Welcome to the part of the movie where exposition stops being polite and starts being a montage. This week, Pete and Kyle pick up mid-Zola — that floating square head still trapped in his beige basement screensaver — as he cheerfully reveals that Hydra has been quietly running SHIELD the way a tapeworm runs a digestive tract. The clips reel he scrolls through is peak subliminal world-building: Howard Stark’s death, Fury’s death, Captain America “hunted,” the Helicarrier, all the guns. It’s the kind of montage you’d put together if you had eternity, a server room, and a working knowledge of Canva.
And then SHIELD drops a house on them. Cue the rare MCU fade to black. The Winter Soldier is waiting in the dark, a gun on the table and a single beam of moonlight hitting his eyes. Pierce offers him milk. Pierce shoots the housekeeper. Pierce is Hydra. GOOD GOD PIERCE IS HYDRA!#&$@*^#@!
The hour closes with Pete and Kyle untangling the film’s strangest structural choice: a movie called The Winter Soldier in which the Winter Soldier has been on screen for roughly the runtime of the film’s own trailer. We end the minute with three heroes in a kitchen, two level-six targets on Pierce’s whiteboard, and exactly ten hours on the clock.
Links & Resources
- Branka Katić on IMDb — Renata in this film; selected credits include Black Cat, White Cat (1998), Public Enemies (2009), Big Love, and The King’s Man
- Branka Katić on Wikipedia
- Toby Jones as Arnim Zola on IMDb
- Arnim Zola on Wikipedia — comics-to-MCU background on the character
- Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on IMDb
- The Fugitive (1993) on IMDb
- Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars (1984) #4 on Marvel.com — the Hulk-holds-up-the-mountain issue (150 billion tons, per the cover copy)
- Operation Paperclip on Wikipedia — the post-WWII recruitment of German scientists; the real-world template Zola arrives through in the MCU
- Redwing on Marvel.com — comics-Sam Wilson’s American Kestrel falcon partner, telepathically linked, natch.
- Falcon (Sam Wilson) on Marvel.com — comics history and background for the character about to join the team
