- "The 107th, our tactical team."
"You guys are the Howling Commandos!"
"Yeah, I hate that name."
"I came up with that name."
"That you did."
"Dugan, you fought side-by-side with Captain America, didn't you?"
"Yeah. But not as long as she did." - ―Peggy Carter, the SSR agents and the Howling Commandos[src]
The Iron Ceiling is the fifth episode of the first season of the television series Agent Carter.
Synopsis
Peggy Carter is finally trusted with a mission and calls upon her trusted Howling Commandos squad for backup. But her cover could be at risk when SSR Chief Roger Dooley also sends Agent Jack Thompson with her.
Plot
In Belarus, Russia 1937, a young girl named Anya is awakened when the handcuff connecting her to her bed is loosened. She quickly finds a piece of bread she had hidden and eats while the adult is awakening other girls. Anya sees another girl and shares her bread with her; the two smile.
The new friends watch a movie in a classroom and repeat its words to learn English. Later, the two spar against each other. However, Anya is not as strong as her friend and is put in a stranglehold. When the school's headmistress nods her head, Anya's neck is snapped.
Seven years later, Anya's killer now calls herself Dottie Underwood and asks her new friend Peggy Carter for help touring New York City as they share a breakfast bagel at L&L Automat. Underwood purposefully knocks Carter's purse on the ground, and apologetically puts its contents back inside, with the exception of Carter's apartment room key.
Carter goes to work to learn that the Remote Typewriter wrote a message. Carter translates the message when the code breaker from Arlington cannot and asks Chief Roger Dooley to allow her to join Jack Thompson's team as they go to Belarus to investigate the connection to Howard Stark. She is initially refused, but when she manages to have the 107th regiment meet and escort them across enemy lines, Dooley relents and allows her to tag along.
While she is changing for the mission in the men's locker room, Daniel Sousa notices that Carter has a gunshot wound on her shoulder. This wound matches the wound of the blonde woman in the picture from La Martinique.
The 107th regiment is none other than the Howling Commandos, the unit specifically created by Captain America to fight HYDRA during World War II. As they share war stories, Thompson is asked to discuss how he became a war hero. Thompson tells the story of how he caught four Japanese soldiers sneaking into their camp and how he killed all of them before his soldiers woke up, his actions later earning him a Navy Cross.
When the team infiltrates the Red Room Academy, they find a movie projector which shows films filled with subliminal messages. They also discover a little girl; she stabs Dum Dum Dugan and shoots and kills Junior Juniper before escaping.
The team goes deeper into the compound and find scientists Nikola and Ivchenko, who are being held and forced to build a weapon from Stark blueprints acquired by Leviathan. Carter frees the prisoners, but, in the ensuing firefight with Leviathan operatives, Nikola holds Happy Sam Sawyer hostage hoping to trade him for his freedom. Strategic Scientific Reserve agent Mike Li is killed and, tearfully, Ivchenko kills Nikola. Meanwhile, Thompson freezes and is too scared to help in the shootout. Carter rescues him and they escape with Ivchenko.
As Carter bids farewell to the Howling Commandos, Ivchenko decides to go with her to the United States, claiming that he has nowhere else to go and that he would like to help the SSR stop the schemes of Leviathan.
Meanwhile, Underwood enters Carter's room in the Griffith Hotel and steals her Sweet Dreams Lipstick and a picture of one of Stark's inventions, which Peggy kept hidden under a false bottom in her drawer. She also notices a photo of pre-serum Steve Rogers and attempts a British accent, calling herself Peggy Carter.
Meanwhile, Dooley approaches Edwin Jarvis about to discuss a fist fight Howard Stark had with a general the day after the Battle of Finow, a fight which caused the general to resign and Stark to give up a six-figure military contract. Jarvis claims to know nothing about the incident, but Dooley gives him a card with his phone number, telling Jarvis to tell Stark that the SSR isn't hunting for them; rather, they simply wish to know the truth.
On the plane ride home, Thompson tells Carter the truth about how he became a war hero; the Japanese who entered their camp were holding a white flag of surrender, and that he only noticed the flag after murdering them. In order to hide his actions, he buried the flag. He reveals to Carter that he's been struggling to talk about his actions ever since he came back from the war, and Carter assures him that he just did.
Back in the office, Carter and Thompson report their mission to Dooley, Thompson praising Carter's work. Dooley tells him to call in Ivchenko as he heads out, and personally congrats Carter on her work. After seeing Carter in action and as thanks for saving his life, Thompson invites Carter to the bar with all the other men. Carter, glad to be finally accepted, agrees. She attempts to invite Sousa, but Sousa declines. As she leaves, Sousa pulls out the photo of the blonde woman, who possesses the same gunshot wound that Carter has.
