman killed in combat. If one of his men dies, he will have set them up to be killed. Peggy asks what if she can get help on the ground from the 107th – the Howling Commandos – and Dooley says that if she delivers, she can go. So Peggy leaves the room. Thompson, assuming this means she has given up, starts laying his plan out to Dooley when Carter returns. She has, of course, delivered. So Peggy is going to Russia.
Peggy already has more respect from the 107th than she does the SSR. So when Thompson finally gets to see Peggy in action, he gets a bit of a shock. She can do far more than make tea, answer phones and order food. It seems he’d always assumed that it was the men around Carter who kept her alive, not her own formidable skills. Doogan, like Peggy, is convinced the who meeting is a trap, and that Stark isn’t involved.
In the U.S., it looks as if Dooley is less convinced than he was that Stark is guilty of treason. He’s conducting his own investigation into various things. Such as the Battle of Finow in which a whole bunch of Russians died and yet no-one has claimed responsibility for. It also becomes apparent that the aftermath of the battle caused Stark to have a major falling out with the U.S. military. Meanwhile, it looks as if Sousa has finally discovered that his mystery woman and Peggy are the same person. He may not know what to do with this information yet, though.