Time for another two-episode recap of Agent Carter! Anyone else think it’s unusual that this show has packed four episodes into just two weeks? Seems like they’re hustling to get the show out the door … please don’t let this be a sign that Agent Carter won’t return for a third season! The second season has been such a delight! Sigh.
Anyway, let’s get to it. Spoilers to follow, of course!
Last week, we left with Ana Jarvis in the operating room for a bullet wound, courtesy of Whitney Frost. This week, we start out with a flashback to the first season – Peggy’s trying to disarm a container of Nitramene, while Jarvis helps her with instructions over the phone. This time, we get to see Ana coming home and overhearing Jarvis’ half of the telephone conversation; those of you with a keen memory will recall that Jarvis was making a soufflé for Ana at the time. This scene shows us the first time that Ana learns of Miss Carter’s existence — and right from the jump, she understands that this friendship is going to take up a lot of her husband’s time.
Back to the present – Ana’s hospital bed. I guess she must be still alive, but Jarvis looks so concerned that I don’t feel too optimistic about her fate. He’s fiddling with the radio on her bedside table. Peggy shows up with a coffee for him. Jarvis ends up breaking the radio in frustration. The show just started and this scene already is making my eyes well up, y’all.
Peggy sits Jarvis down and turns off the now-broken radio. She points out that Ana is out of surgery and has “color in her cheeks” – although Ana hasn’t woken up yet, which is a little concerning. Peggy tells Jarvis she’s headed home to get him a new radio (and a toothbrush and razor). I love their friendship so much! (Cue wild sobbing.)
Meanwhile, Jason is still kidnapped and enduring Whitney Frost’s scientific scrutiny. Whitney wants to compare notes with Jason – “physicist to physicist.” She tells him she’ll let him go if he only tells her about his experiences with zero matter. I doubt she ever plans to let him go.
Jason tells her he can share some formulas. She accuses him of killing time, saying that if he waits long enough he’ll be able to use his non-corporeal state to slip through his handcuffs. “I hope I disappear and don’t come back,” Jason yells. Whoa … is Jason okay? Like, emotionally?
Peggy meets up with Sousa and tells him the big bad-news update: Jason’s been kidnapped and Ana’s been shot. Peg also notices Sousa’s mysterious injuries, due to the thugs Vernon sent after him. Sousa tells Peg that Vernon wants the uranium rods for Whitney, and Peg decides they may as well hand them over – or, at least, trick Whitney into thinking they will. While Peg changes her clothes (and makes Sousa turn around as she does so), Sousa updates her about Whitney’s new boyfriend, Joseph Manfredi.
Peggy and Sousa decide to pay a visit to the mobsters’ restaurant. The mobsters tell them “we’re closed.” Back in the kitchen, Joseph gets into a hilarious fight with his mom about the best way to make sauce, so he doesn’t notice that his guards are getting into a physical altercation outside. It’s great. After Peg takes out the mobsters, Joseph and his mom finally take notice.
Meanwhile, Jack Thompson is off somewhere getting completely plastered with a British friend of his. Turns out this other guy is a friend of his from university. Wait, Jack Thompson went to college in the UK? Apparently his friend is MI-5 now, and Jack convinces him to hand over a file of some kind. Moments later, we figure out Jack was just pretending to be drunk in order to get this file from his friend. Seems unnecessary, mostly because his friend seems like the type who’d hand it over even if Jack weren’t drunk, but all right.
A very sober Jack quickly scans the file; it’s about Agent Carter, from during her time at the S.O.E. I guess he’s trying to dig up dirt on her after all? Oh, Jack, I was so hoping that you wouldn’t decide to take Vernon’s side, but I guess you’re an asshole after all.
Back at Joseph’s restaurant, Joseph’s mom decides to serve spaghetti to her son and to Sousa, whom she decides she likes. (She doesn’t like Peggy. She thinks Peggy is “the devil.” Why? Who knows.) Anyway, Joseph admits he used to be in a relationship with Whitney Frost: “Everybody in town knows that,” he shrugs. But he denies being associated with her now.
Sousa decides to play hardball, threatening to tell one of Joseph’s jailed associates that Joseph was the person who turned over the evidence that put him behind bars. It’s not true, but Sousa needed a threat. Joseph’s mom goes for a knife in retaliation (I guess Sousa is “the devil” now, too) — but Joseph stops her and sends her out of the room. He sits back down at the table and agrees to deliver a message to Whitney Frost on Peg’s behalf.