Back at the Griffith Hotel, Dottie Underwood handcuffs herself to her bed's headboard before going to sleep.
Cast
Main Cast:
- Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter
- James D'Arcy as Edwin Jarvis
- Chad Michael Murray as Agent Jack Thompson
- Enver Gjokaj as Agent Daniel Sousa
- Shea Whigham as Chief Roger Dooley
Guest Stars:
- Neal McDonough as Dum Dum Dugan
- Bridget Regan as Dottie Underwood
- Ralph Brown as Doctor Ivchenko
- Leonard Roberts as Happy Sam Sawyer
- Greg Serano as Agent Rick Ramirez
- Eddie Shin as Agent Mike Li
- Alex Veadov as Nikola
- John Glover as New York Times Reporter
- Richard Short as Pinky Pinkerton
- Jared Gertner as Cryptographer
- James Austin Kerr as Junior Juniper
- Veronika Bonell as 10 Year Old Dottie Underwood
- Caitlin Carmichael as 10 Year Old Anya
- Chiara Aurelia as 10 Year Old Eva
- J. Anthony McCarthy as Pete the Newspaper Boy
- Vladimir Tevlovski as Leviathan Soldier
- Alexander Carroll as Agent Yauch (uncredited)
- Bella Rochelle as Russian School Girl (uncredited)
- Unknown actress as Red Room Instructress
Appearances
Locations
- New York City, New York
- New York Bell Company Office
- L&L Automat
- Griffith Hotel
- Central Park (mentioned)
- Empire State Building (mentioned)
- Trinity Church (mentioned)
- Statue of Liberty (mentioned)
- Times Square (mentioned)
- Poland
- Belarus
- Arlington, Virginia (mentioned)
- Arlington Hall (mentioned)
- England (mentioned)
- Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes (mentioned)
- Russia (mentioned)
- Lithuania
- Finow, Germany (mentioned)
- Kiev, Ukraine (mentioned)
- Tsuken Island, Okinawa (mentioned)
- Tibet (mentioned)
Events
- Johann Fennhoff's Campaign
- World War II (mentioned)
- Battle of Finow (mentioned)
Items
- Remote Typewriter
- Sweet Dreams Lipstick
- Bulletproof Vest
- Photonic Amplifier (mentioned)
- Havoc Reactor (mentioned)
Vehicles
Organizations
- Strategic Scientific Reserve
- 107th Infantry Regiment
- Soviet Armed Forces
- New York Bulletin
- Leviathan
- Stark Industries (logo)
- United States Marine Corps (mentioned)
- United States Navy (mentioned)
- United Nations (mentioned)
- League of Nations (mentioned)
- Cosa Nostra (mentioned)
Mentioned
- Angie Martinelli
- Captain America
- Howard Stark
- Sasha Demidov
- Ernst Mueller
- John McGinnis
- Ana Jarvis
- Alan Turing
- Edward R. Murrow
- Mahatma Gandhi
- Vice President
- Leviathan
- Yeti / Abominable Snowman
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (footage)
- The New York Times
- Pulitzer Prize
Trivia
- Junior Juniper is killed during the mission; however, in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes was said to be "the only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country". This inconsistency could be referring to the fact that Barnes was the only Commando believed to have died during the war.
- In the 1937 flashback, Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was shown to the children to teach them English. However, the movie was not completed until a week before its on night premiere, in December 1937. It was released nationwide in the U.S in February 1938, and did not get released internationally until April 1938.
- At the beginning of the mission they find a film projector. Agent Carter stops the projector, with the light still on, to read some subliminal messages embedded in the film frames. Doing this would melt/burn the film in a few seconds, but it does not.
- Additionally, the 1942 Looney Tunes film The Dover Boys was shown during the main plot, to demonstrate subliminal messages.
- While working on the code, the team keep on mentioning Belarus. However, Belarus wasn't known as Belarus outside of the country until it gained Independence from the USSR in 1991. The country, at the time, was most commonly known as White Russia, which is a translation of its official name at the time, Byelorussia.
- When Agent Carter is decoding the message, she reads out coordinates of "53 degrees, 72 minutes North and 27 degrees, 37 minutes West." There are two errors here: 1.) In angular measurement there are 60 minutes in a degree, just as there are 60 minutes in an hour. To give a longitudinal coordinate including 72 minutes is incorrect, as it would be to give the time as 72 minutes past the hour. 2.) The coordinates given are not in Russia, but in the North Atlantic ocean. The coordinates should be 27 degrees, 37 minutes East, not West.
- Dooley mentions reporting to the Vice President of the United States. In real life, the office of Vice President was vacant from April 12, 1945 until January 20, 1949.
Music
| Song title | Artist | Location(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Reveille Roll | Rob Parton Orchestra |
|
Videos
