Written by Brant Englestein, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely, Stan Lee, & Jack Kirby
Directed by Stephen Cragg

While trying to clear Howard Stark’s name, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) and Jarvis (James D’Arcy) rescue Howard (Dominic Cooper) from a greedy smuggler who smuggled him back into the country, but is now holding him ransom. Unable to bring him to any of his homes, which are being staked out by SSR agents, Peggy takes him to The Griffith. She sneaks him in past the house mother, Ms. Fry (Meagan Fay).

However, they are not quite done with the smuggler, Mr. Otto Mink (Gregory Sporleder).

They go through everything to try and figure out which of his technological inventions are missing. He shows Peggy the blitzkrieg button, an invention that was designed to shut off all of the lights in London when they were under attack from the Nazis. Unfortunately, he never figured out how to turn them back on afterward. Setting it off in the New York City area would be bad.

Meanwhile, at the SSR, Thompson (Chad Michael Murray) and Sousa (Enver Gjokaj) pull in a vagrant who witnessed Peggy and Jarvis going onto the boat. Chief Roger Dooley (Shea Whigham) is off to Germany to interrogate Colonel Mueller (Jack Conley) about his connections to the evidence.

Peggy manages to get the item she’s looking for, but it’s not what Howard described to her. She confronts him and he tells her that it’s Steve Rogers’ blood. Peggy is angry, and Howard apologizes for lying to her. Peggy is having one of it, though. She feels like she’s been duped and tells Howard to get out of her sight.

Viewers learn who the mole is at the Griffith, and she displays some pretty incredible prowess as she’s stopping Otto Mink from getting to Peggy. Peggy hides the vial of blood behind bricks in the wall of her room. Back at the SSR, Dooley sees the typewriter start typing on its own.

There’s a lot of character advancement in The Blitzkrieg Button. The SSR agents get a bit more substance, rather than just being background characters Peggy works with. Some of that has to do with them mourning one of their own, which Dooley blames Howard Stark for. There are a couple of conversations where Peggy is questioned about why she is still working there when she’s the subject of the sexism that exists at this time. Really, it just shows how isolated Peggy is at this time. The only one who really knows Peggy and believes in her is Howard Stark and Jarvis, and she now feels like she was lied to, betrayed, and used by him.

Sousa gets to question the derelict he’s brought in, which leads to a few questions about his war injury, which he’s not forthcoming about. Still, he’s the one agent who seems sympathetic to Peggy’s situation since he’s being marginalized due to his disability while she is because she’s a woman. While in many shows, him playing on his disability to elicit sympathy and get the man to open up would have worked, that’s not the case here. It’s Thompson who offers the man a good meal and some booze that gets the information out of him.

The Blitzkrieg Button doesn’t have a lot of action – it’s heavy on character development. There are a couple of brief fight scenes, particularly between Mr. Mink and one of Peggy’s housemates who is not all that she seems. However, it’s a good episode that moves the characters and the story along while giving them a bit more depth. I really feel like this is the episode that hooked me into this series for good.

There’s also a Stan Lee sighting – watch for the man who asks Howard to borrow the sports section of the newspaper when he’s sitting at the shoe-shine chair.

Previous episode of the series (link): Agent Carter: Time and Tide

Next episode of the series (link): Agent Carter: The Iron Ceiling