Jason and Whitney trade theories about zero matter. Jason wants it all out of his system, but Whitney believes that he has to accept it in order to adequately control it. But also, Whitney keeps hearing voices, and Jason doesn’t — so maybe she’s a little too deep into this zero matter thing. Jason closes his eyes and tries to listen for the voices, anyway, per Whitney’s directive. In the meantime, Joseph shows up and tells Whitney about the trade Peggy’s offering: uranium rods in exchange for Jason. Whitney agrees to the deal.
At the hospital, Ana still hasn’t awoken. Jarvis promises her he’ll make apple torte at least once a week if only she’ll wake up, among many other heart-wrenching promises. These scenes are destroying me.
Luckily, Ana wakes up and the pair shares the adorable moment that they deserve. Except when the doctor shows up, he looks really concerned. Oh god. NO. NOOO! Please don’t tell me Ana is somehow still going to die!?
The doctor tells Jarvis that due to the complications that arose during surgery, Ana will no longer be able to have children. Considering that I assumed he was going to tell Jarvis that Ana was about to die, this seemed like a relief to me, but I guess that this would be a tragedy if Jarvis and Ana had always planned to have children (this is the first we’re hearing of it). The doctor says that the nurse can tell Ana about this, but Jarvis wants to do it himself.
Ana sees Jarvis talking to the doctor outside and notices the concern in their body language. But when Jarvis comes back in, he doesn’t tell Ana what’s up. I guess he wants to wait until she’s doing a little better? I don’t blame him, but she’s already suspicious, so I’m not sure if that was the right decision or not.
Samberly joins Peg and Sousa at Stark’s estate to help pack the uranium rods for the trade with Whitney and also pack up Jason’s containment unit. Jarvis shows up unexpectedly, without Ana (she’s still at the hospital). He instantly gets suspicious that Peg and Sousa are planning to meet up with Whitney. He insists on going along with them, which is a bad idea, because he is way too emotionally invested in taking down the woman who shot his wife. I mean, that’s understandable, but he really shouldn’t go on this mission.
Peggy and Jarvis get interrupted by the sound of Howard Stark’s fax machine (it’s called a “telex” or something). Howard faxes over three pages of design specifications for some kind of machine, but he doesn’t include any sort of message about what it is or what it does. Seems odd — but Samberly gets excited as soon as he sees the documents and wants to build the thing. These documents were probably meant for Jason Wilkes, not Samberly, but of course Jason isn’t there.
Samberly believes that the documents will help him create a machine that could help eliminate zero matter – which could cure Jason. (Or kill him? Or kill Whitney, as Jarvis points out.) Samberly admits the design specs look “complicated” to him, but insists he can do it. Oh, dear. Remember when Samberly tried to hack a locked door in that other episode? Remember how well that went?
The hand-off with Whitney is going down in less than an hour. Jarvis, Sousa, and Peg leave the lab and run straight into Jack Thompson, who’s waiting for them in the living room. I guess he let himself in! He calls them the three stooges – apparently Peg is “Moe,” Jarvis is “Larry,” and Sousa is “Curly,” which is a joke that I don’t get, because I don’t know anything about the three stooges. Jack hands Peg the file he got from the MI-5 and tries to use it to blackmail Peg into coming back to New York with him. He seems to think that this file indicates that Peggy participated in a war crime.
Peg doesn’t even open the file and tells Jack it’s a forgery, sight unseen. It’s too convenient – Vernon asked Jack to discredit her, and suddenly the perfect file appeared in his hands? Plus, Peggy would probably remember if she had committed a war crime in the past – and we all know she hasn’t.
Peg points out that she doesn’t get why Jack wants to be on Vernon’s side, anyway: “you’re better than that,” she says. I don’t get why Jack wants to go with Vernon’s route to power, either.
Joseph and Whitney prep for the hand-off together. Joseph tries to convince Whitney that he still thinks she’s beautiful, facial scar and all, but she’s not having it. “That mark on your face is nothing to be ashamed of,” he tells her. “It’s power. And that’s what makes you so beautiful. You should never have to hide it.” I gotta admit, I dig their villainous romance.
