Agent Carter wrapped up its miniseries run last night with one hell of a finale. While the show takes place decades before most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, there’s no shortage of easter eggs, winks, and nods to the larger story they’ve been building over the past seven years.
Here are 10 connections that bridge Agent Carter to the rest of the MCU. Let me know if you’ve found any more!
1. Edwin Jarvis
James D’Arcy’s Jarvis played a big role in the events of Agent Carter, and although he hasn’t made an appearance (yet) in any of the movies, it’s clear that he played a big role in the upbringing of Tony Stark. In the MCU comic (yes, there are comics set in a movie universe that’s based on comics) Iron Man 2: Public Identity, it’s revealed that Jarvis stayed with Tony after his parents were killed in 1991.
Jarvis likely passed away soon after that (given he’d be about 80 or 90 at that point), but Tony would honor his memory by naming his AI system, J.A.R.V.I.S., after the loyal butler.
2. Daniel Sousa
Is Sousa the man that Peggy Carter eventually marries and has a kid with? That’s not clear by the end of the first season, but the character connects to the larger movie universe in another little way. The actor who played Daniel Sousa, oneĀ Enver Gjokaj, also had a role in The Avengers, where he played an NYPD police officer.
Just a bit of convenient recasting? Or maybe that cop is the grandson of Agent Sousa, carrying on the family legacy of police work.
3. Lucky Star
The fictional Lucky Star Cab Company returns for a brief moment, following up on an equally short appearance in Captain America: The First Avenger.
4. Anton Vanko
A scientist named Anton Vanko makes a brief appearance in the first episode, helping Carter and Jarvis in their investigation. That name should sound familiar if you’ve seen Iron Man 2.
After the events of Agent Carter, Vanko would go on to co-develop the Arc Reactor technology with Howard Stark. After Vanko attempted to illegally sell it though, Howard Stark had him deported back to Russia, where he would spend the next 15 years in Siberia. Following Vanko’s death, his son (Mickey Rourke’s character in Iron Man 2) would use the Arc Reactor technology to create the Whiplash armor to go after Tony Stark.
5. Roxxon Oil
The Roxxon Oil corporation keeps popping up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It plays a big role in Agent Carter, after Carter and Jarvis accidentally get a Roxxon Refinery blown up. Decades later, following an oil spill caused by the company, Adrian Killian would stage a fake terrorist attack targeting President Matthew Ellis, who helped Roxxon execs dodge jail time.
Finally, Roxxon logos have appeared all over the MCU, including all three Iron Man movies, Agents of SHIELD, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer.
6. Property of A. Erskine
While searching for a device that can detect nitramene, Carter stumbles upon a piece of equipment labeled as “Property of A. Erskine.” This is a reference to the late Dr. Abraham Erskine, the character who developed the Super Soldier Serum used on Steve Rogers in The First Avenger.
7. The Howling Commandos
After enlisting the Howling Commandos, Peggy Carter gets her spot on the SSR’s Russian mission team. The Commandos have appeared once before in the MCU (and a few more times in reference). They were a WWII-era unit formed out of the P.O.W.s that Captain America rescued from a HYDRA facility. They went on to serve out the war, with Dum Dum Gugan going on to help Howard Stark form S.H.I.E.L.D.
8. Black Widows
In the comics, the “Red Room” was a Soviet training facility for elite spies. Graduates of this program include one Natalia Romanova, aka Black Widow.
Agent Carter got its own version of the Red Room in The Iron Ceiling, which revealed that the MCU version of the program exclusively trained female children; and more specifically, trained them to become American sleeper agents. We know this program is ongoing too, since we meet a young recruit while Carter and the Howling Commandos are exploring the facility.
Agent Carter showrunners Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters have confirmed that what we saw in that episode was a precursor to the Black Widow program, which would eventually train Natasha Romanoff.
9. Arnim Zola
Zola’s cameo at the very end of Agent Carter might have felt a bit out of place, but it was actually a pretty clever nod to events going on decades later in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The scene shows the incarceration of Leviathan’s Dr. Ivchenko, with his cell-mate being none other than captured HYDRA scientist Armin Zola.
The implication of their “conversation” seems to be that Ivchenko passed on his mind control techniques to Zola. Shortly after, through Operation Paperclip, Zola was freed from prison in exchange for working for the US government. He then applied what he learned from Ivchenko in the brainwashing of Bucky Barnes, turning him into the Winter Soldier.
Putting Zola and Ivchenko in the same room together at the end of the series wasn’t a mind-shattering revelation, but it did succinctly explain how HYDRA was able to control Bucky so effectively.
10. Did she just throw away the Super Soldier Serum?
Yup, and her decision is going to have some far-reaching consequences in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (both good and bad). The overall impact is that for the next 50 some odd years, everyone and their mother will be trying to replicate the formula. With no Abraham Erskine (the original creator of the serum) though, no one could get it quite right.
HYDRA got the closest, with their Winter Soldier program, although Bucky didn’t get anywhere near as big of a transformation as Steve Rogers did. Years later, Bruce Banner would try to create his own version while employed by the US Army. His approach was to combine the process with Gamma Radiation. It did not go as planned, to say the very least.
As a result of the Hulk, General Ross injected Emil Blonsky with Banner’s serum, using Vita Radiation instead of Gamma. Funny enough, this actually worked out pretty well. It turned Blonksy into a monstrous, misshapen Abomination (permanently?), but for the most part, it seemed like he was in control of himself, unlike Banner on most days. The Abomination hasn’t appeared since, but he’s still around, as evidenced by The Consultant one-shot.
Finally, HYDRA took another swing at things with Centipede. This treatment used yet another attempt to recreate Cap’s Super Soldier Serum, only this time it was combined with Extremis, Gamma Radiation, Chitauri tech, and a kitchen sink. The final version of this was probably the most stable out of all of the attempts to replicate Cap’s serum, but required a lot of rest and recovery in between periods of super strength.
So in short, Peggy Carter’s decision to throw away Captain America’s blood resulted in a series of pretty destructive attempts to recreate it throughout the 20th century. On the other hand, it prevented anyone (probably the US government) from creating an army of super soldiers. Also we got the Hulk, and that’s pretty cool.
