^Honestly, I don't remember specifics much. It didn't leave that strong an impression, and I'm not really interested in thinking back on it.
Agent Carter - Season 2
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That's one of the ones I linked to above. It blasted past it's original goal of 25,000 easily, and at this rate should exceed the revised goal of 35,000 in the next hour or two.
Oops! I missed your post somehow...
Well, I don't disagree with what you're saying it terms of our world, but in terms of the MCU, I can't see Hydra rising until the powerful "Secret Empire" falls. Of course, Hydra could be said to have infiltrated and taken over the Council the same way as they did SHIELD, but I prefer to think that Hydra filled the power vacuum left after Peggy conveniently took down the Council for their crimes.
New goal is 50k. It's currently at close to 43k.
Err...the Council is clearly meant to be a faction of Hydra, or connected to it. LOOK AT THE LOGO! I don't believe that's a coincidence, no matter what evasive answer anyone's given on the subject in interviews...
First off, I agree with the preceding poster that the Arena Club's logo does seem to match the Hydra iconography seen in AoS. But even if that weren't the case, the thing that must be remembered about Hydra is that it's not one organization, it's many. That's the whole point behind the name -- it's one dragon with many heads. It's divided into several factions that operate independently. So it's not about filling a single vacuum.
The problem with that is that she is aware of the Council's existence, as she was not of aware of Hydra's continued existence, and is destined to soon become head of the greatest spy agency in the world. This not something that Peggy will just let lay, especially after Thompson's murder. She is going to dig deep in the Council's affairs, take names and kick ass. She is, after all, Peggy Carter. If there was a pre-existing Hydra connection to the council, it would be difficult to hide it from her (of all people in the world) scrutiny. At this point, secrecy is of prime importance to any fragments of Hydra out there, and if the members of the council were Hydra, they have been marked. They are under scrutiny. They're no good to Hydra now. No, if the resources and infra-structure created by the Council are to be of any use to Hydra, Peggy must believe that it, and their threat, to be a thing of the past.
As far as she and the rest of the SSR know at this point, Hydra was just the Red Skull's pet project and died with him. But they are actually an ancient cult that have been around in many guises for thousands of years. All this as per the season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that this season of Agent Carter was broadcast in the middle of.
Hence no one knowing about them, including Carter. She and her organization will remain completely ignorant of Hydra having totally infiltrated it all the way up until the events leading up to and culminating in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Believe me, a woman in the 1940s was never going to believe that the threat from rich white men and their elitist cliques was a thing of the past. At most, she'd see the downfall of the Council as addressing one symptom of a systemic problem that wasn't going away anytime soon.
Anyway, again, Hydra is intentionally organized in isolated cells. The links between them are difficult even for accomplished SHIELD agents to discern, which is how Gideon Malick and those guys from Ant-Man were able to survive the fall of Alexander Pierce's Hydra. And, for that matter, how Hydra was able to successfully infiltrate "the greatest spy agency in the world" for 70 years and almost completely co-opt it. The thing about spy agencies is that they're often very, very bad at noticing the most important threats.
All of what you say is true. However I find the resemblance between the Hydra logo and the Council's logo to be minimal.
I guess all I'm saying is that I don't believe that this organization, "The Council of Nine", had anything to do with Hydra. They certainly didn't seem like the "draw a stone from a bag a become a human sacrifice" type of gathering.
I guess all I'm saying is that I don't believe that this organization, "The Council of Nine", had anything to do with Hydra. They certainly didn't seem like the "draw a stone from a bag a become a human sacrifice" type of gathering.
*MINOR SPOILERS FOR FIRST HALF OF AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. SEASON 3 BELOW*
Shortly before the mid-season break of AoS the episode "Many Heads, One Tale" showed a bunch of different logos used by different groups throughout history all stemming from the Hive/Hydra cult. This came about while Fitz and Simmons were researching the origins of the Distant Star Return project that had sent Will to the planet where Jemma ended up after bieng sucked through the portal. Although the Arena Club's itself was not shown among them, it seemed to be a representative rather than exhaustive sample, and they ALL corresponded to that distinct form. One in particular very strongly resembled it. I will see if I can find some screenshots for you (though given your avatar I would've thought you'd been watching!