Peggy and Sousa pull up, with Jason’s containment unit and the rods in the back of a very roomy truck. I guess they’re planning to transport Jason back to safety in his unit. Why is he still corporeal, by the way? Peggy asks him that very question as soon as she sees him, but Jason evades answering.
Peggy walks forward and drops off the briefcase full of uranium rods. Joseph bends down to check on the contents. Whitney shames Peggy for not working with her: shouldn’t women be working together? Peggy reminds Whitney about that whole shooting-Ana thing. Not exactly proof of Whitney’s belief in the “sisterhood” of feminism! “Occasionally sacrifices must be made,” Whitney responds.
Joseph’s inspection of the uranium rods goes fine. (I think Samberly may have doctored them in some way so that they wouldn’t work, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to that scene because I hate Samberly.) As soon as Wilkes is allowed to go free, the mobsters accidentally drop the briefcase of uranium rods and they all fall on the ground. They … don’t explode. Which proves they aren’t functional uranium rods. Uh, at least everyone is still alive??
Our heroes manage to shut the door to their bulletproof getaway truck in time and drive off to safety, with Jason Wilkes inside. This feels like the first time they’ve had a win in a long time.
But it won’t last. There’s a car pursuing them. Peg tells Jason about the machine Samberly is building, but Jason doesn’t sound that excited about it. Suddenly, Jason pulls a gun on everyone. What????
Jason starts demanding the rods and tells everyone that Whitney taught him how to control his powers. Now he can remain corporeal outside of his chamber, and he wants the rods as much as Whitney did.
Peg refuses to tell him where the rods are. “You’ll have to kill me,” she says. She doesn’t think Jason would go that far, even with the zero matter affecting his reasoning. Sousa falls for the threat, though, and tells Jason where the rods are. Jason instantly returns to non-corporeality, then jumps through the wall of the van. He gets in the car with the villains and they drive off, presumably to go get the uranium rods together.
At the SSR, Jack gives Vernon the file he found on Peggy. He also expresses his doubts about its validity. Vernon says that it doesn’t matter – it’s an official document, so it’s “true,” regardless of what really happened. Another guy interrupts the two of them, saying there’s a woman on the phone and it’s urgent. I’m guessing it’s Whitney.
Vernon orders Jack out of his office so he can take the call. Jack somehow has the means to listen in on the call back at his desk, though, and so he does. Now Jack knows that Vernon is working with Whitney Frost to deliver those uranium rods.
Vernon heads to the safe where the rods are stored. Jack catches him in the act. Vernon offers him a big promotion in exchange for keeping quiet, but that’s not good enough for Jack anymore.
Peggy and Sousa race down the hallway of the SSR, presumably towards the same room in which Vernon and Jack are arguing over the rods. When they get there, Jack is in the room by himself, and he doesn’t remember anything. Oh no … that stupid memory inhibitor device showed up again, and this time it’s actually affecting the plot in a meaningful way! Damn it!
Luckily, Jack remembers far back enough to picking up his phone at his desk and listening in on Vernon’s call with Whitney. But he doesn’t know it was Whitney – he only remembers it was a “woman.” Luckily, Sousa and Peg can help him put it together. The trio then finds a piece of paper at Jack’s desk where he was listening in on the call; it has a set of coordinates written on it. This seems a little too convenient. Could Vernon be setting them up for a trap? These coordinates are their only lead, so I guess they’ll have to follow them regardless.
Except Sousa doesn’t want Jack to come with them. Peg doesn’t entirely trust Jack, either, especially after the whole file forgery thing with Vernon. Jack insists he’s on their side, so Sousa and Peg reluctantly agree to let him come along.
After that, Sousa pulls Peggy aside to discuss Wilkes’ betrayal. Peg insists that Jason is just “confused” due to his zero matter infection. Then Sousa and Peg get into an argument about letting feelings get in the way of a mission, which both of them have had trouble doing in the past. Jack pops back into the conversation and points out that, luckily for them, he doesn’t give a shit about anybody. I guess it is a good thing they’re letting him tag along?
Rose is back!! She and Samberly talk about the “gamma cannon” that Samberly built based on Stark’s notes. Samberly tries to give Rose a big romantic speech about how he’s saving the day. He reaches forward to stroke her face lovingly, and she turns that into an awkward handshake. I really hope these two don’t end up together.
