Agent Carter - Season 2

[Turtletrekker]

Apparently it's supposed to be the MCU version of the Secret Empire, whatever that is. But maybe it's a splinter group from the ancient forerunner of Hydra.

A story that you may have heard of about regarding the Secret Empire is when Steve Rogers unmasked their "Number One" and it was revealed to be a high ranking Government official, heavily implied to be then-President Richard Nixon. Rogers briefly gave up the mantle of Captain America as a result, going by the name Nomad instead.

And, yes, in the comics there is a connection between Hydra and the Secret Empire.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I think that what we've basically got with the Arena Club and Hydra's secret history is the MCU version of the fabled Illuminati...which seems obvious, but if somebody dropped the name, I must have missed it.

They reportedly had President Harding assassinated

Which could mean that Calvin Coolidge was one of them....

 

[Christopher]

Which could mean that Calvin Coolidge was one of them....

So he would've had good reason to be so silent.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I don't see the difference. Hydra was content to quietly infiltrate SHIELD, the U.S. Congress, the World Council, and other organs of power over the course of 70 years, serving as a power behind the throne and secretly manipulating world events to serve their agendas. That's exactly the Arena Club's MO. If anything, maybe Zola learned from the Arena Club's example that quiet infiltration is more effective than armies of jackbooted thugs with superscience ray guns. Maybe the surviving members of the Arena Club ended up aligning themselves with Zola and became the new Hydra. I can certainly see Alexander Pierce as a spiritual successor to Vernon Masters.

The difference is Hydra has an ideological zeal and a specific endgame that they're working towards (which more or less qualifies as a semi-apocalyptic event), while the Arena Club seem to be entirely rich narcissicistic hedonists throwing their weight around for immediate personal gain. They don't seem to have any need for an endgame or really care that much for ideology (outside of making themselves richer and more powerful), and their focus also appeared to be almost entirely on the US, while Hydra is undeniably globally oriented.

I can absolutely believe that Hydra - or Zola in particular - learned a few tricks from them, maybe even recruited people from their former ranks. I could even buy the idea that they're some sort of offshoot of that ancient Hydra cult from AoS - one which has seemingly given up on its original purpose. But they themselves are clearly not Hydra. And I don't think they've been particularly interesting in and of themselves, so I honestly would've preferred the show skip over them entirely and get to the founding of SHIELD and the building up of that MCU mythology which only Agent Carter is in a position to create in any real detail.

 

[Christopher]

The difference is Hydra has an ideological zeal and a specific endgame that they're working towards (which more or less qualifies as a semi-apocalyptic event), while the Arena Club seem to be entirely rich narcissicistic hedonists throwing their weight around for immediate personal gain. They don't seem to have any need for an endgame or really care that much for ideology (outside of making themselves richer and more powerful), and their focus also appeared to be almost entirely on the US, while Hydra is undeniably globally oriented.

Endgames are for people who don't already have what they want. The Council of Nine was a bunch of rich white men. Controlling the world wasn't some future goal, it was the existing status quo for rich white men, and has been for centuries. The Council was just a dramatization of that dynamic, symbolizing the white patriarchy that people like Peggy, Wilkes, and Whitney had to struggle against all their lives.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Endgames are for people who don't already have what they want. The Council of Nine was a bunch of rich white men. Controlling the world wasn't some future goal, it was the existing status quo for rich white men, and has been for centuries. The Council was just a dramatization of that dynamic, symbolizing the white patriarchy that people like Peggy, Wilkes, and Whitney had to struggle against all their lives.

Absolutely. But it's still a big difference between them. And - while Whitney Frost's story was very well done, especially early on in the season, and I definitely wouldn't have wanted to miss that - the Arena Club just wasn't very interesting or exciting.

 

[Christopher]

Why shouldn't the Council of Nine have been different from Hydra? We've already seen Hydra. It makes sense for Agent Carter's villains to be suited for Peggy Carter to take on. An embodiment of the entrenched patriarchal power structure seems entirely fitting. No, they weren't the big bad; they were a group that posed an obstacle to both Peggy and Whitney, two women who were both challenging the patriarchy in their own ways.

 

[JD]

I don't have a problem with The Arena Club not being a part of Hydra. I think it makes more sense that Hydra wouldn't have been that active at this point. I have a feeling they probably wouldn't have been this stable between the end of WWII, and Zola getting them into S.H.I.E.L.D. With Hydra still being such a big part of AoS, it's also nice to get some different bad guys in Agent Carter.

 

[Kemaiku]

Leviathon was it's own thing too, a Russian secret weapon/assassination bureau operation. Not every enemy has to be Hydra.

The Ten Rings are still an actual group in the current day MCU for all we know.

Operation Paper Clip got Zola his chance to start taking over Hydra in the 1970's, we're still 20-30 years away from that in this series.

 

[Arrrrgggh]

Leviathon was it's own thing too, a Russian secret weapon/assassination bureau operation. Not every enemy has to be Hydra.

The Ten Rings are still an actual group in the current day MCU for all we know.

Operation Paper Clip got Zola his chance to start taking over Hydra in the 1970's, we're still 20-30 years away from that in this series.

You'd have a point if the Arena Club's logo wasn't pretty much a replica of one of Hydra's past symbols. That's kind of damning evidence in and of itself.

That said, they clearly can't/won't reveal that fact to Carter or the SSR/early SHIELD because we know SHIELD had no idea Hydra was still active post WWII, let alone within their own ranks.

 

[Turtletrekker]

The Ten Rings are still an actual group in the current day MCU for all we know.

Ten Rings was confirmed to still be a real thing in the "All Hail the King" One-Shot. Also, there was a guy with a Ten Rings tattoo in Ant-Man.

 

[Kemaiku]

^I saw the one-shot but I missed the tattoo, good to know.

 

[Tuskin38]

Also, there was a guy with a Ten Rings tattoo in Ant-Man.

Do you know when in the movie he appears?

I'm hoping we'll get to meet the future Mrs. Stark at some point.

 

[JD]

Have we heard anything about who she was or what she did in any of the movies? I honestly can't remember Tony ever talking about his mother.

 

[Silvercrest]

I'm pretty sure they confirmed her name as Maria, at least. But I couldn't say where or when.

 

[RJDiogenes]

In the comics, her name is Maria-- that's where the name of the Maria Stark Foundation comes from.

 

[Silvercrest]

My reply was intended as an allusion to that, but I didn't phrase it well.
And I found at least one reference: The article that AI/Zola flashes on the screen in The Winter Soldier is on the deaths of Howard and Maria Stark.

 

[The Old Mixer]

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[Karzak]

Have we heard anything about who she was or what she did in any of the movies? I honestly can't remember Tony ever talking about his mother.

I thought it was established in Captain America: The Winter Soldier that it was HYDRA who orchestrated the car accident that killed Howard and his wife? It's on a newspaper that flashes by on screen when the computer Dr. Zola gives his big monologue when Cap and Natasha find the underground bunker before it self destructs. I'm not sure though -- haven't watched TWS in a while, but that detail did jump out at me. It could have just been Howard who died in that accident, but I also seem to recall both Tony's parents dying when he was a young man from the beginning of the first Iron Man film.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Silvercrest.

 

[Gaith]

^ A very slow-moving, geriatric ninja?

... Seeing that all of this season's DC series have been renewed, I wonder if any of the Disney execs are vain enough to renew AC just to match that dubious achievement (looking at you, Gotham). Maybe if they announce it as a third and final season, they can lie to the historians, and say they always saw the show as a trilogy.