)When the Arena Club logo and "the Council" was featured so prominently in Agent Carter it was obvious to me immediately that this was a deliberate connection. Some on the internet have pooh-poohed this because of this interview with Michele Fakezas:
But to me this sounds like a tease, especially considering it was published a day after the first episode of AC's scond season premiered. Of course they wouldn't want to give away the game at that point, especially since it wasn't known that the show would be cancelled, and second half of AoS's season was still to come as well. And I think the use of the phrase "I would not say that" is a particularly cheeky misdirection.
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Well, Marvel is known for its secrecy, but I think it's possible that you're reading too much into her statement. It seems to me that she is more trying not to go into detail about the Council and who they are rather than trying to deny a Hydra connection. Also, Fazekas make a point of pointing out that the symbol of the Council is an "A", and not a many-tenticled beast. What does the "A" have to do with Hydra?
I also read an interview with Fazekas and Butters where they said the reason they didn't show the SSR transition into SHIELD in S2 was because ABC already had a show about SHIELD and they didn't want to be repetitive. If they didn't want to be "The other SHIELD show", why would they want to be "The other show fighting Hydra"?
I also read an interview with Fazekas and Butters where they said the reason they didn't show the SSR transition into SHIELD in S2 was because ABC already had a show about SHIELD and they didn't want to be repetitive. If they didn't want to be "The other SHIELD show", why would they want to be "The other show fighting Hydra"?
That's only Malick's branch of Hydra. It wasn't the case with the Red Skull/Daniel Whitehall branch, or the Alexander Pierce branch, or the Strucker/List branch, or the John Garrett/Centipede offshoot, or the Grant Ward "rebuild," or the Mitchell Carson splinter from Ant-Man. Again, Hydra is not one organization, it's many different ones. As with the factions of any long-standing belief system, many of them have splintered off in their own directions, either wanting nothing to do with each other or being actively at odds with each other. Indeed, pretty much all the modern branches except Malick's are descended from the Red Skull branch, which specifically rejected the mysticism of the Hive cultists in favor of a modern philosophy of conquest through science and invention. Note that the Skull/Whitehall branch, the Strucker branch, and the Garrett branch were all investigating human enhancement, and Carson's branch wanted to acquire miniaturization technology, while Pierce focused on advancing armaments and computer technology through SHIELD.
As Monkey already explained, AoS established a history of Hydra logos that included ones very similar to the Council/Arena Club logo. Specifically, the logo of the space mission that sent Will to the planet Maveth was quite similar to the Council logo. The space mission patch was derived from the 1800s Hydra symbols seen here.
The point was that all these logos shaped like A's or rocket ships or ram's heads actually concealed a hidden Hydra connection. Here are those screenshots:
http://kissthemgoodbye.net/AgentsofSHIELD/displayimage.php?album=60&pid=86464#top_display_media
http://kissthemgoodbye.net/AgentsofSHIELD/displayimage.php?album=60&pid=88468#top_display_media
http://kissthemgoodbye.net/AgentsofSHIELD/displayimage.php?album=60&pid=88473#top_display_media
http://kissthemgoodbye.net/AgentsofSHIELD/displayimage.php?album=60&pid=88480#top_display_media
Now tell me you again that you see only minimal resemblance between the Arena Club logo and one of those...
They wouldn't, which is why they'd not make it explicit on Agent Carter, but only clear in context of the surrounding season of AoS. I mean, it's the same approach taken to the Black Widow and Winter Soldier and Darkforce and J.A.R.V.I.S. connections on AC. That seems to have been their modus operandi.
OK. I give up. I'm still not convinced, but I give up.
I kinda like it that AC just lets us make these connections for ourselves instead of spelling it out. I mean, these recurring elements are showing up generations apart. The characters in the past would have no idea what would happen in the future, and the characters in the present wouldn't necessarily have a reason to call attention to that specific time in the past. It helps give a sense of a bigger universe without falling into the small-universe trap of having different shows constantly referencing each other directly.
You know, the possibility just occurred to me that irrespective of whether Fazekas "would not say that" in the same way that Benedict Cumberbatch and others would and did say he was "not playing Khan" in Into Darkness, it could also be that the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. folks are the ones who took it upon themselves to subtly tie in/foreshadow/otherwise make reference to something they were aware of being planned for this season of Agent Carter in the course of their own ongoing storyline, much as they have done for Civil War and all the other MCU films, which fits *their* modus operandi as well!
49,611 as I type this.
Passed 50k, new goal is 75k.
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