Jarvis walks in and wants a word with Rose. He has a small briefcase with him. It apparently contains all of Ana’s favorite recipes, her favorite mug, a blanket, and a document that looks like it might be Jarvis’ will. Wait, where is Jarvis going?! Wherever it is, he seems to think Rose will be able to keep Ana safe while he’s gone. Jarvis … why are you leaving!? Don’t do this! Just stay at home with your wife. Remember how sad you were when your wife almost died? Think how she would feel if you die!
Jarvis is apparently going along with Peg, Jack, Sousa, and Samberly to reach the coordinates on that piece of paper. The coordinates take them all to the middle of a desert. Whitney’s already there, along with Vernon and a ton of other dudes. I bet the villains are about to recreate the original zero matter experiment with the uranium rods.
Apparently, both Jason and Whitney can hear voices in their head now. That’s how they know this experiment is going to work and give them more zero matter. I am so disappointed that Jason is a bad guy now. I refuse to accept this.
Vernon shoots off the bomb. Jason and Whitney head directly towards the blast site. There’s a huge rift of zero matter growing in the sky; even Peg and the rest of our heroes can see it from far away, as they drive towards it.
Jason can hear a voice coming from the blast … but Whitney can’t. Jason starts floating towards the rift … but Whitney doesn’t, to her horror. Jason disappears into the rift.
Samberly starts setting up the machine. But our heroes are still pretty far away from the rift. “Do you think the machine can reach that far?” Peggy asks. Samberly seems to think so, but he’s not sure. And he only has enough charge for one shot – he plans to aim it at the rift, not at Whitney Frost, to Jarvis’ fury. Mr. Jarvis decides to get in a car and go after Whitney by himself, because he’s in a real state. Peggy gets in the other car and goes after Jarvis — abandoning Samberly, Jack, and Sousa in the middle of nowhere with Samberly’s machine. Hope it works, guys!
Jarvis drives towards the rift. Peggy, in pursuit, calls out to him on their two-way radio. He refuses to answer.
Samberly, Sousa, and Jack manage to shoot the beam directly into the rift. The rift disappears. But where’s Jason? Whitney has the same question. She walks towards the now-empty patch of sand where the rift once appeared. Jason is lying there, unconscious.
Ana wakes up in her hospital bed, surprised to find Rose instead of her husband at her bedside. She seems suspicious at first about her husband’s absence, but she goes with the flow after a minute or two. The camera pans ominously over to the suitcase Jarvis gave to Rose – the suitcase that contains his will. I just remembered that Jarvis never actually told Ana about the full extent of her injuries before he went on this suicide mission. That alone convinces me that he’ll probably come back … probably. Yikes?
Jarvis finds Whitney Frost and gets out of his car. Whitney moves away from Jason’s unconscious body and runs towards Jarvis, who … instantly shoots her. I admit, I didn’t see that coming. Peggy catches up to Jarvis and the now-collapsed Whitney Frost. Unfortunately, a bullet won’t stop Whitney. She just absorbs it into her body with her zero matter powers and comes right back to life.
Before Peg and Jarvis can make a break for it, Joseph Manfredi and the mobsters show up to kill them. Whitney insists that they all keep Jarvis and Peg alive — so that they can use them to control Jason, whenever Jason wakes up. The mobsters knock Peg and Jarvis out cold.
Time for the second episode of the two: “A Little Song and Dance”!
This one starts out as a dream sequence — in black-and-white, apparently. Peggy finds her dream-self in the SSR office. She walks into Daniel Sousa’s office, but her deceased brother Michael is sitting in Daniel’s chair. They have a cute conversation, but it doesn’t last very long.
Michael soon fades away and Peg finds herself on a strange theatrical set that looks a little bit like something out of Singing In the Rain. It looks gorgeous, so … well, here, have some pictures.
Peg, wearing a gorgeous red dress, walks into a diner … where Angie is waiting tables.
Jason’s in the dream-diner, too!
Music starts playing, and Jason invites Peggy to dance. They start doing some adorable foxtrot moves together. Peggy tells him she forgives him for that whole holding-a-gun-to-her-head thing.
Then Daniel Sousa walks in, throws his crutch away, and starts … singing and dancing. Yep.
I think all of the songs in this portion of the episode were written specifically for the show, because they don’t sound familiar (although they’re all delightful) and they’re all about the situation that Peggy’s found herself in: a classic love triangle. Angie and Dottie show up and sing to Peg about how she’s got to make a decision between her two suitors; Peg sings as well, and beautifully too. Everybody’s voices sound fantastic; no idea if it’s the actual actors singing or what, but I’d love to know.
