As Peggy Carter continues to deal with life after wartime and an unsatisfying career, an old friend returns to ask for her help in battling a looming threat against a mysterious organization.
Tropes:
- Action Girl: Agent Carter herself.
- Call-Back: Just like how Natasha was constantly trying to get Steve to go on a date with someone, anyone in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, so is Peggy's roommate trying to do for her.
- Cassandra Did It: Howard Stark knows that if he were to report a robbery of his restricted weapons vault, said weapons appearing on the black market would only cause suspicion that Stark had faked the break-in and sold the weapons himself.
- Casual Danger Dialog: Peggy tells Jarvis to bring the car near her in an unusually calm voice for someone who's trying to escape from a factory that's about to blow up.Peggy: Mr. Jarvis, could you possibly bring the car around?
Jarvis: Sure, when would you like it?
Peggy: Oh, in about 20 seconds. - Clear Their Name: Howard Stark wants his name to be cleared, but he's on the run, so he sent Agent Carter into missions for it.
- Condescending Compassion: How Peggy interpets Sousa's rebuke to their colleagues' treatment of her.
- Continuity Nod: As is with the other series related to it by viewing chronology, it has so many connections to the films.
- Several events from Captain America: The First Avenger came in as flashbacks such us the scene where Cap and Carter had a brief communication as Steve was about to crash land the Valkyrie aircraft. These flashbacks were the ones that Carter kept on remembering after the film's aftermath. Vita Radiation, which was pivotal in Project: Rebirth that created Captain America, is also very important.
- Anton Vanko, a Russian Scientist working with Howard Stark was the father of Ivan Vanko, tells what was in the bomb.
- Roxxon, the oil company that appears throughout the franchise from Marvel and most prominently in Iron Man 3, Daredevil (2015) and The Defenders (2017), appears here in the form of their refinery.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Treating someone who lost a leg in a war like he's less than human? Yeah, that used to be a thing.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: Like in the Agent Carter One Shot, the men of the Strategic Scientific Reserve don't respect Agent Carter, a woman.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: Once Peggy hears Spider Raymond would open up to just a blonde, she dons a wig to get info out of him.
- Fake Period Excuse: Peggy overhears her fellow agents planning a secret infiltration of Spider Raymond's nightclub. Not invited alongside her male coworkers, she asks to go home early due to "ladies' things", and promptly gets the time off to plan her own investigation.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Howard has no trouble respecting Peggy and asking her for help.Howard: I owe you one, pal. [brohug]
- For Science!: Howard Stark's basement was full of items so dangerous he had no intention of even trying to sell them to anyone, but he built them anyway because once he had an idea he couldn't just not build them. This causes trouble when two weeks before the start of the series, someone broke into his basement and stole them all.
- Honey Trap: To interrogate Spider Raymond, owner of the La Martinique club, Peggy dresses herself up and seduces him, pretending to be a liaison from an interested buyer. The disguise works too well, as Raymond starts kissing her and accidentally early-triggers the knockout poison on her lipstick, meaning now he can't tell her anything.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: After disarming a Nitramine bomb with household goods, Peggy nearly takes a swig from the bottle of whisky she had been using as one of the ingredients. She pours it into a glass first, though; even needing a freaking drink must be done with a level of decorum.
- Improvised Weapon: At one point, Carter uses a stapler to beat up a crook.
- Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Peggy knocks out the club bouncer and the Leviathan agent in her apartment while wearing the fancy evening gown.
- Kiss of Death: Downplayed. At one point Peggy wears a tranquilizer lipstick that will knockout anyone who kisses her, intending to use it on the seedy nightclub owner after she interrogates him. Unfortunately, he kisses her early and thus gets put to sleep before she could hear anything useful from him.
- Like Father, Like Son: Howard spent some time in front of a Senate subcommittee, too.
- Macgyvering: Jarvis tells Carter that in order to defuse a nitramene explosive, it has to be sprayed with a compound made from a variety of chemicals, but he doesn't know how she's going to find them on short notice in the middle of the night. She figures out that the chemicals are all ingredients of various things she has at home, and so is able to make the necessary compound from the contents of her makeup cabinet, some cleaning supplies, and a bottle of whiskey.
- Made of Explodium: Molecular Nitramene, one of Howard Stark's "bad babies" that is compared in power to the A-bomb. One grenade's worth of nitramene (coupled with a storage of a few dozen more such grenades) is enough to blow up an entire refinery in an enormous explosion, then implode it into a ball about three feet in radius. So just think what a full-size bomb's worth would do.
- Meet Cute: Peggy and her not-Steve Love Interest, Sousa. He stands up for her against the period-accurate sexism, she resents it.
- Morning Routine: Right after the flashback, the episode shows Peggy's morning routine before she goes to work.
- Oh, Crap!: When Peggy pulls a glowing orb out of the safe at the club, recognizing that the nitramene is no longer just a formula... and later at the factory when she sees a whole truck filled with glowing balls any one of which is capable of leveling a city block.
- Outrun the Fireball: Peggy and Jarvis barely get away when the Roxxon Oil refinery blows up and then implodes, doing about 500 yards of damage.
- Power Glows: Nitramene bombs glow as brightly as an Infinity Stone. When having to defuse one, Peggy's sign that the bomb is toast is that it stops glowing.
- Properly Paranoid: A stranger approaches you in an alley, says something menacing, and a car's headlights turn on... Peggy properly clocks the stranger in the face, tries to escape, then shoots out the tire of the approaching car.
- Sacrificial Lamb: Peggy's first roommate Colleen is killed in just her second scene to demonstrate how ruthless Leviathan agents are.
- Serious Business: Jarvis is not new to espionage.Jarvis: Last summer I caught the cook pocketing the good spoons!
- She Cleans Up Nicely: Not that she wasn't attractive before, but Colleen notes this about Peggy, taking time to compliment her on the silver dress she wore undercover.
- Squick: In-universe, Peggy's male colleagues react with horror to mention of "ladies' things," a fact she exploits to keep them from asking too many questions about why she's requested a sick day.
- Stiff Upper Lip: Peggy and Jarvis can maintain a ridiculous level of politeness even when they are about to be blown up.
- Straw Misogynist: A customer at the diner that's rude to Angie. Peggy's fellow agent Ray Krzeminski is another one.
- Wig, Dress, Accent: Peggy's disguise to infiltrate the club in the pilot is this: blonde wig, silver dress, American accent.