I normally can’t abide musical episodes of television – I love musicals, but usually stuff like this feels too forced and corny to me. When this began, I thought I was going to hate it – but I admit, it ended up winning me over. The music fits the time period, and the dancing was fantastic. Plus, it was only a couple of minutes in length, so it felt like just the right amount of time for a non-canonical dream sequence, while still highlighting everything going on in Peggy’s head.
Peg wakes up on the floor of a moving vehicle, alongside Jarvis. Both of them are tied up. I wonder if Jarvis is having a musical dream, too.
Wow, I forgot that Jack, Sousa, and Samberly are all stuck in the middle of the desert with no cars. Whoops? A car shows up – an SSR car. Sousa think it’s Vernon’s guys, sent to kill them for seeing too much.
Peggy and Jarvis are both awake now. Peg unties Jarvis. She’s pissed, as the mess they’re in is “entirely of [Jarvis’] making.”
Sousa meets the other SSR agents and tells them he’s placed Jack under arrest. This is part of their plan; Jack is pretending to still be on Vernon’s side. He tries to convince the other SSR agents that Vernon would want Sousa and Samberly to stay alive – and that he’s still trying to stop Peggy Carter, not help her. This works, mostly because the agents don’t look too excited about having to turn on their colleagues anyway.
While the SSR agents handcuff Samberly and Sousa and lead them over to the car, Jack takes the opportunity to give Sousa a big punch in the stomach. He’s “in character,” guys, it’s fine! In character as an asshole. The role he was born to play.
Peggy figures out a way to escape out the back of the mobsters’ truck. Although it’s locked and chained, she has a “hot wire” hidden in her belt buckle that she uses to melt the chains. How does it work? Don’t worry about it! Peg and Jarvis end up leaping out of a moving vehicle together (well, Jarvis gets pushed, and Peggy leaps). Now they’re stuck on their own in the desert as well.
Jarvis gets uncharacteristically mad at Peggy for pushing him out of a moving truck in the middle of a wasteland. He gets so angry that it becomes obvious he must be angry about something else … not that he’s going to admit to that, yet.
Dr. Wilkes wakes up in the back of a car; Joseph’s driving, with Whitney in the passenger seat. His eyes are pure black, since he’s chock full of zero matter. He also doesn’t feel too good. After a little bit, his eyes go back to normal, but he still doesn’t feel so great. Whitney asks him what he saw inside the rift, but he doesn’t elaborate beyond “pure black.”
Whitney wants to take him back home so she can run some tests on him, but Jason insists he’s not safe around people and shouldn’t go to a populated area. He wants to get out of the car, so Whitney decides to let him go for a stroll — she mostly just wants to show him she has Jarvis and Peg in the back of a truck.
When they get to the truck, though, the captives aren’t there. On Whitney’s orders, Joseph kills the guy who was supposed to be watching over the captives. He assures Whitney that Peg and Jarvis can’t have gotten far and he’ll “send some guys” down the road to find them. Joseph orders Jason back into the car; they’re all heading home.
Jarvis and Peg are still fighting. Mostly over which of them has made more immoral and stupid decisions lately. Can we just agree that they both behave recklessly from time to time, and move on? I hate seeing these two fight.
Peg points out to Jarvis that he sees the SSR missions as “adventures” – and that he never really understood how dangerous they were, at least not until his wife got near-fatally injured. Now he’s trying to blame Peg for that, when he’s the one who insists on going on missions. Peg has seen people close to her die many times. She understands the cost.
Jarvis breaks down and tells Peggy the full extent of Ana’s injuries, and that he’s been too much of a “coward” to reveal to his wife that they will no longer be able to have a biological child. (Again, I get that this is being presented as a huge tragedy to us within the scope of this show, but … there’s always adoption, you know? It’s still tragic, of course, but Ana’s alive, and that seems much more worthy of celebration.)
Some of the mobsters drive up to recapture Jarvis and Peg. Peg pretends to be passed out from heat exhaustion, which allows her to catch the mobsters off guard. She takes them all out with her usual ease. The pair of them get into the car together and leave the mobsters by the side of the road. Jarvis asks if they’re going after Whitney Frost; Peggy tells him they’re heading home to Ana.
At the SSR, the agents have placed Sousa, Jack, and Samberly in holding cells. Vernon is angry that they didn’t kill any of them. Jack is still pretending to be on Vernon’s side, again. Jack points out that Samberly built a gamma cannon that can destroy Whitney Frost – and Samberly knows how to fix it, should Vernon choose to do so. Good thinking, Jack! Now everyone can come together against Whitney. Common enemies can be useful, sometimes.
Vernon points out that Sousa might turn on them if he gets out. Sousa responds that Whitney Frost is “too dangerous to have running around” – so Sousa will work with Vernon to take her down. Vernon still doesn’t trust Sousa, and it doesn’t seem like he entirely trusts Jack either … although Jack insists he’s definitely on Vernon’s side now. Of course, he also insists to Sousa that he’s on Sousa’s side. Let’s see how that shakes out, hm?
Joseph brings Whitney to a “waste management facility” that he owns, where he’s set up a laboratory for her. Jason Wilkes has already gotten tied down to a cot in said laboratory. That’s quite a set-up!
Whitney plans to suck all of Jason’s zero matter out of him and into herself. With a huge syringe. It looks painful.
Peggy shows up at the SSR to confront Vernon. And by “confront” I guess I mean “punch in the face, and then slap several times while demanding information.” Jack and Sousa run up and pull Peggy off of Vernon, giving her a quick update on the grudging truce that has been formed.
Peggy points out that Vernon’s “priorities” aren’t going to change even after Samberly fixes the machine to take down Whitney Frost. That may well be, because Vernon still has dirt on all of them, and if any of them try to take him down, he reminds them that he’ll release it. In spite of that, Peggy agrees to the terms of the truce, since she doesn’t really have any other options.
Vernon tells the team that Whitney’s been breathing down his neck about the cannon; she wanted it “over an hour ago,” but Samberly needs yet another hour to finish fixing it. Jack says he’ll go talk to Whitney in person.
Meanwhile, the syringe technique doesn’t seem to be extracting any of Jason’s zero matter. Jason is actively preventing it from leaving his body – he thinks it’ll kill Whitney if he allows it to escape. “Let me be the judge of that,” she smiles.
Jack shows up to give Whitney the bad news about the cannon. Jack delivers this news with a healthy dose of flirtation, which works just fine on Whitney, but not at all for Joseph … who gets infuriated that anyone’s pulling the moves on his girlfriend. Whitney tells Joseph to go; he obeys.
Jack has another plan for appeasing Whitney: telling the truth. He admits to her that Vernon plans to use the gamma cannon against her. Jack has an alternate proposal: “I deliver the cannon to you, along with Vernon Masters, to do with as you please.” Jack then tells her why he’s doing this: he wants a seat on the Council.
I continue to have no idea which side Jack is actually on. Does he even know anymore?
Jack returns to the SSR and tells everybody that Whitney bought his story — although, of course, he doesn’t tell them what he told her. Peggy is suspicious, but she can’t prove Jack did anything. Samberly helps load the weapon into an SSR vehicle; Vernon insists he wants to be the one to fire the weapon at Whitney. I guess Vernon and Jack are going to do this by themselves?
Peggy and Sousa are supposed to be back-up, tailing them in a separate car. Except their car has been sabotaged … by Jack, probably, although Peg assumes Vernon did it. Does it even matter which of them did it? They’re both jerks. Anyway, Jack doesn’t respond to Peggy’s radio call about the car, so it was probably him.
Inside the SSR office, Samberly sits on Rose’s desk, irritating her while she works. (I think we’re still supposed to hate Samberly, right? Because they have done absolutely nothing to redeem him.) Peg and Sousa walk in and ask to borrow Samberly’s car. Then Samberly tells them that Jack Thompson told him to turn the gamma cannon into a bomb – and he thought Peg and Sousa already knew about that plan. Did Jack switch sides back to the good guys again, then? Jack’s switched sides so many times in this episode alone that it’s making me dizzy.
Peg points out that the bomb could kill everybody – including Dr. Wilkes. “But that’s okay, right? He’s evil now,” says Samberly. (Shut up, Samberly.) The bomb’s on a remote trigger – Jack can set it off once he’s out of harm’s way. But Samberly can build a jammer to block the remote’s frequency. So, he goes off to do that.
At the hospital, Ana asks Jarvis where Ms. Carter has gone. “Has she located Whitney Frost?” Jarvis lies – well, he lies by omission. (Mr. Jarvis, I don’t think you understand how a relationship should work. Honesty is the best policy, my friend!) Ana has a lot more questions: what about Dr. Wilkes? Jarvis keeps evading straight answers.
Eventually, Jarvis caves and tells his wife that he isn’t sure Dr. Wilkes survived “the extraordinary amount of zero matter” that he encountered in the desert. He also tells her that Peggy is on a mission to stop Whitney. Ana asks, why isn’t Jarvis accompanying her? “Because you need me,” Jarvis tells her, taking Ana’s hand. That’s not an acceptable answer for Ana! She insists that if Jarvis is capable of helping Peggy in her mission, he must do so.
Before he goes, Ana asks, “What else are you not telling me? … You’re a terrible liar.” Maybe these two are going to be all right after all.
Peggy, Samberly, and Sousa head to Whitney’s compound. Samberly can’t manage to get the frequency jammer to work. (It’s a miracle he got that gamma cannon to work, really. How do we know that he even made the bomb correctly?) Peg goes inside to retrieve Jason, even though there’s a bomb in there and it’s super-dangerous.
Inside the compound, Vernon and Jack show the weapon to Whitney. She tells them she’s only planning to use it once: on Jason, so as to get his zero matter (and kill him? I guess? It seems like this weapon has the power to do whatever the plot requires, whether that’s killing people or extracting zero matter or both or neither). I don’t understand how Vernon and Jack think they’re going to trick Whitney into standing in front of this weapon, by the way.
Meanwhile, Peggy is making her way into the facility. She walks past the room Whitney’s in; she doesn’t want to interrupt that, she just wants to find Jason. And she does, pretty fast.
Peggy starts undoing Jason’s restraints. He doesn’t want to go with her; his whole body is basically a zero matter bomb, and he has limited control over it. Also, he tells Peggy that “the things he did – all of that was of my own volition. That wasn’t zero matter.” Uh … okay. What’s that supposed to mean?
Back in the room with the weapon, Jack pulls a gun on Vernon. For some reason, Vernon doesn’t just turn on the gamma cannon and use it on Whitney, but I guess he doesn’t think he has time now that Jack has turned on him. What was the original plan, though? It doesn’t seem like this was ever going to work — they never would have convinced Whitney to stand in front of that thing.
Peggy saves Jason and drags him outside, in spite of his attempts to convince her otherwise. On their way out the door, Jason holds back, shuts the door, and locks it behind Peggy. He tells her, “I’m ready for this to be over.” I don’t know what that means, but I don’t think I’m going to like it.
Outside, Samberly has finally managed to fix the frequency blocker. The bomb won’t go off now. In theory, anyway. I don’t trust Samberly’s abilities.
Jack tells Vernon he appreciates everything he’s done, but that he has to take this opportunity. He tells Whitney she can “do the honors” of killing Vernon. Then Jack heads outside. He pulls his remote trigger out of his pocket and presses the button. Nothing happens.
Jack runs into Samberly and Sousa and sees them messing around with the radio jammer. “Turn it back on!” he shouts at Samberly. Peggy shows up and reminds Jack that Jason is innocent and that she can’t allow him to set off the bomb. Plus, killing Whitney and Vernon without a trial isn’t exactly the height of moral responsibility – they all work for the SSR, they’re supposed to care about justice and all that good stuff.
Jack pulls his gun on Samberly and insists that he fix the bomb detonator. Samberly does so. Peg pulls her gun on Jack in an attempt to prevent him from pushing the button on the detonator.
Inside, Whitney gives Vernon the ol’ zero matter chokehold. Vernon looks behind her at the weapon, which has just turned itself on, and he grins: “They got you, too, bitch.” Whitney drops her chokehold in shock (so Vernon’s still alive, I guess). Does Whitney realize that the machine has been turned into a bomb? She seems to realize that it’s about to do something, even if she isn’t sure what.
Jason stumbles into the room, his body now riddled with zero matter scars. As soon as he sees Whitney, he allows himself to explode into a huge blast of zero matter – presumably killing her, himself, and maybe Vernon? But … who knows. The credits just rolled.
Season finale next week!!!!!! AAAAAAGH, these cliffhangers are killing me.
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